Crédit : Mirco Magliocca
One wonders why we can speak of a “Pelléas Moment” – a suspended and unique moment – in connection with the premiere of Pelléas et Mélisande at the Opéra-Comique in 1902, when all the elements that cumulate in the opera
Crédit : Mirco Magliocca
Pelléas et Mélisande, proposed by Eric Ruf, General Administrator of the Comédie Française, and co-produced by the Théâtre des Champs Elysées, the Opéra de Dijon, the Stadttheater Klagenfurt and the Opéra de Rouen Haute-Normandie, is being revived at the Théâtre national du Capitole in Toulouse. During its travels, this production has seen a number of casts, notably that of the TCE, which has been reviewed in these columns. The one offered in Toulouse is a marvel, supported by a staging full
Credit : Laurent Guizard
Just over two years ago, Europe was still living in relative peace, despite the ominous winds blowing from the East. Now winters, springs and summers have come and gone with their waves of life, while on the fertile plains of Ukraine, machine-gun fire rumbles and rifles replace the sweet song of the dumkas. Some would have us believe that Russia has been a barbaric country for centuries. This is a misleading assertion, because such a vast territory has made its mark through
Crédit : Laurent Guizard
The Opéra de Rennes launches its operatic season with The Coronation of Poppea (Monteverdi) performed by Damien Guillon’s Le Banquet Céleste, directed by Ted Huffman, highlighting the (en)play of power and sensuality, the better to make Love triumph (over Virtue):
“What happens when our moral values are discarded? What can we do when we watch helplessly as a certain world order collapses? This is the question that director Ted Huffman asks himself in the programme, a question posed
Crédit : Laurent Guizard
The 23/24 season at the Opéra de Rennes opens with one of the major successes of the 2022 edition of the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, a production of Claudio Monteverdi’s Coronation of Poppea by New York director Ted Huffman. It features Johannes Schütz’s Spartan set design (here revived and adapted by Anna Wörl), distinguished above all by the enormous tube – half black and half white – that hangs above the protagonists throughout the evening, like a symbol of the duality between good
Crédit : Simon Gosselin
La Traviata, Verdi’s masterpiece, is revived at the Opéra National de Toulouse in a colourful production by Pierre Rambert, conducted by Michele Spotti with a second cast led by Claudia Pavone, Julien Dran and Dario Solari.
The staging is as clear as ever, from the mundanity of Act I to the almost celestial bliss of the beginning of Act II, which is soon transformed into a descent into hell, literally: as the curtain closes on Act II, a spectre takes
Crédit : Simon Gosselin
Barrie Kosky’s ten years at the helm of the Komische Oper Berlin have left a legacy of unforgettable productions, some of which he directed. In France, therefore, we are eagerly awaiting the arrival of all the productions from this recently ended era. His staging of Handel’s Sémélé (2018, seen streaming during the COVID months) lands at the Opéra de Lille, revived by David Merz, and it’s a complete strike!
Sémélé loves the god of gods Jupiter, who loves Sémélé. Semele is due
Crédit : Simon Gosselin
Les dix ans de Barrie Kosky à la tête de la Komische Oper Berlin ont laissé des productions inoubliables, parmi lesquelles certaines dont il était à la barre. On guette donc en France avec impatience l’arrivée de tous les spectacles de cette époque récemment révolue. Sa mise en scène de Sémélé de Haendel (2018, vue en streaming pendant les mois COVID) débarque à l’Opéra de Lille, reprise par David Merz, et c’est un strike complet !
Sémélé aime le dieu des dieux
Crédit : Simon Gosselin
When the curtain rises, the drama has already been played out: all that remains of the beautiful, loving, naive Semele, the mythological figure and heroine of Georg Friedrich Handel’s oratorio, is a pile of smouldering ashes. Out of it suddenly emerges a dazed, incredulous young woman in a nightie. Locked in the vast room where she died, Sémélé, or rather her ghost, has no choice but to replay the events that led to her untimely death. Her forced betrothal
The exceptional combination of Vincent Dumestre and Omar Porras masterfully brings Sebastian Duron’s “Coronis” back to life, a beautiful woman who has been asleep since the 18th century.
Sebastian Duron’s Coronis, a baroque zarzuela presented at the Théâtre de Caen from 6 to 9 November, in co-production with teams from Rouen, Limoges, Amiens, Lille and the Opéra Comique in Paris, is an exciting and, to put it bluntly, eminently bewitching discovery. This French premiere is also a stage premiere, since this mythological pastoral, first performed
György Ligeti died in 2006 and bequeathed to posterity a composite and peculiar musical body of work based notably on a complex polyphony, influenced by different ethnic music. His opera, Le Grand Macabre, belongs to the major lyrical works of the 20thcentury.
The Philharmonie de Paris was sold out for this exceptional evening dedicated to two of the central works of György Liegti, his deeply moving Requiem and his opera Le Grand Macabre through representative extracts of the latter. To see this vast enterprise
That Lully’s Phaéton was an allusion to Fouquet’s fall, the minister guilty of having wanted to rise too closely to the Sun King, is possible, but for his production, Benjamin Lazar has chosen a totally different interpretation. This terrible story of all-consuming ambition could take place in any setting without losing any of its force, as we are shown by Mathieu Lorry-Dupuy’s sober and monumental set and Alain Blanchot’s costumes that deliberately mix periods and places. In this lyrical tragedy where the Lullyist art of
If live performance survives in spite of all the economic indicators, it is because, unlike any other genre – including cinema – it offers a part of the unexpected needed to experience a thrill. Take the Instant Lyrique with Anne-Catherine Gillet, a delightful soprano that Paris applauded last year in Le Domino Noir and Liège did a few weeks ago in Gounod’s Faust.
Couple her with a partner relatively unknown up to now as having only recently left the conservatoire: Victoire Bunel, a
In a few words, the conductor Jean-François Heisser situates the initiative behind this programme. In the context of his Society for Private Musical Performances founded in 1918, Schoenberg advocated the discovery of the contemporary repertoire by proposing an innovative approach whereby
