PRESS RELEASE SEASON 17—18

OPERA DANCE CONCERT AMPH I THEATRE

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To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day / To the last syllable of recorded time, / And all our yesterdays have lighted fools / The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! / Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more: it is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.

William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act V, scene 5

The Opéra National de Lyon is approved by the Ministry of Culture and Communication, the City of Lyon, Auvergne Rhône-Alpes council and Lyon Metropole.

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Of wars and kingsStories of wars, stories of kings, stories of victims, stories of oppressors: from yesterday, or today, they are framing our 2017/2018 opera season. A century after 1917 which, for some historians, marked the real beginning of the 20th century – as the turning point of the First World War, with the arrival of the USA, and the Russian Revolution… – we are opening the season with a staged version of Britten’s War Requiem, a work that deplores and consoles, a work of war, and peace. It was in 1917 that Stravinsky, then exiled in Switzerland, composed his Histoire du Soldat, on a text by Ramuz – a Faustian tale for three voices and small orchestra. And it was also in 1917 that Janáček composed his Diary of One Who Disappeared, both a cycle of melodies and a concentrated, intensely overwhelming opera. When it comes to kings and warlords, it was Verdi who depicted them in their moving, epic or tragic existences, grasped at the moment when an empire is being made or unmade – in late Antiquity, the Middle Ages, or Spain’s Golden Age, with Attila, Macbeth, and Don Carlos. These three operas make up our annual festival, as a homage to the composer, a reflexion about power, with its grandeurs and baseness, its contradictions, abuses and capacity to corrupt. GerMANIA, a creation which we commissioned from Alexander Raskatov, for both the music and libretto, takes its inspiration from Heiner Müller: it is an opera that speaks to us about totalitarianism, with its “dark, furious, subversive score”. Its 37 characters include a Stalin, sung by a Russian basso profondo, and a Hitler by a Wagnerian Heldentenor! As a political tale, denouncing injustice and social oppression, Zemlinsky’s Chalk Circle is being performed this season for the first time in Lyon, or France. Injustice too, and domestic oppression, but this time a happy ending and a prince charming can then be found in Rossini’s La Cenerentola. Don Giovanni at last, Don Giovanni for ever. This “opera of operas” tells the

tale of a wicked lord, alone against the world, and love as an endless, head-spinning battle of the sexes.

Project Leaders 2017-2018 is a season for maintaining and deepening the partnerships we have with the stage directors and conductors we love. We shall thus be seeing again, in order of appearance, Yoshi Oida, Stefan Herheim, Richard Brunel, Ivo van Hove, Christophe Honoré, Alex Ollé/La Fura dels Baus, John Fulljames and David Marton. 2017/2018 also marks the first season of the stewardship of our new permanent conductor Daniele Rustioni. He will be going back to his roots – Verdi – while also conducting Britten. In the pit and in concert, Stefano Montanari will be pursuing his exploration with the Orchestra of the baroque repertory, and also its practice. Furthermore, we shall be seeing Lothar Koenigs and Alejo Perez.

DanceThe eclecticism of the repertory, an openness to different choreographic scripting and a mastery of classical technique are all part of the Ballet of the Opéra de Lyon’s DNA. As conceived by Yorgos Loukos, its director for many years, this season is bringing together choreographers and pieces as diverse as Carmen and L’Arlésienne by Roland Petit, Trisha Brown’s Set and Reset/Reset or else William Forsythe’s Steptext. And this season, Jiří Kylián will be joining us as an associated artist: we will thus be able to see again or discover his work as a choreographer, stage director, but also photographer.

ConcertsThe season of concerts will see Daniele Rustioni as our symphonic conductor, with French, Russian and German music, in a prelude and pre-echo of seasons to come. It will also see the Opera’s Orchestra as a baroque ensemble, with dedicated bows and instruments. At the end of the year, there will be the traditional concerts by the Children’s Choir and

for New Year’s Eve. We will also be offering several recitals of song and piano.

