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Saint-Barthélémy, le party

Dominique Bassal

Programme notes

There’s so much you can pull off when you completely control the media, which at the time meant the priests in the pulpit! Just give them the order to kindle the dormant sadism found in the miserly masses. This was ground-breaking work, and it has been reproduced near identically several times since, and up until very recently. A juicy detail: the victims’ clan at the party, devotees of a particularly hysterical take on Christianism, later exported their own point of view on all continents, where their missionary work convinced communities to convert, usually after a series of bloody depredations.

Dominique Bassal [English translation: François Couture, iv-24]


Saint-Barthélémy, le party [The Party on Saint Bartholomew’s Day] was realized from 2018 to 2021 at the composer’s studio in Montréal (Québec).