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Upon her release, she discovers a world ravaged by conflict and misery. To find her prince, our heroine gives way to listening to her desires and confronts a general who knows only how to sow chaos.
Olivier Py’s fourth show inspired by the Grimm brothers, L’amour vainqueur is an operetta in which five characters – a willful princess, a disfigured suitor, an evil general, an eco-friendly gardener and a dishwashing girl – take us in white alexandrines into their adventures made of love, transvestism and struggle. In this show for children, the author and director combines with spirit the pleasure of musical theater and the awareness of a troubled world: ours. He responds to despair with fantasy, to war with song, so that love, in the company of actors, singers and musicians, may be victorious.
Production
Festival d’Avignon
Coproduction
Opéra de Lausanne, Opéra de Limoges, Scène nationale du Sud-Aquitain (Bayonne), Théâtre Georges-Leygues (Villeneuve-sur-Lot)
With the help of Odéon – Théâtre de l’Europe Résidence à la FabricA du Festival d’Avignon
Text by Olivier Py
First performance at the Avignon Festival, 2019
Actes Sud – papier Edition
with Clémentine Bourgoin, Pierre Lebon
Flannan Obé, Antoni Sykopoulos
Born in Grasse in 1965, Olivier Py entered the Conservatoire National Supérieur d’Art Dramatique in 1987, and began studying theology at the same time. In 1995, he created a sensation at the Festival d’Avignon by directing his text La Servante, a cycle of plays lasting twenty-four hours. In 1997, he became director of the Centre dramatique national d’Orléans, which he left ten years later to direct the Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe. In 2013, he became the first director appointed to head the Avignon Festival since Jean Vilar. In 2023, he was appointed Director of the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. Alongside his directing activities, Olivier Py is also an author (published mainly by Actes Sud) and actor. With his female alter ego, Miss Knife, he takes his singing tour all over the world. He has directed some fifty plays and as many operas. He has directed three films, including Le Molière imaginaire (due for release in February 2024). As an artist and a citizen, Olivier Py regularly takes a stand and engages in numerous political and societal battles.
At the Opéra de Lausanne: La Vase de parfums (2005), Mam’zelle Nitouche (2019) and L’Amour vainqueur (2022).
Pierre-André Weitz took his first steps on stage at the Théâtre du Peuple de Bussang at the age of ten, where he acted and sang, as well as making and designing sets and costumes until he was 25 years old. At the same time, he studied architecture in Strasbourg and entered the Conservatoire d’art lyrique. During this period, he was a chorister at the Opéra national du Rhin. In 1989, he met Olivier Py and since then he has designed all the latter’s sets and costumes. He has created more than 150 sets for various other directors, both in theatre and opera (Jean Chollet, Michel Raskine, Claude Buchvald, Jean-Michel Rabeux, Ivan Alexandre, Jacques Vincey, Hervé Loichemol, Sylvie Rentona, Karelle Prugnaud, Mireille Delunsch, Christine Berg…). This research into space and time has also led him to perform as a musician or as an author in certain shows. He has been teaching stage design for over 20 years at the École supérieure des arts décoratifs in Strasbourg. Recently, he directed Les Chevaliers de la Table ronde and Mam’zelle Nitouche, two Palazzetto Bru Zane productions.
At the Opéra de Lausanne: La Vase de parfums (2005) and L’Amour vainqueur (2022).
After making his debut with Pierre Barrat at Colmar’s Atelier lyrique du Rhin, he worked with Fran- çois Tanguy and the Théâtre du Radeau for several years. In 2000, he reunited with Pierre André Weitz, whom he had met at a production at the Théâtre du Peuple in Bussang in 1988; the latter introduced him to Olivier Py. Since then, he has designed the lighting for their theater productions and some sixty operas in France and abroad. He has also designed lighting for such artists as Ivan Alexandre, Pierre Lebon, Jacques Vincey, Kidjo and Isabelle Huppert at the Festival d’Avignon.