In 2017/2018, the Opéra de Lyon will be pursuing its missions, as an artistic theatre which – at the same time – celebrates the great repertory, brings to light works that are performed too seldom, and enriches the operatic repertory with new creations. It is also a centre of exchanges and encounters between works, artists and the audiences that follow us with so much enthusiasm, curiosity and openness along the pathways we offer them. In an ever more difficult context, and with increasingly limited means, this is more than just encouraging for us: it is the justification for the collective endeavours of all the teams of the Opéra de Lyon. For today, more than ever, we need art and culture to resist and respond to the barbary and hatred of our era. Serge Dorny General Director of the Opéra National de Lyon

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The idea for a pacifist work with a universal reach busied Britten’s mind as soon as the bomb exploded in Hiroshima in 1945, then again after the assassination of Gandhi in 1948. This was fifteen years before he set to work, at the turn of the 1960s, on a piece that was to be completed when the Berlin Wall had just been built, freezing East-West relations for twenty-eight years and confirming stigmatisation of the Cold War. The date does not apparently correspond to any commemoration. But this would be to forget that the fiftieth anniversary of the armistice of the First World War – which, through Wilfred Owen’s poems, occupies a central position in War Requiem – was in view as early as 1960; that the Vietnam War was present in the minds of all pacifists and that it led, just like nuclear disarmament, to constant protestations and demonstrations. Britten, who had in part missed out on marking his commitment during his exile in the USA as a conscientious objector during the Second World War, clearly intended to reaffirm his profound convictions, after the refusal of his Sinfonia da Requiem, in 1940, by the Japanese authorities. 

An exceptional conceptionEvents thus imposed themselves, rather than a need for a reconciliation with the ideals of his youth, which from now on would never desert the composer. There then arose the idea for a requiem which would be a memorial for the victims of these two wars, but also a vigorous, moving call for peace now, and in the future. The title War Requiem, in fact, allows for a twofold interpretation, as either a requiem after a particular war, or for war in general, and it was the latter sense that Britten stood up for: at once establishing a ceremony for death, while tolling the bell for all forms of bloody conflict! So what new ideas could be found, to avoid a basic liturgical requiem simply setting the text of missa pro defunctis? Should it be dropped? Definitely not. Should it then be extended and made operatic, as with Verdi (whose influence can be clearly heard)? No, nothing as simple as that, even if the proportions of the War Requiem are huge. Instead, he followed another model, which is not often cited, that of Brahms’s German Requiem, which is not only based on the liturgical missa but also on purely German texts, with the singing divided between two soloists and a chorus. On this basis, it was possible to envisage a three-part division: the traditional mass, sung in Latin by a soprano (originally Galina Vichnevskaïa) with a large orchestra, then the supernatural sphere for a children’s choir, and the human sphere thanks to the deeply moving poems of Owen, who died at the age

of 25, in 1918, during the battle of the Somme, sung by a tenor from among the allies (Peter Pears) and by a baritone, from among their foes (Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau), accompanied by a chamber orchestra. This accordingly required two conductors and the performance configurations are thus variable. 

A work for the stage?As soon as this conception had been chosen by Britten, the idea of staging it arose, especially in the mind of the composer who, in 1961, two years before turning fifty, had already composed ten of his operas. The very fact of wanting two orchestras suggests a set-up in which the theatre comes fully into play. Despite some inevitable differences, we are in the same configuration as for the vivid oratorio A Child of our Time (1939-1941), the dedicated anti-war piece by Michael Tippett, who was Britten’s friend, which also calls out to be staged. By not choosing a cathedral but instead the Opéra de Lyon, Yoshi Oida will be exploiting the pit to house the main orchestra and the soprano, and the stage to present the chamber orchestra, the children’s choir and the two male soloists, at the piece’s poetic heart. Xavier de Gaulle 

WAR REQUIEMBENJAMIN BR ITTEN

War Requiem Text of the Mass for the Dead and poems by Wilfred Owen 1962 In Latin and English

Conductor: Daniele Rustioni Director: Yoshi Oida Sets: Tom Schenk Costumes: Thibault Vancraenenbroeck Lighting: Lutz Deppe Choreography: Maxine Braham Baritone: Jochen Schmeckenbecher Tenor: Paul Groves Soprano: Ekaterina Scherbachenko Orchestra, Choruses and Children’s Choir of the Opéra de Lyon

New production

October 2017 Monday 9th 8 pm Wednesday 11th 8 pm Friday 13th 8 pm Sunday 15th 4 pm Tueday 17th 8 pm Thursday 19th 8 pm Saturday 21st 8 pm

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A legend which is harder than the truthThe rarely staged opera, Mozart and Salieri, was inspired by the play of the same name by Alexander Pushkin, who had the latter murder the former, an idea that was to be recycled by Peter Schaffer in 1979 for his play Amadeus, which was then made into a film by Milos Forman in 1984. Through this fable, Pushkin, and then Rimsky-Korsakov did not just treat the issue of the jealousy of a gifted man, who was nevertheless aware of this own limitations, when confronted by pure, thoughtless genius, but also the incomprehension of this same fine, cultivated, hardworking man at the frenzy, roughness, rusticity and lightness of this other who invented the most sublimely inspired music. 

