The Season 2024-2025

For once, this season’s first cycle is not centred on a particular composer or aesthetic period. Cello, the soul of Romanticism focuses on an instrument that is not usually regarded as one of the ‘kings’ of the concert hall, a title usually attributed to the violin or the piano. Yet the cello is no less capable of virtuosity than either of those instruments, and its expressive qualities are perfectly suited to the Romantic repertoire. In France, the cello became well established in the nineteenth century, with classes at the Paris Conservatoire ensuring that it enjoyed a high profile. The autumn festival in Venice presents an overview of the repertoire dedicated to the cello, in the form of seven concerts, with three main themes: solo pieces with piano accompaniment, works for several cellos, and cello quintets (for 2 violins, viola and 2 cellos). In Italy and elsewhere – in cities including Rome, Munich, Paris, Saintes, Montreal and Quebec – works for cello and orchestra will complete the panorama.

The year 2025 provides a twofold opportunity to celebrate Georges Bizet: it marks the 150th anniversary both of his death and of the première, three months earlier, of Carmen. The cycle Georges Bizet, ‘l’oiseau rebelle’ (‘the rebellious bird’ – words taken from the famous Habanera) aims to give a representative picture of a composer who moved between opera, art song (mélodie) and pieces written for his own instrument, the piano. The production of Carmen, created in Rouen in September 2023, with sets, costumes and staging reconstructed from period documents, is to be revived in January at Versailles and in March in Hong Kong. Le Docteur Miracle, an opérette, will travel between Poitiers and its surroundings, Bordeaux, Venice, Normandy and Swiss. Together with the incidental music to L’Arlésienne (with Alphonse Daudet’s drama adapted for a narrator), it will be presented at the Opéra de Tours in October and at the Théâtre du Châtelet in May and June, while a symposium focusing on Bizet will bring together researchers at the Opéra-Comique. Several books and recordings will reveal unknown facets of the composer’s work, including amongst others Djamileh, Vasco de Gama, Le Retour de Virginie and Le Golfe de Baïa.

As well as the two cycles devoted to Georges Bizet, and the productions that continue to tour, the 2024-25 season will include other inspiring performances, such as L’Ancêtre by Camille Saint-Saëns in October (Monaco), Mazeppa by Clémence de Grandval in January (Munich) and Psyché by Ambroise Thomas in February (Budapest, then Vienna). The first version of Charles Gounod’s Faust, published in 2019 in the ‘French opera’ series (Bru Zane Label), will finally be back on stage in Lille and at the Opéra-Comique in Paris.