Opera

Simon Boccanegra

by Giuseppe Verdi

Bastille Opera

from 12 March to 03 April 2024

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Ballet

Don Quixote

by Rudolf Nureyev

Bastille Opera

from 21 March to 24 April 2024

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Ballet

La Fille mal gardée

Frederick Ashton

Palais Garnier
from 15 March to 01 April 2024
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Concerts and Recitals

Concert à la Philharmonie de Paris

Philharmonie de Paris
on 02 April 2024 at 8 pm
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Opera

Médée

Marc-Antoine Charpentier

Palais Garnier
from 10 April to 11 May 2024
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News

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    26 March 2024

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    Bleuenn Battistoni nominated Danseuse Étoile de l'Opéra national de Paris

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    27 March 2024

    Prix de l'Arop season 2022/2023

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    20 March 2024

    The artistic programme 24/25 is online !

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    18 March 2024

    Kinoshita Group Co., Ltd. and the Paris Opera are glad to announce the signature of a major partnership

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    08 March 2024

    Cast change: Don Quichotte

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    06 March 2024

    The Exterminating Angel: cast change

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    24 February 2024

    Anna Ringart obituary

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    22 February 2024

    La Traviata: cast change

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    16 February 2024

    Concerts with the Paris Opera orchestra at the Philharmonie in Paris and in Aix-en-Provence

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    16 February 2024

    Générations France Musique

Life at the Opera

  • Absolute revenge - Interview with David McVicar
    Video

    Absolute revenge - Interview with David McVicar

  • Draw-me La Fille mal gardée
    Video

    Draw-me La Fille mal gardée

  • A whimsical ballet: Marine Ganio et Jack Gasztowtt rehearse La Fille mal gardée
    Video

    A whimsical ballet: Marine Ganio et Jack Gasztowtt rehearse La Fille mal gardée

  • Giselle, romantic and sincere
    Video

    Giselle, romantic and sincere

  • Baritone Ludovic Tézier about Simon Boccanegra
    Video

    Baritone Ludovic Tézier about Simon Boccanegra

  • Draw-me Simon Boccanegra
    Video

    Draw-me Simon Boccanegra

  • Simon Boccanegra’s ship
    Diaporama

    Simon Boccanegra’s ship

  • The spirit of Boccanegra sails onwards
    Article

    The spirit of Boccanegra sails onwards

  • Romantic Tutus in Giselle
    Article

    Romantic Tutus in Giselle

Absolute revenge - Interview with David McVicar

Watch the video

Interview with David McVicar

10:15 min

Absolute revenge - Interview with David McVicar

By Isabelle Stibbe

Médée, Marc-Antoine Charpentier's only "tragédie lyrique", returns to the Paris Opera three centuries after its creation.

To mark the occasion, director David McVicar discusses the function of myths and the fascination exerted by the character of Médée.

Draw-me La Fille mal gardée

Watch the video

Understand the plot in 1 minute

1:11 min

Draw-me La Fille mal gardée

By Matthieu Pajot

A whimsical ballet: Marine Ganio et Jack Gasztowtt rehearse La Fille mal gardée

Watch the video

4:44 min

A whimsical ballet: Marine Ganio et Jack Gasztowtt rehearse La Fille mal gardée

By Antony Desvaux

On the occasion of the revival of La Fille mal gardée at the Paris Opera, Marine Ganio and Jack Gasztowtt discuss the solo roles of Lise and Colas, which they perform on stage.

The two dancers explain the humorous yet virtuoso nature of this ballet, created in 1789 by Jean Dauberval, remounted in 1960 by Frederick Ashton, and added to the Paris Opéra repertoire in 2002.

Marine Ganio discusses her work in the studio and the importance of not overplaying the farcical elements at the heart of the story. Jack Gasztowtt talks about rehearsing the pas de deux with an unusual prop, a long ribbon that wraps around the dancers. The two performers share what the ribbon symbolizes for them.

© Agathe Poupeney / OnP

Giselle, romantic and sincere

Watch the video

Secrets of interpretation

8:46 min

Giselle, romantic and sincere

By Aliénor Courtin

To mark the revival of Giselle after Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot, encounter with dancer Étoile Dorothée Gilbert, production manager Cédric Cortès and guest répétitrice Monique Loudières. This landmark production from the Paris Opera Ballet's repertoire continues to astound with its romantic-style choreography, theatrical techniques and multi-faceted interpretive skills.

Baritone Ludovic Tézier about Simon Boccanegra

Watch the video

4:58 min

Baritone Ludovic Tézier about Simon Boccanegra

By Marion Mirande

The truth of Verdian feeling shines out from Simon Boccanegra. His love of coastal landscapes, his faith in social justice and his loss of wife and child are all biographical elements towards which this opera converges.