It took Rimsky-Korsakov less than a month in 1897 to compose this opera in one act and two scenes, lasting under an hour, for two singers, a solo violinist embodying a blind man, a mixed, off-stage chorus and a small orchestra (woodwind, two horns, three trombones, timpani, piano, strings). The composer wrote the libretto himself, which he adapted from the verse play, Mozart and Salieri, which Pushkin had written in 1830, reusing entire sections of its dialogue. 

This plot has damaged the Italian composer’s reputation. The legend seems to have been created by Anton Schindler, Beethoven’s secretary who in 1824, mentioned in Conversations with Beethoven a confession by the old Salieri, who, in a fit of madness, is supposed to have accused himself of murdering Mozart. This contradicts the ample proofs of good relations between the two men, as attested in the manuscript of the dramatic cantata Per la ricuperata salute du Ophelia, co-signed by Mozart and Salieri, on a text by Lorenzo Da Ponte, which was discovered in Prague in late 2015, while the opera Cosi fan tutte was commissioned from Mozart on Salieri’s express recommendation… the intrusion of Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and above all the Requiem into Pushkin’s story have contributed to the rise of the legend of Mozart being murdered by Salieri. 

At the time of the genesis of Rimsky-Korsakov’s piece, Mozart was seen as a god by the Russians. Tchaikovsky did not hesitate to mix up entire pages of his work in his suite Mozartiana and to integrate his spirit into the Queen of Spades. For his piece, Rimsky-Korsakov used pastiche, composing “in Mozart’s manner”, while also bringing in actual features of the Austrian master. In the development of the work, he followed Pushkins’ indications, using melodic formulas which clearly distinguish the two characters, the plodding, restricted Salieri, and the versatile, nonchalant Mozart, while quoting his arias almost in their entirety, such as Batti, batti o bel Masetto from Don Giovanni, or a long extract from the Mass for the Dead, when Mozart asks Salieri to listen to his Requiem, while the quotations from the latter are provided from reworked versions of his operas, as used at various revivals, with Rimsky-Korsakov thus showing up Salieri’s laborious aspect. Bruno Serrou

MOZART AND SAL IER I NIKOLAI R IMSKY-KORSAKOV

Mozart and Salieri Dramatic scenes, 1898 Libretto by the composer after Alexander Pushkin

Conductor: Pierre Bleuse Director: Jean Lacornerie Sets: Bruno de Lavenère Costumes: Robin Chemin Lighting: David Debrinay Video: Étienne Guiol Orchestra, Choruses and Studio of the Opéra de Lyon

A 2010 Opéra de Lyon production revival

October 2017 Tuesday 31st 7.30 pm November 2017 Thursday 2nd 7.30 pm Friday 3rd 7.30 pm Saturday 4th 7.30 pm Monday 6th 7.30 pm Tuesday 7th 7.30 pm

OPERA AND C INEMA FROM 6 YEARS

Friday 3rd November, 7.30 pm Saturday 4th November, 7.30 pm

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Cinderella is now 200 years old and without a wrinklePremiered on 28 January 1817, La Cenerentola remains one of Rossini’s most popular works, passing between tears and laughter. So it is that the plot of this dramma giocoso makes use of characters offering remarkable musical contrasts, from the tenderness of Angelina to the farcical character of her stepfather, without forgetting the selfish laziness of her sisters and the elegant refinement of the Prince.

