Sponsored by
This “American-style operetta” questions the optimism of the Brave New World and its supposed superiority.
Based on the eponymous work by Voltaire, Candide according to Bernstein transposes the caustic Voltairean sense of humour into contemporary American society. A comedy that mocks the world’s absurdity, this ‘American operetta’ questions the optimism of Brave New World and its supposed superiority. Bernstein creates a lyric work unique in its genre. Candide is subjected to a significant number of edits by a variety of people before arriving at its final form which encompasses all its originality. Just like the fate of the work itself, the young Candide’s initiation journey is marked by several adventures and sudden changes. While he learns at his own expense that ‘everything is not for the best in the best of all possible worlds’, the music on the other hand returns to optimism in sparkling passages full of joy and parody. Nothing is left out: a brilliant overture, the pieces of bravery for the coloratura, the dances, from the tango to the gavotte; everything is there. Irony and good nature mark the path of happiness, which consists very simply of ‘cultivating our garden’.
Music by Leonard Bernstein, book by Hugh Wheeler after Voltaire, Lyrics by Richard Wilbur, with additional lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, John La Touche, Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker and Leonard Bernstein
Orchestrations by Leonard Bernstein and Hershy Kay; Musical continuity and additional orchestrations by John Mauceri, with a narration for concert version by Leonard Bernstein and John Wells, adapted from the satire by Voltaire and the book by Hugh Wheeler; edited and supplemented by Erik Haagensen.
Work given by permission of Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Limited.
Gavriel Heine has conducted in the most important theaters of the world: Royal Opera House of Covent Garden in London, Festspielhaus of Baden-Baden, Teatro Regio of Turin, LAC of Lugano, Bolshoi of Moscow, Bunka Kaitan of Tokyo, Grand Theatre of Tientsin in China, Opera of Dubai, Kennedy Center of Washington… He is the first American graduate of the Moscow Conservatory and one of the last students of Ilya Musin at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. In 2007 he was invited to make his debut at the Mariinsky Theatre, where he has since conducted over 850 performances and concerts until March 2022. His repertoire consists of the greatest operas and ballets: Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro and Die Zauberflöte, Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia and La Cenerentola, Verdi’s Macbeth, La forza del destino and Otello, Puccini’s La bohème, Madama Butterfly, Tosca and Il trittico, Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, The Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake…
At the Opéra de Lausanne: Eugene Onegin (2022).
Vincent Boussard directed his first shows as director of the Studio-Théâtre de la Comédie-Française. Since then, he has devoted himself mainly to directing opera and has produced some sixty shows for the opera houses of Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels, Dresden, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Liège, Manaus, Marseille, Munich, New York, Riga, San Francisco, Seoul, Stockholm, Strasbourg, Tel Aviv, Tokyo, Toulouse, Vienna and Vilnius. He is also invited to the festivals of Aix-en-Provence, Salzburg, Spoleto and Montepulciano. In the 2022/23 season, he will stage Donizetti’s Two Men and a Woman in Tours, Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur in Riga and Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto in Cologne.
At the Opéra de Lausanne: Hamlet (2017) and Werther (2022).
Born in Arles in 1951, and after studying art history, Christian Lacroix turned to the stage, his childhood dream, after a long detour in the world of haute couture (1980 to 2009), which he undertook at the same time as his work as a costume and set designer for the theatre, opera and ballet, at the Opéra Garnier, the Monnaie in Brussels, the Comédie-Française, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the Bouffes du Nord, the Metropolitan in New York, the Festival of Aix-en-Provence, the Opéra Comique, the Capitole in Toulouse, as well as the opera houses of Strasbourg, Vienna, Berlin and Hamburg, Cologne, Munich, Graz, St. Gallen, Frankfurt and Salzburg. He was awarded the Molière for costume design for Phèdre in 1996 and for Cyrano de Bergerac in 2007. In parallel, he developed an activity as an industrial designer (TGV Atlantique, tramways in Montpellier) and as an exhibition designer. In 2021, with La vie parisienne, he embarked on his first opera production, in collaboration with Laurent Delvert, director, Romain Gilbert, author of numerous productions, and Glyslein Lefever, choreographer. In 2022, he designed the sets and costumes for Cinderella at the Stockholm Opera.
At the Opéra de Lausanne : Le nozze di Figaro (2021) and Werther (2022).