Ludovic Tézier performs the title role, sometimes gentle, sometimes harsh, bringing his immense experience as a baritone to one of Verdi's finest and most moving scores.  

Draw-me Simon Boccanegra

Watch the video

Understand the plot in 1 minute

1:53 min

Draw-me Simon Boccanegra

By Matthieu Pajot

© Elena Bauer / OnP

See the slideshow

An interview with José Sciuto, Deputy Artistic Director of the Workshops

Simon Boccanegra’s ship

By Cyril Pesenti

“The sea is an essential element in the opera Simon Boccanegra. In Calixto Bieito’s production, that sea has retreated, leaving a huge ship's hull washed up on the stage. The construction of this set was the fruit of a complex and meticulous process, involving almost all the craftspeople in the various workshops—from the research and design office to the workshops specialising in ironwork, carpentry, composite materials, painting, and sculpture, etc. This was an extremely “technological” set: To build it, a three-dimensional scan of a scale model of the ship, created by the sculpture workshop, allowed the design office to create a blueprint for the surface of the hull and its inner structure. Using these components as a starting point, a large number of metallic pieces were laser-cut and then assembled. Some thirty moulds were prepared to create the metal plates for the hull. These plates were also designed in a way that they could be used as a projection surface for the videos that director Calixto Bieito is so fond of.”

© Elena Bauer / OnP

The spirit of Boccanegra sails onwards

Read the article

Interview with Calixto Bieito

04 min

The spirit of Boccanegra sails onwards

By Marion Mirande, Simon Hatab

Of great musical finesse, Simon Boccanegra is an opera that takes us on a voyage to the world of the Genoese doge - a politician and former corsair, redeemed by his relationship with his daughter. After his striking production of Aribert Reimann’s Lear and Carmen by Georges Bizet, Calixto Bieito returns to the Paris Opera to take up this neglected work by Verdi, offering us a reading as sensitive as it is enlightening.   

Simon Boccanegra is based on the eponymous work by the Spanish Romantic playwright, Antonio García Gutiérrez. What, in Verdi, remains of his drama?

The romantic aesthetic fascinated Verdi, that of Schiller particularly, and of course, that of Spain. In the subjects tackled by Spanish Romanticism, he found echoes of situations familiar to him: a father love for his child; confrontations with death; hatred and family feuds ... Themes that resonate strongly with Spanish history, past and present. For me, the most emblematic work of Spanish identity belongs to the Romantic period: the painting by Francisco Goya, The Second of May 1808 in Madrid. In it I perceive the expression of the Latin spirit, explosive and rebellious. One might think that the extreme behaviour portrayed in theatre or in the arts is the stuff of mythology and is exaggerated. But it is not. This impetuosity is characteristic of the Spanish, notably of people one meets in the villages, as is also the case in Italian culture, where emotions are felt very intensely, even beyond reason.   

You once qualified this opera as a strange work... In what way is it strange?

Simon Boccanegra differs noticeably from Verdi’s other operas, such as Il Trovatore or La Traviata. The music is less well-known ... Verdi concentrated here on the characters and their personalities. He sought to underline their depth of feeling. This makes it a very complex opera from a psychological point of view, posing numerous enigmas concerning Mankind and human nature. Verdi stripped away the varnish of appearances in order to question the very essence of his characters and reveal their intimate natures. This is also true of the treatment of the father-daughter relationship which also appears in several of his other works. In Simon Boccanegra, however, it is more thoughtful and profound.   

How do you envisage the interactions between the private and public spheres that punctuate the work from beginning to end?

Simon’s peace-making policy has its origins in his love for his daughter, but also in her loss which prompts him to seek a lost harmony. A quest that will unfortunately prove sterile... The character’s sadness echoes today's world in which disillusionment with humanity is every day palpable. As well as transforming Gutiérrez’s text, Arrigo Boito’s inclusion in the libretto of Petrarch’s letter calling for reconciliation confers on Simon a humanist dimension. His exhortation for peace has not been common in the mouths of politicians, either in Verdi’s day or in our own.

Simon Boccanegra is a work in which the sea is omnipresent. Have you tried to give the maritime image a more up-to-date, political resonance?

For Simon, the sea is synonymous with freedom. The immigrant crisis reminds us daily that the sea is also murderous. However, that wasn’t a theme I wished to take up. It didn’t seem really opportune. Above all, I tried to explore what there is within Simon, the memories he keeps locked inside him, the dreams, the nightmares. Therefore I had to imagine a mental space, a refuge, that would allow him to escape from his grief to the obscure zones of his soul and to find once more the feeling of liberty that was once afforded him by the sea.    