A fairy tale without a fairy The libretto has removed everything supernatural from Perrault’s tale: no pumpkins or good fairies… no wicked stepmother, but a wicked stepfather, no slipper, but a bracelet. Cenerentola is set in Rossini’s great Neapolitan period, with its pure creative fireworks. Thanks to a team of talented singers, “he (could) experiment as he wished (and) produce the forms which Italian opera was to thrive on for over a century”, wrote Piotr Kaminski. Within a few years, he created in Naples such works as Otello, Mosè in Egitto, La Donna del lago, while at the same time offering other theatres rarer pieces, including several masterpieces: Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Rome), La Cenerentola (Rome again), La Gazza ladra (Milan)… With an unfailing productivity which made anything imaginable: was it not said that the score of Cenerentola was completed in a single night? It was actually more like three weeks, but such verve was already prodigious. The whole thing is virtuosic, right up to the final rondo. As for The Barber, the premier was a failure. And as for The Barber, it then became a triumph.

Stefan Herheim: an eclectic, thinking director Direction of this bicentennial Cenerentola has been entrusted to Stefan Herheim. Three times named “director of the year” by the review Opernwelt, he is not unknown to audiences in Lyon, where his Rusalka was applauded in 2014. This enabled him to show how he could use kitsch in the service of myth, while creating a universe of colourful, flashy images, in order to distil a caustic vision, perfectly relaying the desolation of a naïve outcast in a hostile, brutal world. So are we being promised a revamped Cenerentola, free from clichés? Always guided by an in-depth reading of each work, Stefan Herheim is an eclectic director, capable of offering modern transpositions, alongside apparently traditional representations, often with astounding visual delights. This Norwegian director does not believe in the myth of the “good little girl” behind Cinderella and so, while keeping in mind Perrault’s tale, he promises us a heroine who is more wild and cunning, as opposed to the aseptic version popularised by Walt Disney. Without forgetting the presence of Rossini himself …Jean-Marc Proust

LA CENERENTOLAGIOACHINO ROSS INI

La Cenerentola Melodramma giocoso in two acts, 1817. Libretto by Jacopo Ferretti In Italian

Conductor: Stefano Montanari Director: Stefan Herheim Sets: Daniel Unger, Stefan Herheim Costumes: Esther Bialas Lighting: Phoenix (Andreas Hofer) Staging Assistant: Alexander Meier-Dörzenbach Video: fettFilm (Momme Hinrichs, Torge Möller) Don Ramiro: Cyrille Dubois Dandini: Nikolay Borchev Don Magnifico: Renato Girolami Clorinda: Clara Meloni Tisbe: Katherine Aitken Angelina, called La Cenerentola: Michèle Losier Alidoro: Simone Alberghini Orchestra and Choruses of the Opéra de Lyon

New production As a coproduction with the Oslo Opera

December 2017 Friday 15th 7.30 pm Sunday 17th 4 pm Tuesday 19th 7.30 pm Thursday 21st 7.30 pm Saturday 23rd 7.30 pm Tuesday 26th 7.30 pm Thursday 28th 7.30 pm Saturday 30th 7.30 pm January 2018 Monday 1st 4 pm

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A masterpiece is rebornBorn in Vienna in 1871, where he was Schoenberg’s brother-in-law, and Mahler’s friend, the composer, conductor, and director of the Prague German Opera, Alexander von Zemlinsky dwelt at the heart of central European modernity. At the end of the 1920s, he joined Otto Klemperer’s avant-garde ensemble at the Krolloper in Berlin, where in particular he conducted the premiere of Mahagonny, Bertolt Brecht’s and Kurt Weill’s opera. It was under just such influence that he composed Kreidekreis (The Chalk Circle), adapted from a play by Klabund (the pseudonym of the writer and poet Alfred Henschke), which was itself taken from a Chinese play by Ling Sing-Tao (13th century), Houei-lan-tsi, which Brecht then also adapted as The Caucasian Chalk Circle in 1954. 

Jazz and oriental stylisation Previously anchored in the most lyrical post-romanticism, Zemlinsky successfully mingled the influence of jazz and oriental stylisation in this new piece. It was the last opera the composer completed. In 1933, several German theatres would have staged this creation simultaneously, but the Nazis’ accession to power made this impossible. The premiere finally took place in Zurich, in the author’s presence. He died in exile in Larchmon, in the state of New York, USA, in March 1942.

