The Season 2026-2027

The cycle Clémence de Grandval, an unconventional vicomtesse follows the Palazzetto Bru Zane’s strategy, initiated several seasons ago, of promoting female musical figures. To remedy the omission of women composers from our history books a concerted effort is required in order to provide a more accurate representation of musical production in the nineteenth century, one more in keeping with the diversity of that period. A closer look at Clémence de Grandval’s career shows, however, that the fact of being a woman was not the only explanation for her lack of recognition, both during her lifetime and after her death. In a century marked by professionalisation in the music world, this aristocrat was constantly dismissed as an “amateur”, by programme organisers – who felt she should perform her works at home rather than in public concert halls – and also by journalists. “My name is a crime,” she wrote to her teacher and friend, Camille Saint-Saëns, on the eve of the premiere of Mazeppa.

To mark the bicentenary of the death of the composer of the famous Ode to Joy, the cycle Paris in the age of Beethoven offers another example of erasure: that of an entire generation of composers that was overshadowed by such a mighty figure. Not only did Ludwig van Beethoven capture the imagination throughout the Romantic period, but he also served as a key reference point for music historians seeking to chart the transition into the nineteenth century. Consequently, his contemporaries – in Paris as elsewhere – were relegated to secondary roles, either called upon to serve as foils to the genius of the great master, or simply sidelined. In providing today’s musicians with the opportunity to perform the works of those forgotten artists, the Palazzetto Bru Zane aims to enrich the understanding of that period, without detracting from the great names of the past.