Opéra National de Paris

Wave-Breaker' is a choreography created by master of visual dancing Damien Jalet inspired by the movement of the waves, seen here as a metaphor of what passes through us, overwhelms us and eventually saves us.

A documentary view of the galas of Paris’s Palais Garnier in the 1950s and ’60s.

Jafar Panahi sets out to find a Kurdish young woman with a golden voice that has been forbidden to sing by her family.

No men left on earth, only maintenance programed robots. Mikki, the robot from the Opera Garnier is not an exception. Every night, at nightfall, he projects on the stage mysterious pictures of a dancer, as a last memory of mankind.

Between dance and drawings, Arnaud des Pallières relates different moments of Degas’s life and unveils some of his darker sides.

What is this flame that compels Don Giovanni to seduce, subjugate and conquer women one after the other, with the fervour and cold indifference of a predator securing his prey; to pursue through his conquests some obscure and ever‑elusive objective? For his second collaboration with Da Ponte, Mozart was to brand the history of opera with a hot iron and forever haunt European culture. In this Libertine Punished, Kierkegaard invites us to hear “the whisperings of temptation, the whirlwind of seduction, the silence of the moment”. The Mozart-Da Ponte cycle continues with a Don Giovanni entrusted to director Ivo Van Hove. In the wake of Boris Godunov, the director, accustomed to examining the political meaning of works, presents his second production for the Paris Opera.

Of Shostakovich’s initial undertaking – a trilogy on the tragic destinies of Russian women through the ages – only one opera was ever written: the hard-hitting Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Although one of the mainsprings of the work, the Shakespearean parallel is here bitterly ironic: unlike Lady Macbeth, Katerina Ismaïlova who, in the remote reaches of rural 19th century Russia, falls in love with one of her husband’s employees and is finally forced to commit suicide, is less a manipulator than a victim of a violent and patriarchal society. Krzysztof Warlikowski liberates all the subversive power of this scorching and scandalous work, which marked the early years of the Opéra Bastille.

Two bored extras from the ‘Tristan and Isolde’ opera roam the underground of the Garnier Palace.

The year 2019 marks the 350th year of existence of the Opéra de Paris, and the Opéra national is staging two exceptional shows at the Palais Garnier in the form of an inaugural gala. Under the direction of Dan Ettinger, the principal dancers, soloists, corps de ballet and orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris will perform extracts from famous ballets as well as some of the most popular opera arias. Soprano Sonya Yoncheva, tenor Bryan Hymel and baritone Ludovic Tézier are among the headliners. A magical experience!

Sergei Prokofiev's setting of the fairy tale "Cinderella" premiered at Moscow's Bolshoi Theater in 1945. In 1986, Rudolf Nureyev, then ballet director of the Paris Opera, choreographed the ballet anew and transposed the story into a private cinema, with sets reminiscent of Fritz Lang's "Metropolis." ARTE shows the Paris Opera performance from December 31, 2018.

The ambiguities of Verdi’s theatre are particularly clear in his baritone roles, among which is that of Boccanegra, corsair turned doge of Genoa and the troubled observer of the conflicts that tore apart 14th century landowners and peasants. An eminently political opera in which power struggles are interwoven with family conflicts, Simon Boccanegra echoes the life of its composer – the man who championed the cause of Italian unification and overcame the loss of his wife and children. Calixto Bieito, that most Shakespearean of opera directors, brings humanism and truth to a work haunted by gleaming images of the sea.

In Benoît Jacquot’s production, Manet’s Olympia dominates the stage of the Opéra Bastille. In 1863, the painting caused a scandal: the prostitute awaits her client, her expression proud, her demeanour assured. Is this Violetta? Like Olympia, Verdi’s most celebrated heroine surrenders to the spectator just as she surrenders to love, going so far as to die on stage, a woman’s ultimate sacrifice for her lover. Or might it be the spectator who strips her bare and intrudes upon her privacy, in the image of this milieu of social voyeurism? Whatever the case, these two women regard us with defiance and subjugate those who cannot help but look at them.

Divested of its traditional attributes – glass slipper and pumpkin carriage – and dominated by a tyrannical stepfather instead of a cruel stepmother, Rossini’s la Cenerentola plays with these most conventional of fairy‑tale characters. Nonetheless Cinderella lives in a closed world devoid of tenderness and under the yoke of the tormentor whom she protects. Deep beneath her goodness smoulders a fire that her encounter with the prince will set free… Guillaume Gallienne subtly highlights the halftones of this dramma giocoso, somewhere between opera buffa and opera seria, and ranging from sombre melancholy to the burlesque.

A village somewhere in the Italian countryside, a wayside inn on a road crossed by the occasional dog. Nothing more. Laurent Pelly’s production presents a deserted landscape in which the turbulent arrival of Doctor Dulcamara causes a sensation. And with good reason! He is said to be the inventor of a mysterious love potion… In opera, love philtres often provoke terrible tragedies. They also provide the pretext for this gentle comedy in which Sergeant Belcore and the timid Nemorino vie with each other for beautiful Adina’s heart. The stage is set! Bring on the music, which, if we are to believe Donizetti, was composed in a fortnight!

Jerome Robbins considered the Paris Opera Ballet as his second home after the New York City Ballet. This production in his honour brings together works displaying the infinite diversity of his sources of inspiration and his genius on stage. Be it in the energy of the large-scale Glass Pieces or the intimate sweetness of Afternoon of a Faun and A Suite of Dances, there emerges that rare capacity to make bodies follow the flow in a living comprehension of music. As the celebrated ballet Fancy Free, a veritable theatrical portrait of an era, enters the repertoire, Robbins reveals another facet of his talent.

Les Huguenots is a monumental fresco featuring various impossible loves in the context of the Saint Bartholomew Massacre. Andreas Kriegenburg places these timeless conflicts of love and religion in an immaculate setting in which the costumes appear yet more flamboyant and the victims’ blood more violently red.

Titus and Berenice love each other; under the watchful eye of Antiochus, the hopeless lover, they try yet refuse to understand each other. Taking up the “majestic sadness” of these alexandrines, among the greatest verses in the French language, Michael Jarrell amplifies the power of words, making them a vehicle for spaces and identities that, from Rome to Jerusalem, are unceasingly questioned.

Motivated by the love that bound him to Mathilda Wesendonck, Richard Wagner’s composition of Tristan und Isolde goes far beyond any simple operatic gesture. Peter Sellars’ production pours oil onto this troubled sea of emotions in an almost dematerialised setting bared of all earthly contingencies whilst Bill Viola presents the lovers’ initiatory quest for nirvana in videos detached from the stage, suspended like altarpieces.