An eloquent, modern fableThe work was revived and recorded some seventy years later, and today it is entering the repertory of the Opera National de Lyon, directed by Richard Brunel, after his productions of Der Jasager and In the Penal Colony. He is thus taking on a forgotten gem of the repertory, with an exceptional theatrical and musical acuity. This three-act opera in the form of a fable tells the eloquent tale of a young girl, who is sold by her parents but then becomes a princess. It is at once a political work, denouncing poverty, oppression, abuses of power and corruption, and a timeless parable about justice and destiny. 

Seeing the real worldThe new Lyon production has been inspired by today’s China, evoking a cruel modernity, which speaks to all of us. So it is that the teahouse, in the first act, takes on the form of a karaoke, concealing a place of prostitution. Any resemblance with the real world is entirely intentional. These seven, exceptional performances will in particular bring together, under Lothar Koenigs’ expert baton, the Tschang Ling of Lauri Vasar, the Ma of Martin Winkler, the Yü-Pei of Nicola Beller Carbone or else Stephan Rügamer as Prince Pao. 

THE CHALK C IRCLE ALEXANDER VON ZEML INSKY

Der Kreidekreis Opera in three acts and seven tableaux, 1933 Libretto by Klabund In German

Conductor: Lothar Koenigs Director: Richard Brunel Staging Assistant: Catherine Ailloud-Nicolas Sets: Anouk Dell’Aiera Costumes: Benjamin Moreau Lighting: Laurent Castaingt Tschang-Ling: Lauri Vasar MA: Martin Winkler Yü-Pei: Nicola Beller Carbone Prince Pao: Stephan Rügamer Tschu-Tschu: Wolfram Koch Tschao: Piotr Micinski Mrs Tchang: Doris Lamprecht Midwife: Hedwig Fassbender Orchestra, Children’s Choir and Studio of the Opéra de Lyon

New production

January 2018 Saturday 20th 8 pm Monday 22nd 8 pm Wednesday 24th 8 pm Friday 26th 8 pm Sunday 28th 4 pm Tuesday 30th 8 pm February 2018 Thursday 1st 8 pm

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Verdi’s work is so omnipresent on the entire world’s opera stages that it might seem astonishing to devote to him the Opéra de Lyon’s annual festival, given that it generally explores less well-trodden paths.

But the 2018 Festival intends to salute the Opéra de Lyon’s new permanent conductor, Daniele Rustioni. For him, a Milanese who studied at his home city’s Conservatory, named after the great composer, Verdi is both his roots and the main branch of his artistic family tree.

What is more, the works in the festival are not among those that are most often performed – no Traviata, nor Rigoletto, but instead Macbeth, Don Carlos and Attila.

Don Carlos, in its original French version composed for the Opéra de Paris, is still little performed or recorded. Macbeth, though revived in the 1950s by Maria Callas at La Scala and by Leonie Rysanek at the Met, it has only really been regularly performed since the early 1970s. As for Attila, it is a genuine rarity.

What these three operas have in common is how Verdi, that eminently political – and liberal – composer viewed power: a bitter view, free of any illusions, in Don Carlos, full of energy and hope in Attila, then epic and imperious in Macbeth, clearly corresponding to his Shakespearian model.

Power drives people mad (Macbeth), power crushes (Attila), power destroys beautiful souls, illusions and ideals (Don Carlos). Macbeth and Don Carlos are dark works, in which the “great mechanism of history” ends up breaking people. Attila, which concludes with the fall of a tyrant and the foundation of Venice, is a more open and highly Verdean piece, given the room it leaves open

to an optimism which was never completely to abandon Verdi, whose last opera, Falstaff, is a hymn to the world and humanity.

What each work by Verdi gives us is a message of vibrant humanism, in which a glimpse of light, no matter how tiny, survives in each character, even the darkest ones; in which even monsters can reveal their human side – the final, desperate courage of Macbeth, Attila’s respect for Odabella’s valour; or else the terrible Philippe II, austere and alone, looking for the friendship of someone who comes over as loyal and human. In the end, what makes us particularly love Verdi is his tolerance, his love for humanity and his faith in the future: while his libretti do not always state this explicitly, each page of his music affirms it: a music which, in these anxious times, helps us to breathe, and live.Guy Cherqui

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MACBETHGIUSEPPE VERDI

A transitional workBecause it was premiered in Florence in 1847, a year after Attila, Macbeth is an opera that can be classified among the works from Verdi’s youth. But because it was revised for Paris in 1865, with quite modest modifications overall, including the addition of a final chorus, Macbeth is often seen as one of his mature productions. It is this latter version, which is chosen almost everywhere, that will be performed in Lyon. Macbeth is Verdi’s first adaption of Shakespeare, and the librettist Francesco Maria Piave remained quite close to the original. This opera was then forgotten until 1952, when it triumphantly opened La Scala’s season with Maria Callas, and then 1975 still at La Scala, where the Strehler/Abbado production and succeeding recording have since turned it into a Verdean reference work.