Trained at the Interlochen Arts Academy and the Juilliard School in New York (in the class of Cynthia Hoffmann), Miles Mykkanen has performed on many stages around the world. He made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera of New York in the new production of William Kentridge’s Wozzeck conducted by Yannick Nézet- Séguin – followed by three successive engagements: Boris Godunov conducted by Sebastian Weigle, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg under the baton of Antonio Pappano, and Ariadne auf Naxos with Marek Janowski -, at the Minnesota Opera in Kevin Putz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Silent Night, in Philadelphia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and with the Cleveland Orchestra and Franz Welser-Möst in Ariadne auf Naxos. He also performed in Gluck’s Alcestis at the Bayerische Staatsoper and in concert in Handel’s Messiah with the Atlanta, Indianapolis, and New Jersey Symphony Orchestras and the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kenndey Center, in Bruckner’s Te Deum with the Pittsburgh Symphony and Manfred Honeck, and in the world premiere of Mohammed Fairouz’s Another Time with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Leonard Slatkin. More recently, he sang in Candide in Arizona and Palm Beach, and in West Side Story with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Slatkin. He participated in the Marlboro Music Festival with pianists such as Mitsuko Uchida, Malcolm Martineau and Roger Vignoles. He has appeared on PBS Great Performances and on Medici.tv in masterclasses with Renée Fleming, Fabio Luisi, Emmanuel Villaume and Sutton Foster. Highlights of his 2022/23 season include the title role in Albert Herring at the Chicago Opera Theater, his first Fenton in Falstaff at the Hamburg Staatsoper and a Zauberflöte at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
Lausanne-based soprano Marie Lys trained at the Haute école de musique de Lausanne and then at the Royal College of Music in London. First prize winner at the Cesti Baroque Opera Competition (2018) and the Vincenzo Bellini Belcanto Competition (2017), she has collaborated with renowned conductors such as Diego Fasolis, Christophe Rousset, Fabio Biondi, Leonardo García Alarcón, Emmanuelle Haïm and Michel Corboz. She has also performed with orchestras such as Europa Galante, Les Talens Lyriques, Sinfonia Varsovia, The English Concert, the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, the Cameristi della Scala and Les Musiciens du Prince-Monaco. She has sung the roles of Ginevra (Ariodante) and Adelaide (Lotario) at the Handel Festival in Göttingen, Dorinda (Orlando) at the Castell Festival in Peralada, Servilia (La clemenza di Tito), Yniold (Pelléas et Mélisande) and Clorinda (La Cenerentola) at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, and recently replaced Cecilia Bartoli at the last minute in the title role of Handel’s Alcina at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. She has played the role of Bellezza in Handel’s Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno alongside Biondi in Granada, and the title role in Donizetti’s Betly for the Chopin and His Europe Festival in Warsaw. She will soon appear in Vivaldi’s Tamerlano during an Italian tour conducted by Ottavio Dantone, as well as in Lully’s Thésée at the Theater an der Wien, at the Bozar in Brussels and at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées under the baton of Christophe Rousset. Marie was supported in her debut by the Migros Culture Percentage and the Leenaards, Dénéréaz, Colette Mosetti and Friedl Wald, Samling, Drake Calleja Trust and Josephine Baker Trust foundations.
At the Opéra de Lausanne: Orlando paladino (2017), La sonnambula (2018), Die Fledermaus (2018), Orpheus and Eurydice (2019), Alcina (2022) and Candide (2022).
Born in Los Angeles, Anna Steiger first trained as a pianist before studying voice with Noëlle Barker at the Guildhall School of Music in London. She then went on to study with Vera Rozsa. She made her debut at Glyndebourne in the title role of L’incoronazione di Poppea, and then sang Concepcion (L’heure espagnole) under the baton of Simon Rattle. Since then, she has sung both soprano and mezzo-soprano roles on the most important opera stages such as Zerlina (Don Giovanni) in Nancy, Stuttgart and Seattle, Marcellina (Le nozze di Figaro) in Madrid, Los Angeles and Monte Carlo, Tisbe (La Cenerentola) in Paris, Geneva and Marseille, Dame Ragonde (Le comte Ory) at the Opéra Comique and in Toulouse, the Composer (Ariadne auf Naxos) in St. Louis, Ein Blumenmadchen (Ein Blumenwald) and in St. Louis. She has also performed Ein Blumenmadchen (Parsifal) at Covent Garden and Gertrude (Romeo and Juliet) at the Chorégies d’Orange. She has collaborated with conductors such as Riccardo Chailly, Jean-Claude Malgoire, Kent Nagano and Michel Plasson. She recorded Despina (Così fan tutte) under the direction of Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Offrandes by Varèse with Pierre Boulez. More recently, she sang Tisbé (La Cenerentola) in Rennes and Rouen, Annina (La Traviata) in Toulouse, and played the role of Belize in Les Femmes Savantes by Molière in Paris, directed by Macha Makaieff.
