Vox Feminae – Les Kapsber’girls

Les illuminations

Stephanie Childress—a revelation at France’s first La Maestra competition for female conductors—returns to the podium of the Orchestre National d'Île-de-France, this time conducting a Mendelssohn-Fauré-Britten programme.

Les voyageuses

Inspired by Clara Schumann’s encounter with several of her female contemporaries, Franco-Belgian soprano Marianne Croux, together with Guillaume Chilemme and Théo Fouchenneret, explores a Romantic Europe torn between passionate fervour and modernist dazzle.

Les Trois Brigands

FEL!X URBAN. Les Abbagliati

The text discusses showcasing new perspectives and revitalizing early music, supported by Kuratorium KölnMusik e.V., Kunststiftung NRW, and the Flemish Ministry of Culture, Youth and Media.

FEL!X URBAN. Les Abbagliati

The text discusses showcasing new perspectives and revitalizing early music, supported by Kuratorium KölnMusik e.V., Kunststiftung NRW, and the Flemish Ministry of Culture, Youth and Media.

Nuria Rial / Les Cornets Noirs

Nuria Rial is a soprano singer.

Les légendes de la musique irlandaise

Icons Andy Irvine and Dónal Lunny, who ignited the 1970s Irish music scene with their legendary group Planxty, demonstrate their peerless blend of bouzouki and mandolin, flanked by the finest of the new folk generation.

Les Grands Maîtres

Jörg Widmann’s Con brio pays homage to Beethoven’s luminous and spirited penultimate symphony, which in some ways is a throwback to Mozart, whose Sinfonia Concertante is an ode to wind instruments.

Les Vêpres Siciliennes

About the work For his first commission for the Paris Opéra Verdi demanded a libretto that was “immense, passionate and original”. What he eventually got from star author Eugène Scribe was a text whose political edginess rivalled the grand opéras of Giacomo Meyerbeer, with whom Scribe had collaborated on LES HUGUENOTS and LE PROPHETE. Like these two works, LES VÊPRES SICILIENNES explored a subject that was not only historical but also highly topical. Parallels could easily be drawn between the “Sicilian Vespers” uprising in 1282 against the island’s French occupiers and the most conspicuous of France’s mid-19th-century expansionist ventures, the conquest and colonialization of Algeria, which began in 1830 and was dogged by an ongoing series of brutally quelled revolts. About the production This link likewise serves as the slant for the current production by French director Olivier Py, who has already shown his sensibility for the grand-opéra approach to political material in his staging of Meyerbeer’s LE PROPHETE at the Deutsche Oper Berlin: the French occupation of Algeria, which extended from Verdi’s period to the 1950s, provides the setting for Py’s version of the story, which, after LA TRAVIATA and RIGOLETTO, was another example of Verdi expanding the focus of his musical dramas. His regard is no longer fixed only on the fate of individual characters; in LES VÊPRES SICILIENNES he is interested in the fortunes and woes of entire nations. Undiluted hatred, a desire for reconciliation and the tension between these two extremes are what drive the actions of the main protagonists and the interactions of occupiers with the subjugated. LES VÊPRES SICILIENNES has long been overshadowed by Verdi’s other great operas, but here the Deutsche Oper Berlin presents the original 1855 French version of the work, not the Italian adaptation that became the standard.