The Lyon production The Lyon production, going back to 2012, is a production by Ivo van Hove, who wanted to show that Macbeth, like most of Shakespeare’s plays about power madness, can be adapted to any context. It occurs in the world of finance, in the atmosphere of trading desks where a blind, violent form of power is exercised. Its internal conflicts are thus made to raise questions about the domination of economic power over politics, with a violence not unlike that of the wild Scotland as seen in Macbeth; meanwhile the opposition is being organised in a clear allusion to the struggle of the indignados against Wall Street.Macbeth is thus the story of a couple, who gradually become isolated, one of these doomed couples that cross through history, such as the Ceausescus, and who exist only through their lust for power and megalomania. Remorse and fantastical visions conjure up insanity and underwrite the way the elements do not tolerate deviations. When the individual runs up against the universal, he is crushed. 

A new castThis revival is dominated by the Lady Macbeth of Susanna Branchini, who is used to Verdi’s most exposed roles, and in particular Lady Macbeth, who she has sung on numerous occasions. Verdi did not want a “beautiful voice” for this particularly arduous role, a dark heroine, who can be interpreted just as well by sopranos as mezzos, and who has no precisely defined tessitura, so that the stage persona imposes a new style on each occasion. All of this implies a new work of production, especially as Daniele Rustioni will now be the conductor, thus giving new colour to the show. Rhythm, impulsion, tension, respiration and precision are the distinguishing qualities that can be expected from this conductor who is deeply aware of what the Italian tradition means. So it is that the Opéra de Lyon is inviting its public to what is virtually a recreated production.Guy Cherqui

Macbeth Opera in 4 acts, 1865 Libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, after Shakespeare In Italian

Conductor: Daniele Rustioni Director: Ivo van Hove Sets and Lighting: Jan Versweyveld Costumes: Wojciech Dziedzic Video: Tal Yarden Macbeth: Elchin Azizov Lady Macbeth: Susanna Branchini Banco: Roberto Scandiuzzi Macduff: Arseny Yakovlev Orchestra, Choruses and Studio of the Opéra de Lyon

A 2012 Opéra de Lyon production revival

March 2018 Friday 16th 8 pm Wednesday 21st 8 pm Sunday 25th 4 pm Tuesday 27th 8 pm Saturday 31st 8 pm April 2018 Tuesday 3rd 8 pm Thursday 5th 8 pm

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DON CARLOSGIUSEPPE VERDI

A French version never performed in its entirety Verdi’s longest opera has never been performed in its entirety in France. Claudio Abbado (1977) at La Scala showed up the extracts that had been excised during the dress rehearsals in 1867, but in Italian. Then, in 1991, in Turin, Gustav Kuhn offered an almost complete French version. But none of the recent productions of the French version has ever staged the full opera, neither in Vienna/Barcelona (Peter Konwitschny), nor in Basel (Calixto Bieito). However, the quality of some of these omissions is such that they deserve to be in the repertory of theatres that put on the French version.

A profoundly pessimistic workDon Carlos is Verdi’s longest opera, and also one of the darkest. It is a story of the frustrations and broken dreams of an Infante who has not been allowed to love, or to have a political role in Flanders, of Elisabeth who is forced into an unwanted marriage, of Eboli, Don Carlos’s rejected lover, and of an isolated, unloved king. Dreams of freedom and peace are borne up by Posa, one of the most noble characters in Verdi’s entire output, who sacrifices himself to save the Infante. Derived from Schiller (1787) and Saint Réal (1672) Verdi produced for Paris a dark grand opera, a hopeless tragedy on a backdrop of a Spain submitted to the Inquisition, where everyone had a cross to bear.