At the Opéra de Lausanne, she has performed in: La Cenerentola (1986), La finta giardi niera (1989), Il cappello di paglia di Firenze (2006) and La fille du régiment (2016).
Franco Pomponi began his vocal studies in Chicago, before continuing them at the Juillard School in New York where he won the prestigious De Rosa Prize. He made his debut at the Lyric Opera in Chicago as Malatesta (Don Pasquale) and Mercutio (Romeo and Juliet). He was subsequently invited to the Metropolitan Opera and the NYCO in New York, the Spoleto Charleston Festival as well as in Portland, Toron- to, New Orleans, Santa Fe, and San Diego. In Europe, he has performed in Marseille, Brussels, Palermo, Cagliari, Moscow, Madrid, Geneva, Budapest, Zurich and at the Liceu. His repertoire includes the roles of Es Camillo (Carmen), the Four Devils (The Tales of Hoffmann), Stanley Kowalski (A Streetcar Named Desire), Ford (Falstaff) as well as the title roles in Don Giovanni, Hamlet, Sweeney Todd and Nixon in China.
At the Opéra de Lausanne, he has performed in: L’Aiglon (2013).
The Swiss baritone studied at the Haute Ecole de Musique de Lausanne in the class of Frédéric Gindraux, before moving to London to work with Prof. Rudolf Piernay at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where he obtained an Artist Diploma with distinction. He also worked with Dame Felicity Lott, François Le Roux, Eugene Asti and Graham Johnson, whom he assisted in his latest book on the life of Francis Poulenc, “Poulenc: The Life in the Songs”, published by Liveright. He sings several roles for the Opéra de Lausanne, including the title role in Christiné’s operetta Dédé, Melchior in Menotti’s Amahl et les Visiteurs du Soir, Maximilian in Bernstein’s Candide, and Urbain in Offenbach’s La Vie Parisienne. He also creates recitals for children and a workshop during the Lausanne Youth Olympic Games in 2020. He is also heard singing Weill’s Berliner Requiem during the exceptional concert of the Opera Choir. He has worked for the LSO (London Symphony Orchestra) on several occasions (Discovery Day on the music of Michael Tippett, soloist for Haydn’s Nelson Mass or curator of a recital in the series “Future: the musical voices of our time”), the BBC (“Immersion in the music of Detlev Glanert”) or the Wigmore Hall (study groups on the vocal music of Schumann, Ravel, a recital of contemporary music and a recital of French melodies). He is part of the French Song Exchange between the Wigmore Hall and the Salle Cortot in Paris, where he has the chance to make his debut in 2019 and return regularly to perform. The singer, a Samling Foundation Artist, is awarded the title of Ambassador of Melody by the Oxford Lieder Festival for the year 2020. He enters the concert placement of the Migros Culture Percentage, of which he is also a scholarship holder, as well as the Friedl-Wald and Colette Mosetti foundations. He participated in the final of the prestigious Kathleen Ferrier Competition in London and was also a finalist of the Young Classical Artist Trust in 2022. He won the English Song Prize in 2020, Second Prize and Audience Prize at the Kattenburg Competition in 2019, Third Prize and all Special Prizes in 2022, and Second Prize at the Somerset Song Prize. Future engagements include SongStudio 2023 at Carnegie Hall in New York with Renée Fleming, a recital series in England and Canada with pianist Cole Knutson for the Oxford Lieder Festival, the role of Maximilian in Bernstein’s Candide at the Opéra de Lausanne, and a revival of My Fair Lady.
At the Opéra de Lausanne: My fair Lady (2015), La Belle de Cadix (Route Lyrique 2016), L’Orfeo (2016), La vie parisienne (2016), Amahl et les visiteurs du soir (2017), Les chevaliers de la table ronde (Route Lyrique 2019), Dédé (Route Lyrique 2021) and Candide (2022).
