The Season 2023-2024

With the cycle ‘Au miroir des mondes’ (Mirroring Worlds), we will be exploring foreign inspiration in nineteenth-century French music. Situated as it is at the crossroads of Europe, France has always been an aesthetic melting pot, but the acceleration of international exchanges during the Romantic period amplified this tendency. The modal formulas and exotic rhythms that appear in scores written for Paris were far too distorted to be regarded today as representative of their countries of origin. But they do testify to an attempt to renew the national art form. An attempt that bore fruit: is not the most famous French opera aria in the world a habanera? And indeed, Bizet’s Carmen will also be on the programme for this year’s festivities, along with Augusta Holmès’s La Montagne noire and Charles Gounod’s Le Tribut de Zamora.

In spring, the doors of the Palazzetto Bru Zane will be thrown wide open to welcome Gabriel Fauré and his pupils. While the mélodies and chamber music of the composer of the famous Requiem now enjoy a well-deserved reputation, they deserve to be heard alongside much less familiar works by his disciples. In this way, the figure who was chosen by Ravel’s generation as a veritable godfather for their innovations will be seen in true perspective. In Quebec, the Fauré celebrations will also include Dubois, his predecessor at the head of the Paris Conservatoire.

Women composers, who were the focus of a thematic cycle last season, will remain a thread in the programming this year, particularly at the Paris Festival, with Juliette Dillon’s Contes fantastiques and orchestral works by Rita Strohl.

Louise Bertin’s Fausto, revealed in concert in the summer of 2023, will find its way onto the stage in Essen, and Charles Lecocq’s La Fille de Madame Angot, released in 2021 in our CD-book series, will take up residence at the Opéra Comique for a series of performances in the autumn.

Already popular productions – La Vie parisienne, Ô mon bel inconnu, Le 66! – will continue to tour, while Flannan Obé will invite us to a brand-new evening of café-concert.

Finally, Lalo’s Le Roi d’Ys will be heard in Budapest and Amsterdam, reminding us that this composer – already celebrated by the Centre de musique romantique française in 2015 – is in the top flight of those whose repertory we promote.