Gallant Indies

LA PIETRA DEL PARAGONE (The Touchstone) concerns the Count Asdrubale who is wealthy and therefore of great interest to many women – notably Aspasia, Fulvia, and Clarice. Only Clarice, however, loves him for something other than his riches. There are also male hangers-on: the corrupt journalist Macrobio, the poetaster Pacuvio, and Giocondo, who is Asdrubale's true friend, but who has his own eyes on Clarice. To test his friends and would-be fiancées, Asdrubale pretends that he has been bankrupted. Sure enough, only Clarice and Giocondo stand by him, and when his fortune is "miraculously" saved, the three have the last laugh on everyone else... or do they? This production is set in what looks like the early 1960s. But the real innovation is the use of blue screen technology: using tiny cameras and sets, along gigantic screens hanging over the stage, a kind of video mixing makes the singers appear to inhabit any number of fanciful settings and perform a myriad of improbable actions.

As part of the 2019 Aix-en-Provence Opera Festival, filmmaker Christophe Honoré delivers an innovative staging of Giacomo Puccini's famous drama. His cleverly staged "opera within the opera" is a melancholy homage to the fascinating figure of the diva, who thrives on art and love and upsets the laws of time and death.

How can people play together as one? How can one contribute to something greater than oneself? How can a group cohabitate for decades without falling apart? And what role does the conductor really play? For the first time, cameras and microphones slip among the 80 musicians of the Orchestre de Paris, under the baton of their young prodigy conductor, Klaus Mäkelä. A total immersion to share their experiences, emotion and beauty, at the heart of music in the making.

For her first production, Marina Hands chose "Six Characters in Search of an Author," a play by Luigi Pirandello that premiered in Rome in 1921. A team rehearsing is interrupted by six characters in search of an author willing to write their story, which has gone from drama to drama. Luigi Pirandello had the brilliant idea of doubling the conflictual relationships within this dysfunctional family with another type of dispute: the characters rebel against the false truth of the actors and actresses playing out their story. Filmed at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier in Paris's 6th arrondissement.

How can emotion come to light on the opera set? Does it come from singing, acting or music? How can someone become the incarnation of Verdi's masterpiece? Following world famous French soprano Natalie Dessay from the first repetitions until the premiere under the direction of Jean-François Sivadier, we meet a very special woman, a piece of art, a myth: LA TRAVIATA.

Ten year-old Anthony has red hair, as did Antonio Vivaldi. For his birthday, his grandfather gives him a book. He would have preferred a video game, but what can you expect from a grandfather who spends his time building violins in his workshop? But this is a magic book! When you draw in it, it plays the Four Seasons: it’s an activity book, a herbarium, a sketchbook... The orchestra playing the music is inside the book, on the other side of each page... drawings come to life and join the orchestra in an imaginary space. The book accompanies Anthony throughout the seasons until his eleventh birthday.

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The programme features arias from Vivaldi’s operas and oratorios, as well as two of his cello concertos, performed by cellists Nicolas Altstaedt and Bruno Philippe. The young Franco-Italian mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre performs on the world’s leading concert and opera stages and won the Opus Klassik award for Singer of the Year in 2022.

With “Antigone,” the Philharmonie de Paris serves as the setting for a world premiere: an “operatorio” by Pascal Dusapin, brought to life by Christel Loetzsch in the title role, conducted by Klaus Mäkelä and directed by Netia Jones.

Among DVDs of "Hoffmann" currently available, this is the only one that even begins to stand comparison with the superlative Powell and Pressburger film (whose ideas it occasionally borrows). Olivier Py's baroque imagination, which sometimes leads him into self-indulgence and incoherence, is well suited to bringing out this opera's darkness and he does an excellent job

A meditation on the passing of all things and an affirmation of faith in creative power, Symphony No. 2 in C minor, "Resurrection," remains undoubtedly the most popular of Gustav Mahler's symphonies. The iconoclastic Romeo Castellucci (whose version of Mozart's Requiem in Aix-en-Provence in 2019 caused quite a stir) joins forces with Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen for a radical reinterpretation of this existential fresco.