A Franco-Italian mezzo-soprano born in Milan, Béatrice Nani joined Brigitte Balleys’ class at the Haute école de musique de Lausanne in 2014, graduating with a Master of Singing in 2019. She is currently perfecting her vocal skills with Jeanne-Michele Charbonnet. Passionate about theater, she trained with Gaëlle Bourgeois and Fiona Chauvin in Paris, and received invaluable advice from Thierry Pillon, Jean-Yves Ruf and Shin Iglesias. In 2016, she made her Geneva debut, creating the role of Ella Maillart in Guy-François Leuenberger’s Le Ruisseau noir at the Théâtre du Grütli. She then played Lois in Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate at the Théâtre du Galpon. She was also heard in Bottesini’s Requiem at the Victoria Hall. In 2022, she made her French debut as La Mère in Guy-François Leuenberger’s contemporary children’s opera Le Petit Chaperon rouge at the Opéra de Tours. In 2023, she sings the title role in Bizet’s Carmen on tour in Switzerland. In the 2023/24 season, she is Mercedes in Carmen and Didon in Dido and Aeneas. She can also be heard in Palmeri’s Misa a Buenos Aires and in concert with the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne conducted by Marc Leroy-Calatayud. A committed artist, she founded the Les Rocambolantes company with pianist Émilie Roulet, and is involved in a number of performance and mediation projects for young audiences and the disadvantaged. The show Mimi and the Blondies, which she staged with soprano Anne-Sophie Petit, won the Lavaux Classic prize.
At the Opéra de Lausanne: La Vie Parisienne (2016), Le Chanteur de Mexico (2017), Cendrillon (2018), Les Chevaliers de la Table ronde (Route Lyrique 2019), Dédé (Route Lyrique 2021), Candide (2022), Orphée aux Enfers (2023).
Nicolas Wildi studied singing with Charles Ossola and Jeanne Roth in Neuchâtel and perfected his skills with Ion Buzea, Heidi Raymond and Stuart Patterson. He is passionate about Renaissance music of the late Middle Ages and early Baroque, all of which he occasionally practices. Currently, he devotes himself mainly to the stage, where he likes to lend his voice to smaller roles at the opera.
At the Opéra de Lausanne : Parpignol in La bohème (2008), a Domestique in La Traviata (2008), Ajax 2 in La belle Hélène (2008), a Matelot in Lakmé (2013), a Contadino in Luisa Miller (2014) and El Lañador in Doña Francisquita (2020)
Bastien Combe studied trumpet and voice in Grenoble before continuing his vocal training in Neuchâtel with Marcin Habela. He was a finalist in the Mahler Lieder Competition in Geneva. In concert, he sang the Evangelist in Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. On stage, he sang the roles of D’Estourville (Ascanio by Saint-Saëns) in Geneva and Tamino (Die Zauberflöte) in Bern, Hortensio (Kiss me, Kate) and Herr Schulz (Cabaret) at the Théâtre du Galpon in Geneva. In December 2021, under the baton of Paul Agnew, Bastien will sing as a soloist with the baroque orchestra of the Haute Ecole de Musique de Genève in a concert of cantatas by Bach and Buxtehude.
At the Opéra de Lausanne : Les chevaliers de la table ronde (2019)
Born in Lausanne, Raphaël Hardmeyer began his musical career with the violin, then the viola. After obtaining a master’s degree in law, he began to study singing at the Lausanne Conservatory. Three years later, he joined Gilles Cachemaille’s class at the Haute école de musique de Genève. During the 2019/20 season, he can be seen in Philip Glass’ Einstein on the Beach at the Grand Théâtre de Genève and Die Walkyrie (in concert version) in Evian. In 2020, he benefits from the OperaLab.ch program set up by the Grand Théâtre de Genève and the Hautes Écoles de Genève. This season, he performs in a staged version of Messiah at the Théâtre du Jorat and in Die Zauberflöte at the Gstaad Menuhin Festival, under the direction of Christophe Rousset.
At the Opéra de Lausanne: Ariadne auf Naxos (2019), Semiramide (2022), L’elisir d’amore (2022), Candide (2022).
Born in Bogota, Fernando Cuellar trained in his native city before joining the troupe of Young Opera Artists of Colombia. He then continued his training in Geneva and Bern with Gilles Cachemaille.
As a soloist, he has performed with the Orchestre du Conservatoire de musique de Genève, the Orchestre du Conservatoire supérieur de Paris, the Théâtre du Passage in Neuchâtel, the Théâtre de Colombier, the Théâtre L’Heure bleue in La Chaux-de-Fonds, the Théâtre de Bienne, as well as at the Lausanne and Geneva opera houses. He sings under conductors such as Will Cruthfield, Gergely Madaras, Yves Senn, Andrei Feher, Franco Trinca and Gabriel Garrido.
