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Premiered at the Théâtre du Jeu de Paume in Aix-en-Provence, *Accabadora*, a one-act chamber opera composed by Francesco Filidei, transports the audience to a Sardinian village in the 1950s, still steeped in vivid and powerful ancestral traditions.
Custom dictated that the upbringing of a young girl from a poor, large family should be entrusted to an elderly woman from the village, who was mysteriously respected by all. Here, Maria, ‘the child of the soul’, is raised with tenderness, certainly, but also

Jean-Philippe Rameau’s *Castor et Pollux* is brought back to life at Versailles under the baton of Leonardo García-Alarcón, conducting his Cappella Mediterranea and the Namur Chamber Choir. An immersive production, driven by a committed cast of singers and a spatial arrangement that places the audience at the heart of the drama. From the very first bars, the work asserts its expressive power: Rameau’s third opera, Castor et Pollux, unfolds with a compositional style in which harmonic tensions, dissonances and

Words fail us: they stumble, distort and dull the reality of this deeply moving performance. One must imagine the encounter between horror and beauty, and experience an incurable pain that only the testimony of incredible dignity makes tolerable. Mieczysław Weinberg’s work is adapted from the radio play ‘The Passenger in Cabin No. 45’ by Auschwitz survivor Zofia Posmysz, written after she heard a woman’s voice that reminded her of a concentration camp guard. On a transatlantic liner, a young couple celebrates the success of the

In the courtyard of Louis XI Castle in La Côte-Saint-André at the Berlioz Festival, Claire Gibault and her Paris Mozart Orchestra offer a concert in chiaroscuro between romanticism, lyricism and intensity, bringing together Schubert’s Death and the Maiden, melodies by Berlioz performed by Victoire Bunel, and Beethoven’s 8th Symphony.
From the outset, with Franz Schubert’s Death and the Maiden in Gustav Mahler’s version for string orchestra, Claire Gibault’s conducting is vibrant, almost choreographic. Her gestures combine firm momentum for the accents, open

The Opéra Comique de Paris opens its new season with panache thanks to Daniel-François-Esprit Auber’s Domino Noir on a libretto by Eugène Scribe, in the dazzling production staged by Valérie Lesort and Christian Hecq, under the precise musical direction of Louis Langrée.

Under the baton of the Director of the venue, Louis Langrée, the Overture is immediately striking for its efficient fluidity and its careful dynamics. Enough to immediately plunge the audience into

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

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

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