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  • Simon Boccanegra

    Opera

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    Tuesday 19 March 19:30

    Opéra Bastille

  • La Fille mal gardée

    Ballet

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    Tuesday 19 March 19:30

    Palais Garnier

  • Le Petit Bain

    Dance

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    Wednesday 20 March 14:00

    Amphithéâtre Olivier Messiaen

  • Le Petit Bain

    Dance

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    Wednesday 20 March 16:30

    Amphithéâtre Olivier Messiaen

  • La Fille mal gardée

    Ballet

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    Wednesday 20 March 19:30

    Palais Garnier

  • Le Petit Bain

    Dance

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    Thursday 21 March 10:00

    Amphithéâtre Olivier Messiaen

  • Musical encounter March 21

    Concerts and Recitals

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    Thursday 21 March 13:00

    Studio Bastille

  • Le Petit Bain

    Dance

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    Thursday 21 March 14:00

    Amphithéâtre Olivier Messiaen

  • Don Quixote

    Ballet

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    Thursday 21 March 19:30

    Opéra Bastille

  • La Fille mal gardée

    Ballet

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    Thursday 21 March 19:30

    Palais Garnier

Don’t miss

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Opera

Simon Boccanegra

Giuseppe Verdi

Opéra Bastille
from 12 March to 03 April 2024
Book

Ballet

La Fille mal gardée

Frederick Ashton

Palais Garnier
from 15 March to 01 April 2024
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Ballet

Don Quixote

Rudolf Nureyev

Opéra Bastille
from 21 March to 24 April 2024
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News

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  • Learn more

    18 March 2024

    New

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

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    06 March 2024

    The Exterminating Angel: cast change

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    08 March 2024

    cast change: don quichotte

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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

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    09 February 2024

    Tribute to Seiji Ozawa

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    08 February 2024

    cast change: don quichotte

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    30 January 2024

    Rehearsals to the general public

Life at the Opera

  • 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

  • Absolute revenge - Interview with David McVicar
    Video

    Absolute revenge - Interview with David McVicar

  • Draw-me The Exterminating Angel
    Video

    Draw-me The Exterminating Angel

  • Baritone Ludovic Tézier about Simon Boccanegra
    Video

    Baritone Ludovic Tézier about Simon Boccanegra

  • Draw-me Simon Boccanegra
    Video

    Draw-me Simon Boccanegra

  •  A mysterious bewitchment: interview with Thomas Adès and Calixto Bieito
    Video

    A mysterious bewitchment: interview with Thomas Adès and Calixto Bieito

  • Simon Boccanegra’s ship
    Diaporama

    Simon Boccanegra’s ship

  • The spirit of Boccanegra sails onwards
    Article

    The spirit of Boccanegra sails onwards

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

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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.

Absolute revenge - Interview with David McVicar

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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 The Exterminating Angel

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Understand the plot in 1 minute

2:04 min

Draw-me The Exterminating Angel

By Matthieu Pajot

Baritone Ludovic Tézier about Simon Boccanegra

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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

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1:53 min

Draw-me Simon Boccanegra

By Octave

 A mysterious bewitchment: interview with Thomas Adès and Calixto Bieito

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11:09 min

A mysterious bewitchment: interview with Thomas Adès and Calixto Bieito

By Marion Mirande

  "Freedom is a ghost" said Luis Buñuel, director of the film The Exterminating Angel. Taking his inspiration from the film and its surreal domestic huis clos, composer Thomas Adès has created a brilliantly orchestrated work of tremendous dramatic force, which acts like a spell on both the performers - themselves prisoners of an enigmatic force - and the audience.

Calixto Bieito embraces this dramatic and operatic substance, underlining the humanity in its darkest aspects.  

© Elena Bauer / OnP

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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

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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.    

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