At the Opéra de Lausanne: Un notaro in La Sonnambula (2018) ein Offizer in Ariadne auf Naxos (2019).
For the first time at the Opéra de Lausanne
Born in Cardiff, Wales, Mike Winter has had an atypical career as a choreographer and dancer. After a first career in international finance and information technology, he was awarded a scholarship by Princess Diana, then president of the English National Ballet, with which he was able to develop his dancing skills. He graduated from Trinity Laban in London. He went on to enjoy a prolific career as a dancer, international performer, choreographer and teacher. In Switzerland, he collaborated with Guilherme Botelho, Philippe Saire, Jozsef Trefeli, Omar Porras, Nicole Seiler, Peter Regli, Antoine Jaccoud and Ursula Meier. Under the pseudonym Mister Winter, he has been associated in recent years with Lloyd Newson, Pina Bausch, Marina Abramovic, and the Sean Kelly Gallery in New York. Most recently, Mister Winter created The Belief Series, an ambitious original trilogy of dance and theater in collaboration with the Roman Catholic Church and Vatican City. He is currently touring Europe in Nigel Charnock’s Haunted by the Future with Israeli prima ballerina Talia Paz. In Switzerland, he is currently touring in a live production for Radio Télévision Suisse celebrating the centenary of Swiss radio. In the UK, he is completing his MA in Comedy Writing for Television and Radio under the tutelage of award-winning BBC producer Simon Nicholls.
The Opéra de Lausanne Choir is young, made up of students of singing from Lausanne’s University of Music and the Geneva HEM, and professional singers. Its members are selected by audition and periodically reheard. For each opera, they are distributed depending on their voice and/or aptitudes. Thanks mainly to their talent on stage, supported by an infectious enthusiasm, they are highly appreciated by all the theatre directors invited. For a few years the choir has benefitted from preparation by several experienced choir masters from different backgrounds, chosen depending on the works being sung and their specific interest.
rained at the Conservatoire d’Aix-en-Provence, where he began his career under the baton of Darius Milhaud, Patrick Marie Aubert obtained a first prize in orchestral conducting in the class of Pierre Villette. He also won a prize for singing, a prize for lyric art and a prize for chamber music. He was a professor of the choral singing class and then director of the Léo Delibes Conservatory in Clichy, artistic director of the Vox Hominis vocal ensemble, musical director of the Divertimento orchestra and conductor of the choirs of the Nantes Opera. Conductor of the French Army Choir until 2000, he has participated for nearly twenty years in major national events and has conducted numerous concerts in France and abroad. He was the conductor of the Chœur du Capitole de Toulouse from 2003 to 2009, then director of the Chœur de l’Opéra national de Paris from 2009 to 2014. He has collaborated with conductors Maurizio Arena, Serge Baudo, Roberto Benzi, Marc Minkowski, Evelino Pidò, Michel Plasson, Georges Prêtre, Yutaka Sado, Jeffrey Tate… and directors Robert Carsen, Georges Lavaudant, Jorge Lavelli, Laurent Pelly, Pier Luigi Pizzi, Olivier Py, Robert Wilson…
At the Opéra de Lausanne: Orpheus and Eurydice (2019), The Tales of Hoffmann (2019), the exceptional concert of the Opera de Lausanne Choir (2020), Little Red Riding Hood (2021), Candide (2022), Le domino noir (2023)
Vincent Lemaire is a set designer for theatre, dance and opera. He creates sets in theatres such as La Monnaie, Opéra Royal de Wallonie, Théâtre du Capitole, the Operas of Lyon and Marseille, Opéra National du Rhin, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Royal Opera House in Stockholm, Theater an der Wien, Innsbruck Early Music Festival, the Operas of Zürich and St. Gallen, Staatsoper Berlin, Bayerische Staatsoper and the Hamburg Staatsoper. He collaborates regularly with director Vincent Boussard, notably in Un ballo in maschera at the Théâtre du Capitole, La fanciulla del West in Hamburg, La Traviata in Tokyo and Strasbourg, Manon at the Lithuanian National Opera, Otello in Salzburg, Die tote Stadt and Lohengrin in St. Gallen as well as The Prophet in Essen. In 1999 and 2001, he won the Prix du Théâtre awarded by the French Community of Belgium.
At the Opéra de Lausanne: Hamlet (2017) and Werther (2022).
