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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
One of the most prominent tenors of his generation, Philippe Talbot is highly regarded in the great French repertoire (title role in Hippolyte et Aricie, title role in Platée, Les Indes galantes, Orpheus in Orpheus and Eurydice, Benedict in Béatrice et Bénédict, Nadir in Les Pêcheurs de perles, Gérald in Lakmé, Wilhelm Meister in Mignon… ), in the Mozart repertoire (Ferrando in Così fan tutte, Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni…) and in the Italian bel canto (Almaviva in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Ramiro in La Cenerentola, Amenhotep in Moses and Pharaoh, Lindoro in L’italiana in Algeri, the title role in Count Ory...). He also performs with success in the repertoire of the Opéra Comique and the operetta (La Périchole, La Belle Hélène, Orpheus in the Underworld, The Bat, The White Lady…). He sings on the most important international stages: Paris Opera, Lyon Opera, Opéra Comique, Royal Opera of Versailles, Capitole of Toulouse, Marseille Opera, Bordeaux Opera, Luxembourg Theatre, Peralada Festival, Teatro San Carlo of Naples, Deutsche Oper of Berlin, Bayerische Staatsoper, Semperoper of Dresden, Theater an der Wien, Lausanne Opera, Concertgebouw of Amsterdam, New York City Opera, Florida Grand Opera Miami… Among his recent and future projects: Lakmé in Liège, Platée at the Semperoper in Dresden, Armide in Tokyo, La Périchole in Toulon and Dijon, Zémire et Azor and L’Heure espagnole at the Opéra Comique and Béatrice et Bénédict in Nantes, Rennes and Angers.
At the Opéra de Lausanne: La Vie Parisienne (2016) and Orphée et Eurydice (2019).
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.
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).
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 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.
Trained 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), Little Red Riding Hood (2021), Candide (2022), Le domino noir (2023), Orphée aux Enfers (2023)
Diego Fasolis began his career as a concert organist before turning to conducting. A regular guest at the Salzburg Festival, he conducts Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at the Musikverein with the Vienna Concentus Musicus and the Arnold Schönberg Choir. La Scala entrusts him with the creation of an orchestra playing on period instruments, which he then conducts in Handel’s Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno. In Milan, he also conducted Tamerlano with Plácido Domingo. With over 120 CDs released by major international labels such as EMI-Virgin, Naïve, Universal Music and Warner Classics, Diego Fasolis has received numerous awards for his commitment to rediscovering the operatic repertoire: the Disco d’Oro, the Grand Prix du Disque for his work on Handel and Vivaldi, and the Echo Klassik for Leonardo Vinci’s opera Artaserse. In 2014 and 2015, he was nominated for two Grammy Awards for the triumphant “Mission” project with works by Agostino Steffani and the “Saint Petersburg” project with Cecilia Bartoli. To mark the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s death, he recorded Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony with I Barocchisti in Lugano for Arte. In 2019, Diego Fasolis was named Conductor of the Year at the International Opera Awards. Recent and future engagements include Bach’s St. John Passion in Stuttgart, Donizetti’s Anna Bolena in Lugano, Reggio Emilia, Modena and Piacenza, and Vivaldi’s Tamerlano 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), Orphée et Eurydice (2019), Meyerbeer’s Gli amori di Teolinda (2019), Alcina (2022), I Barocchisti (Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno) (2023) and Norma (2023)
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.