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Conciseness, sense of drama, orchestral colours and the importance of the choir characterise this opera, which is now appreciated more for itself than for its place in history. It’s no surprise that the success of the first version in Italian convinced Gluck to make the French adaptation presented in this production.
Tragedy opera in 3 acts
Version of Paris by Pierre-Louis Moline, based on Raniero de’ Calzabigi
First performed in la Salle des Tuileries (Opéra), Paris, August 2nd, 1774
Editions Bärenreiter-Verlag, Kassel
Philippe Talbot has performed the male title-roles in Hippolyte and Aricie, Platée, Le comte Ory, Béatrice et Bénédict, Nadir in Pécheurs de perles, Gérald in Lakmé, Ferrando in Così fan tutte, Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni, Almaviva in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Ramiro in La Cenerentola, Aménophis in Moïse et Pharaon, Lindoro in L’Italiana in Algeri, Piquillo in La Périchole and Alfred in La Chauve-souris.
He has performed at the Opéra Comique, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Semperoper Dresden, the Theater an der Wien, the Berlin Philharmonia, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and at the Operas of Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Bordeaux. He has worked with directors Alberto Zedda, Roberto Abbado, Jean-Christophe Spinosi, Emmanuelle Haïm, Kent Nagano, Carlo Rizzi, Marc Minkowski, Paolo Arrivabeni and Christophe Rousset, in productions by Emilio Sagi, Moshe Leiser, Patrice Caurier, Jérôme Deschamps, Macha Makeïeff, Damiano Michieletto and Denis Podalydès.
At the Opéra de Lausanne: Raoul de Gardefeu in La vie parisienne (2016).
Since winning 2nd prize at the Reine Elisabeth de Belgique Competition in 2004, Hélène Guilmette has led an international career. She is known for her diverse repertoire (baroque, classical, French) and has performed works by Haendel, Rameau, Gluck, Mozart, Massenet, Poulenc and Gounod, on the most prestigious stages.
She has performed at the Bayerische Staatsoper, the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto, the Opéra de Montréal, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the Opéra de Paris, La Monnaie, Covent Garden and the National Opera of the Netherlands, working with well-known conductors Alain Altinoglu, Sylvain Cambreling, Bernard Labadie, Kent Nagano, Michel Plasson, Mark Elder and directors Robert Carsen, Laurent Pelly, Dmitri Tcherniakov and Guy Joosten.
Winner of the first prize at the 2018 Cesti Baroque Opera Competition and the 2017 Belcanto Vincenzo Bellini competition, the soprano Marie Lys has sung with conductors such as Michel Corboz, Laurence Cummings, Giampaolo Bisanti and Daniel Reuss. After studying at the University of Music in Lausanne, she went to the Royal College of Music in London where she obtained a Master’s degree with distinction and a certificate in opera. In opera, she has sung in roles including Cleopatra (Giulio Cesare) at Bury Court Opera, Adelaide (Lotario) at the Göttingen Handel Festival, Dalinda (Ariodante) at the London Handel Festival and Asteria (Tamerlano) at the Buxton Festival. With the Abchordis Ensemble she won first prize at the Göttinger Reihe Historischer Musik competition, then released two recordings with Sony DHM. She was grateful for the support received from Pour-cent culturel Migros and the foundations Samling, Leenaards, Dénéréaz, Colette Mosetti, Friedl Wald, and Drake Calleja Trust.
At the Opéra de Lausanne: Eurilla in Orlando Paladino (2017), Lisa in La Sonnambula (2018), Adèle in Die Fledermaus (2018), and Amour in Orphée et Eurydice (2019).
For the first time at the Opéra de Lausanne.
Aurélien Bory founded Compagnie 111 in 2000 in Toulouse, developing a physical theatre that combines circus, drama, dance, music and visual arts. Driven by the question of space, his composite and uniquely aesthetic works are influenced by his interest in the sciences, and are strongly based on the scenography. By turns scenographer, director, choreographer and visual artist, he thinks of his work as renewing form. Aurélien Bory’s shows have been performed worldwide. Of his twelve creations on the repertoire, seven have been shown at the Vidy-Lausanne Theatre. Orphée et Eurydice, created at the Opéra Comique in Paris and conducted by Raphaël Pichon, is the second time he has directed opera, after Bluebeard’s Castle by Béla Bartók and Il Prigioniero by Luigi Dallapiccola in 2015 at the Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse. He will return there in January 2020 to direct Parsifal by Wagner.
The Opéra de Lausanne Choir is a core group of about forty chorists who are, for the most part, students from singing or professional specialisation classes at the Lausanne Conservatory or other conservatories in Western Switzerland. Chorists are selected by audition and periodically reviewed. Choir directors are chosen from among the most experienced and vary for each performance.
The Opéra de Lausanne Choir is regularly hired by orchestras and festivals in Switzerland and abroad: Création by Haydn (December 2003 – conductor Jerzy Semkow) and Stabat Mater by Rossini (February 2006 – conductor Corrado Rovaris) as a part of the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra season, Roland by Lully (concert version) at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, at the Opéra de Montpellier and the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Bruxelles (January 2004 – Talens Lyriques orchestra – conductor Christophe Rousset), Die Entführung aus dem Serail concert version at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (January 2005), La grotta di Trofonio (concert version) at the Théâtre de Poissy (March 2005 – Talens Lyriques, conductor Christophe Rousset), Nocturnes by Debussy at the 2007 Montreux Septembre musical (RSO Berlin – conductor Marek Janowski).