Nicolas Gilli took his first steps as a lighting director at the Théâtre de Nice, before being entrusted with lighting creations by Jacques Weber, the director at the time. For more than ten years, he was assistant lighting designer to Jacques Rouveyrollis and Alain Poisson, before becoming a freelance lighting designer for many artists – Johnny Hallyday, Michel Sardou, Eddy Mitchell, Zaz… Since 2017, Nicolas Gilli has been designing the lighting for productions directed by Vincent Boussard – Dialogues des Carmélites, Candide, Les contes d’Hoffmann, Manon, Mignon.
At the Opéra de Lausanne : Werther (2022)
For the first time at the Opéra de Lausanne
Isabel Robson trained as a stage director in London and as a video artist in Paris. Since 2001, she has been a freelance stage designer and focuses mainly on video creation. She made her debut at the Theater Basel and the National Theater in London. She has collaborated with Vincent Boussard on numerous occasions for Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny in Berlin and Otello in Salzburg and Dresden. The film Marina, which she shot and directed with the werkgruppe2 collective, won the Golden Dove at the DOK festival in Leipzig. Her video installation of György Kurtág’s Kafka-Fragments in the Jewish Museum in Berlin was also screened at the Kurtág Festival in Dortmund in 2020. In 2021 she realized a mixed reality installation in cooperation with reVerb and the Chitrasena Dance Company, Colombo and XR_Unites (University of Applied Sciences, Berlin) and currently teaches at the Interuniversity of Dance (HZT) in Berlin.
For the first time at the Opéra de Lausanne
Born in Austria, Helge Letonja is a dancer, choreographer, artistic director and festival curator. He trained in Amsterdam and New York with Alvin Ailey. As a dancer, he performed with the Grazer Opernballett, Montréal Danse and Tanztheater Bremen. In 1996 he founded the Steptext platform in Bremen, with which he has been producing contemporary dance performances for over twenty years. His operatic work includes choreographies for Iphigenia in Tauris at the Salzburg Festival and in Zurich, The Flower of Hawaii and The First Emperor, a contemporary Chinese opera, in Saarbrücken. Since 2011 he has collaborated with director Vincent Boussard on numerous productions in Berlin, Tokyo, Strasbourg and Dresden. Helge Letonja is the initiator of the European project KorresponDanceEurope, founder and curator of the festivals Xtra-Frei, Afriction and Baila España. He also coaches numerous choreographers and collaborates with different dance centers, especially in Africa. In 2019, Letonja founded the ensemble Of Curious Nature, which brings together professional dancers from all over the world in northwest Germany. In addition, he is a tireless advocate for dance, both in his adopted city of Bremen and throughout Germany, as a board member of Dachverband Tanz Deutschland, and engages in multiple cooperations for the strengthening and transmission of the art of dance.
For the first time at the Opéra de Lausanne
Born in Lithuania, Gediminas Šeduikis began his training by studying the piano, then continued it at the Theatre Academy in Vilnius. He began his career as an assistant director at the Vilnius Opera and at the Lithuanian National Opera before becoming production manager at the latter institution. He collaborated with many directors, including David Alden, Robert Wilson, Andrejs Zagars and Arnaud Bernard, and directed Acis and Galatea, Der Zigeunerbaron, Die Fledermaus, Hänsel und Gretel and the rock opera Eglé, by Latvian composer Vilkončius. He received the Fortūna Prize for his staging of Lucia di Lammermoor.
First time at the Opéra de Lausanne
Robert Schwaighofer was born in Tyrol and lives in Vienna, Austria. After completing his studies with a Master’s degree in fashion, he gained experience as a costume and set designer’s assistant for internationally renowned designers such as: Christian Lacroix, Vivienne Westwood, John Galliano, Frida Parmeggiani, Axel Manthey and Johan Engels in productions by Robert Wilson, George Tabori, John Neumeier, Heinz Spoerli, Renato Zanella, Philip Taylor and many others. He works as a costume designer in a variety of genres, such as opera, ballet, music, dance and theater. Since 1998 he has been working with Christian Lacroix on various theater projects as an artistic collaborator, since 2009 with Vincent Boussard they have realized numerous productions such as Agrippina, Candide, The Rise and Fall of Mahagony at the Berlin State Opera, I Capuleti e I Montecchi at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, Adriana Lecouvreur, Ezio and I Puritani at the Frankfurt Opera, Madama Butterfly and La Fanciulla del West at the Hamburg State Opera, Otello at the Salzburger Festspiele, Pelléas et Mélisande at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Salome and Lohengrin at the Theater St. Gallen, and Radamisto at the Theater an der Wien.