Schedule of events - Opéra de Lille

Froth on the Daydream, which became a cult classic in the 1960s, was adapted for the stage and film several times before Soviet composer Edison Denisov turned it into an opera. Fascinated by French culture and Western European music, Denisov saw in the narrative freedom of L’Écume a perfect opportunity to expand his musical horizon beyond the strict socialist-realist canon in force behind the Iron Curtain. Informed by his own work as a composer, Lebanese-Polish conductor Bassem Akiki is a specialist in contemporary repertoire. Particularly attuned to the fusion of multiple musical languages, he breathes new life into this rarely staged ‘lyrical drama’. Sought-after Franco-Polish stage director Anna Smolar artfully combines poetry, humour and depth in her productions. For her operatic debut, she has chosen to place Chloé at the centre of the plot. While she seems to be little more than a fantasy in the original work, here Chloé becomes a flesh-and-bones narrator. She gives voice to the complexities of terminal illness and makes a case for the freedom to be found in living and dying by your own rules.

Musical director Bassem Akiki
Staging Anna Smolar

approx. 2 hr. 50 min. incl. interval
Sung in French with French and English surtitles

Long ago, Elina Makropulos’s alchemist father tested an elixir of life on her. Now 337 years old, and performing as opera singer Emilia Marty, she becomes involved in an inheritance dispute. Though her flawless beauty and voice still turn heads, her only aim is to recover the formula for the elixir, whose effects are beginning to wane.
Leoš Janáček was himself getting on in years when he turned this 1922 science-fiction play into an opera about the conundrum of immortality. Throughout his life, he developed a singular musical style by transposing the natural melodies of speech into music.
In Kornél Mundruczó’s staging, Emilia Marty is far from the soulless monster rejected men believe her to be. Worn down by centuries of loss, she ultimately overcomes her fear of death.
Véronique Gens makes her debut in this captivating and complex role. American conductor Dennis Russell Davies, a tireless champion of modern music, is now principal conductor of the Brno Philharmonic – the city where Janáček spent most of his life.

Dennis Russell Davies musical director
Kornél Mundruczó staging

approx. 1 hr. 50 min. (no interval)
Sung in Czech with French and Dutch surtitles

They stop going to school, follow their own rules, and couldn’t care less about ‘finding their place in the world’. They think they’ve found it: their room. Jean Cocteau’s ‘enfants terribles’ – Paul and Élisabeth – are orphaned teenage siblings. In the short novel published in 1929, the author highlights the fragile nature of adolescence.
American composer Philip Glass is the most-performed living opera composer in the world. With his minimalist musical language, he renders the impasse of this story in nearly mechanical fashion. Three pianos play hypnotic loops while repeated themes create a magnetic pull suggestive of the protagonists’ psychological imprisonment and their inability to stop the destructive process. True to Cocteau’s belief in the extraordinary power of the imagination and creativity, young German theatre director Matthias Piro leads the problematic couple through a labyrinth of fantasies, waking dreams and parallel worlds, where they are irremediably lost – until death crystallizes their love and youth for all eternity.

Virginie Déjos musical director 
Matthias Piro staging 

approx. 1hr.40 min. (no interval)
Sung in French with French and English surtitles

The Magic Flute is the work of a playful mind unbound by convention. With the help of a fairytale backdrop and radiant music, it exalts virtue and forgiveness through characters whose weaknesses and moments of heroism are common to all humans. Prince Tamino is tasked with rescuing Pamina, daughter of the Queen of the Night, who has been kidnapped by a tyrant. To help Tamino succeed, the Queen gives him a magic flute to protect him from any danger he may encounter. Accompanied by his new friend, Papageno the bird catcher, Tamino sets out on his adventure. He learns that Sarastro, who is holding Pamina captive, took her to save her from her mother’s evil ways. But who should he believe? How can Tamino tell the difference between truth and lie, friend and foe? For Mozart, the heart must always guide us! But before Tamino and Pamina can live happily ever after, they must overcome a series of obstacles and find their own path.
Since its premier in Berlin in 2012, the enchanting staging by Suzanne Andrade and Barrie Kosky has never ceased to amaze audiences of all ages across the globe. Embracing the extravagance that was dear to Mozart and Schikaneder, it surrounds the singers with a spectacular décor of animated images borrowed from 1920s silent film, German expressionism and British comedy. To infuse this unique experience in the world of opera with energy and whimsy, the young Italian prodigy Riccardo Bisatti, born in 2000, will conduct the Orchestre National de Lille and brilliant soloists who embody the new generation of Mozart.

Musical director Riccardo Bisatti
Staging Suzanne Andrade, Barrie Kosky

approx. 2 hr. 45 min. incl. interval
Sung in German with French and English surtitles