© Christophe Pelé / OnP

Romantic Tutus in Giselle

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A production remembered

06 min

Romantic Tutus in Giselle

By Anne-Marie Legrand

The story is well-known: Giselle discovers that the man she loves is in reality a prince betrothed to another woman. Devastated by grief, the young peasant girl succumbs to madness and dies. She joins the Wilis, young brides to be who have died before their nuptials and who condemn men to dance themselves to death. If this ballet, first performed in 1841, has lost nothing of its fascination over the centuries, it is particularly thanks to those bewitching winged creatures, the Wilis, dressed in tulle and on points. Anne-Marie Legrand, in charge of the Soft Dressmaking Workshop at the Palais Garnier, confides the secrets of the making of the emblematic tutus from the “white act” of Giselle.

The Soft Dressmaking Workshop (in French Atelier Flou, “flou” meaning blurred or indistinct) is dedicated to the conception of the female costumes, unlike the Tailoring Workshop, which makes the male costumes. Why these names? I couldn’t give you the exact reason. To my mind, when you look at a male costume made by the Tailoring Workshop, you notice that it has a more structured look, with fabric cut on a flat surface. For the female costumes, however, a large part of the work is done on the tailor's dummy because a pattern is not enough to work from. The fabrics are all-important and each one requires a particular approach. We have to be very reactive in our work, moulding and sculpting the fabric, particularly for the drapes. I think that’s where the term “flou” comes from, because we sculpt diaphanous fabric for women whose curves can be infinitely varied and subtle.

As head of the Soft Dressmaking Workshop, I prepare the models of the costumes. The decorators arrive at the workshops with designs that I make up in three dimensions. The designs are more or less flexible, depending on the decorators. I have to reconcile the vision of the artistic team with what we can do and especially with the constraints and particularities of dance costumes, which is our speciality. We make suggestions to the decorator and eventually the design is finalised. Then, I create a pattern which I pass on to my two workshop assistants who do the cutting out. Then they pass on the job to the nine dressmakers. We also use temporary staff when the workload is really heavy. At the moment, we’re working on a revival of the ballet Giselle as well as on two new productions so there are twenty-seven of us in the workshop!   

Hannah O’Neill dans le rôle de Myrtha (Giselle, 2016)
Hannah O’Neill dans le rôle de Myrtha (Giselle, 2016) © Svetlana Loboff / OnP

The costumes for Giselle are redone regularly for several reasons. Firstly, because it’s a ballet that occupies an important place in the company’s repertoire and which is often performed, in particular on foreign tours. The costumes get a lot of wear and are stocked in containers: the dancers barely have time to take them off before they are packed away, sometimes still slightly damp. Silk yellows very quickly so we have no choice but to renew the costumes.

Once the skirts and bodices have been cut out, the dressmakers get them ready for fitting. There are always two fitting sessions. At the first, the costume is not finished. Between the first and second fitting it takes five days' work to carry out the considerable job of pleating the organdy silk used for the Wilis. After the second fitting, we make the final adjustments to the bodice before we assemble it with the skirt. It is painstaking work, all done by hand, in order to fit it perfectly to the dancer's body.

There are various sorts of skirts and tutus. The type used in Giselle is what we call a “romantic tutu”. At the end of the 18th century, with grand ballets like La Sylphide, the long skirt with several underskirts became the emblematic costume of the ballerinas. It is also known as the “Degas tutu” in reference to the painter Edgar Degas, who often took dancers as a subject for his paintings. But at the dawn of the 20th century, the tutu was shortened, became rigid and began to be worn above the hips: the pancake tutu or English tutu was now the order of the day. This is the tutu used in Swan Lake, for example, and therefore the emblematic ballerina’s costume in the collective unconscious today.

Making the bodice and the tutu requires a considerable amount of work. One single tutu in Giselle takes 23 metres of tulle, cut into seven layers placed one on top of another. We use different types of tulle with different characteristics for each layer: first comes a stiffer tulle to structure the skirt then come layers of increasingly fine, supple tulle. The layers are gathered, pinned and stitched by hand, one by one, onto a yoke. Then we do what we call “points de bagage” : large, loose stitches that keep the layers together during performance. To make a complete costume, it takes at least sixty hours.

In the second act of Giselle, the dancers all wear romantic tutus and points, which is why it is called the “white act”. It’s the most enchanting and it’s when the plot moves into the realms of the supernatural. We are in the kingdom of the Wilis, ghosts of young women who died before their weddings. I think the tutus make an essential contribution to this unearthly atmosphere. Their whiteness seems to reflect the light of the moon, - it’s extremely beautiful. And the “unreal dance” with which they ensnare men would really lose something of its hypnotic power without the effects created by the fabric. The diaphanous quality of the tutu gives the Wilis' movements an ethereal and floating quality. In spite of the twenty metres of fabric, on stage it appears infinitely light. The romantic tutu has become an integral part of the ballet Giselle.


interviewed by Milena Mc Closkey

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