Théatre National > Grande Salle
Hubert-Félix Thiéfaine
France
The distinctive work of Hubert-Félix Thiéfaine has succeeded in uniting a loyal and fervent audience around his dark moods, surrealist humour, insomniacal lucidity and heightened sensitivity. Hangovers amid melancholic twilights, the albatross poet occupies has these days retreated to a hiding place far from the latest crazes but never stays silent for long and his funeral songs, often precursors to the news, turn the reflection of a world in agony back towards us. Between erudition and provocation, Thiefaine’s tortuous writing style is driven by a protean culture that mixes mythology with pharmacopoeia, or hard-boiled detective series with cynical philosophies, and chisels the tongue with the scalpel in order to blur paths, stir curiosity and turn the simplicities of a lobotomised era on their head. While he’s been conducting his remote charge upon television empires for nigh on 40 years now, his latest album, Suppléments de mensonge, picked up an award at the Victoires de la musique in 2012. Be warned: his Nietzschean folly can be contagious.