In 2008 and 2010 the choir performed as part of the OCL season under the baton of Christian Zacharias: Te Deum by Bruckner (February 2008), Les Noces by Stravinski (December 2008, also in Saint-Gall) and Beethoven’s IXe Symphony (April 2010).
The Choir has also been on many tours with Opéra de Lausanne productions: Opéra de Vichy (Rigoletto in 2005, Il Turco in Italia in 2006, La veuve joyeuse in 2007, Carmen in 2008, Amelia al ballo in 2008 under the direction of Arie Van Beek and La Traviata in 2009 conducted by Roberto Rizzi Brignoli), Opéra Comique (Amelia al ballo by Menotti in March 2007). In October 2008, the Opéra de Lausanne and its choir toured Japan for five performances of Carmen.
The Opéra de Lausanne Choir is featured on several CDs: Le Nez by Chostakovitch, Roland by Lully and La grotta di Trofonio by Salieri. The Choir was also involved in televised performances on RTS of La fille de Madame Angot, La Belle Hélène and, for the reopening of the Opéra, L’elisir d’amore.
After studying at the Aix-en-Provence Conservatoire where he made his debut conducted by Darius Milhaud, Patrick Marie Aubert won 1st prize for orchestra conducting in Pierre Villette’s class. He has also won prizes for singing, lyric art and chamber music. He was a teacher of choral singing then director at the Conservatoire Léo Delibes in Clichy, artistic director of the vocal ensemble Vox Hominis, musical director of the Orchestre Divertimento and choir master at the Opéra de Nantes. As choir master of the French army until 2000, he participated for almost twenty years in major national events and conducted numerous concerts in France and other countries around the world. He was choir master at the Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse from 2003 to 2009, then director of the Opéra de Paris choir from 2009 to 2014. He has worked with conductors such as Maurizio Arena, Serge Baudo, Roberto Benzi, Marc Minkowski, Evelino Pidò, Michel Plasson, Georges Prêtre, Yutaka Sado and Jeffrey Tate, and theatre directors including Robert Carsen, Georges Lavaudant, Jorge Lavelli, Laurent Pelly, Pier Luigi Pizzi, Olivier Py and Robert Wilson. Patrick Marie Aubert is a Knight of the Legion of Honour, an Officer of the National Order of Merit and Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters.
At the Opéra de Lausanne: Orphée et Eurydice (2019).
Diego Fasolis began his career in the 1980s as a concert organist. Appointed chief conductor of the vocal and instrumental groups at the Italian language branch of Swiss radio and television, he also conducted the ensemble I Barocchisti, an orchestra dedicated to the baroque repertoire played on period instruments, which he founded with Adriana Fasolis-Brambilla, a name familiar to audiences in Lausanne. Regularly invited to the Salzburg Festival, he conducted Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at the Musikverein in Vienna, with the Concentus Musicus in Vienna and the Arnold Schoenberg Choir. More recently, for La Scala he created an orchestra playing period instruments with which he then conducted The Triumph of Time and Truth. In 2017, he also conducted Tamerlano with Plácido Domingo. His recent and future plans include La finta giardiniera at La Scala, L’incoronazione di Poppea at the Staatsoper Berlin, Agnese (Ferdinando Paër) and Così fan tutte at the Teatro Regio in Turin, and Dorilla in Tempe at La Fenice. At the Opéra de Lausanne: Faramondo (2009), Rinaldo (2011), Farnace (2011), L’Artaserse (2012), Dorilla in Tempe (2014), Die Zauberflöte (2015), Ariodante (2016), La clemenza di Tito (2018), and Orphée et Eurydice (2019).
For the first time at the Opéra de Lausanne.
Pierre Dequivre began his career as a set builder and designer before joining the world of cinema, primarily as layout and visual artist for the film To Kill a Priest by Agneskia Holland. For two decades, he worked as a set builder, stagehand and chief set builder for numerous feature films and films for television. He created his first theatre scenography for the director Sarah Eigerman in 1990, then worked with Mladen Materic, Michel Mathieu and Aurélien Bory, among others, carrying out the creation and realization of their scenography.
For the first time at the Opéra de Lausanne.
After training as a dancer, Manuela Agnesini gained experience in contemporary Italian dance and in butoh dance with the choreographer Ko Murobushi. She obtained a Master of Arts in the DAMS (disciplines of Art, Music and Spectacle) at the University of Bologna, Italy. In 1990 she moved to Paris and worked with the choreographers Paco Dècina, Bouvier-Obadia, Elsa Wolliaston and the director Didier-Georges Gabily. In 2000, she moved to Toulouse and in 2002 participated in the founding of Lato sensu museum, a label of stage forms that she co-directed until 2015. She has worked as both dancer and choreographer. Now an actress and playwright, she is fascinated by the representations of the body and the polysemous potential of the characters, and also works as a costume designer.
For the first time at the Opéra de Lausanne.
Arno Veyrat is a self-taught artist. After working as a show technician, his love of beautiful things led to him developing a graphic, poetic and sensitive universe, combining scenography, lighting, image projection and video. He has since created the lighting for numerous shows and worked with artists in dance, theatre, opera and music. His eclecticismhas also enabled him to create installations where the physical phenomena are his source of inspiration. He has been working with Aurélien Bory for many years.
For the first time at the Opéra de Lausanne.
Psychoanalyst, playwright and artistic coordinator, Taïcyr Fadel has worked with Aurélien Bory on several productions, including Plexus, Espæce, Bluebeard’s Castle, Il Prigionieroand Ash.