A distinctly theatrical approachChristophe Honoré is offering a Don Carlos (re)founded firstly on a truly theatrical vision: characters in contemporary costumes invest a space and a piece, which looks just like a theatrical play. He thus constructs a Shakespearian vision dominated by desire, brutality, family life and succession, marked by a sensuality in which bodies are the motors and souls of the victims. By adopting a fluid scenography, based on a play using a series of curtains, he aims to help this opera to avoid the obstacles of grand historical pieces, and instead create a drama of souls caught in the trap of desires and missed opportunities.

A team of grand lyrical stylistsThe French version requires a particular approach, and singers devoted to style and elegance. It is Michele Pertusi, the great bel canto Italian bass, who will take on Philippe II in French, confronting Roberto Scandiuzzi’s Grand Inquisitor. Stéphane Degout, that most refined of baritones will sing Posa for the first time, while Don Carlos will be Sergey Romanovsky, the revelation of Lyon’s Zelmira in 2015, Elisabeth will be performed by Sally Matthews, and Eboli by the young and daring Eve-Maud Hubeaux. Daniele Rustioni has previously conducted another grand opera in Lyon, La Juive; he is now taking on the last and the most grandiose example of this genre. His vigour will stir the burning coals of this work, to reveal new splendours.Guy Cherqui

Don Carlos Parisian version in five acts, 1867 Libretto by Joseph Méry and Camille du Locle, after Friedrich von Schiller In French

Conductor: Daniele Rustioni Director: Christophe Honoré Sets: Alban Ho Van Costumes: Pascaline Chavanne Lighting: Dominique Bruguière Choreography: Ashley Wright Philippe II, King of Spain: Michele Pertusi Don Carlos, Infante of Spain: Sergey Romanovsky Rodrigue, Marquis of Posa: Stéphane Degout The Grand Inquisitor: Roberto Scandiuzzi A Monk: Patrick Bolleire Elisabeth de Valois: Sally Matthews Princess Eboli: Eve-Maud Hubeaux Orchestra and Choruses of the Opéra de Lyon

New production

March 2018 Saturday 17th 6.30 pm Tuesday 20th 6.30 pm Thursday 22nd 6.30 pm Saturday 24th 6.30 pm Wednesday 28th 6.30 pm Friday 30th 6.30 pm April 2018 Monday 2nd 3 pm Friday 6th 6.30 pm

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The young VerdiThe so-called “young Verdi”, predating 1850, has been little represented in France, with the exception of Nabucco. This music, which is wrongly considered to be repetitive, is extremely hard to sing, especially for the female roles, with their leaps of register, impossible acrobatics, bel canto and dramatism, making it difficult to find the right interpreters; all of which may explain why. Attila is one of his most emblematic works, little known, but paradoxically quite often performed, especially in Italy, with its libretto by Temistocle Solera, adapted from Zacharias Werner’s tragedy, Attila, König der Hunnen.

A complex, even confusing storyThis opera of Roman resistance against Hun invaders premiered in Venice, which was then occupied by the Austrians. This was enough for Attila to set off a series of demonstrations during its performances, as was the case with most of Verdi’s pieces in this era that exalted patriotic values. Attila has a rather confusing libretto, but is above all a succession of bright, virtuoso, martial arias, with the breathless rhythm that is so typical of Verdi’s youthful pieces. But this was his ninth opera, just a year before Macbeth which already announced his maturity. Attila is made for lovers of bel canto heroism, acrobatic cabalettas, spectacular arias, but also large choruses and a generous music which never runs out of breath and drags us along in its swirling wake.

A top-drawer cast for an opera with brilliantly difficult rolesThis thrilling Attila is dominated by the figure of Odabella, a role that allies the demands of bel canto and the dramatic colour of the great heroines of the composer’s maturity, along with sudden changes of register and astounding virtuosity. She will be Tatiana Serjan, one of the reference voices for this repertory. In front of her, Attila will be Dmitri Ulyanov, one of the world’s most refined basses, alongside the baritone Alexey Markov, who will be Ezio. Finally, Foresto will be Riccardo Massi a highly acclaimed tenor on both the American and European stages. Meanwhile Daniele Rustioni, the Opéra de Lyon’s new musical director, is matchless when it comes to leading orchestras into a Verdean swirl: having trained in Milan, in the shadow of La Scala, he will doubtlessly raise the work’s italianità to its zenith.Guy Cherqui

