Gilles Ragon

A woman calls her ex-lover, unable to let go of him. She flatters, despairs and blackmails in the hope that he will not hang up the phone. / The clockmaker’s wife takes advantage of her husband’s absence to receive her lovers. In Opera Zuid's double bill of 20th century French masterpieces, everything revolves around the female protagonists and their emotional development. The one-act operas La Voix humaine (Francis Poulenc) and L'Heure espagnole (Maurice Ravel), each lasting less than an hour, present themselves as two sides of the same coin united by the same longing for connection to another human being.

German-Jewish essayist, philosopher, and critic Walter Benjamin were one of the early 20th century's most influential thinkers, a light in the darkness of looming war and political oppression. In Benjamin, dernière nuit, composer Michel Tabachnik and librettist Régis Debray examine this life cruelly cut short by despair in the face of Nazism. Experience the opera here in its highly acclaimed 2016 premiere production at the Lyon Opera.