ATT I LAGIUSEPPE VERDICONCERT OPERA

Attila Lyrical drama in three acts, with a prologue, 1846 Libretto by Temistocle Solera In Italian

Conductor: Daniele Rustioni Attila: Dmitry Ulyanov Ezio: Alexey Markov Odabella: Tatiana Serjan Forresto: Riccardo Massi Orchestra and Choruses of the Opéra de Lyon

As a coproduction with the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées

November 2017 Sunday 12th 4 pm At the Opéra de Lyon

March 2018 Sunday 18th 4 pm At the Auditorium de Lyon

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G e r MANIAALEXANDER RASKATOV

From Berlin to MoscowAfter the success of A Dog's Heart, after Bulgakov, in 2014, the Opéra de Lyon has commissioned Alexandre Raskatov’s GerMANIA, his second opera. Sung in German and Russian, this lyrical piece takes its plot from two plays by the dramatist Heiner Müller: Germania Death in Berlin, written between 1956 and 1971, and Germania 3, Ghosts at Dead Man, his final work, the proofs of which the writer corrected a few days before his death, in 1995. 

A utopic society based on the New ManWhile the subject of GerMANIA had nothing autobiographical about it for Müller, it nevertheless comes over as a vital reflexion based on his own experiences: freed from Nazism at the end of the war, he had decided to set up home in East Germany, which was then communist (RDA) only to see, ironically, his plays being censored, because they were judged to be too “political” – whereas in West Germany he was acclaimed as early as the 1970s… As for, Raskatov – who was born in Moscow on the day of Stalin’s funeral (9th March 1953) –, he grew up in a Soviet society and this text, which denounces how ideologies prepare the way for dictatorships – the utopia of a society based on the New Man giving rise to the totalitarian regimes of Hitler and Stalin – inevitably appealed to him. 

The black humour of dramatic momentsThe composer has respected the dramatist’s non-linear construction which, in the spirit of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, offers a succession of dramatic moments, with the particularity that, as opposed to works by Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky, the tale does not denounce, accuse or bear judgment. In the spirit of Pushkin’s verse novel, no fewer than thirty-seven characters (!) appear in the ten scenes, two taken from the first “Germania”, the eight others from Germania 3. Several “star” roles reoccur in this maelstrom tinged with black humour, in particular Hitler and Stalin, as two abject accomplices hungry for power – but what is it for? Entrusted to a fine oktavist bass from the purest Russian tradition, the character of Stalin is expressed with an exaggerated slowness and leaden rigidity; as for Hitler, he is an obviously Wagnerian tenor, fluttering around the higher registers. This dark, furious, subversive score, by a musician who is a past master in the art of satire, as conducted by the similarly minded John Fulljames (Sancta Susanna, Von heute auf morgen and Benjamin, Dernière Nuit in Lyon), should echo clearly with the devastating changes in the world today. Franck Mallet 

GerMANIA Opera 2018 Libretto by the composer after Germania Death in Berlin and Germania 3, Ghosts at Dead Man by Heiner Müller In German and Russian

Conductor: Alejo Pérez Director: John Fulljames Sets: Magda Willi Lighting: Erich Schneider Video: Will Duke Tenor: Michael Gniffke Baritone: Ville Rusanen Counter-Tenor: Andrew Watts Bass-baritone: Piotr Micinski Bass: Gennady Bezzubenkov Soprano: Sophie Desmars Soprano: Elena Vassilieva Alto: Mairam Sokolova Tenor: Karl Laquit Orchestra, Choruses and Studio of the Opéra de Lyon

World premiere, commissioned by the Opéra de Lyon New production

May 2018 Saturday 19th 8 pm Monday 21st 4 pm Wednesday 23rd 8 pm Saturday 26th 8 pm Monday 28th 8 pm Wednesday 30th 8 pm June 2018 Monday 4th 8 pm

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1813

DON GIOVANNIWOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

Da Ponte’s Don Giovanni was inspired by Tirso de Molina, but also the librettist Bertati who, in 1787, a few months before Mozart, offered a Don Giovanni o sia il Convitato di pietra, with music by Giuseppe Gazzaniga. After a triumphant premiere in Prague in 1787, Don Giovanni was revived in Vienna in 1788, with less success and more music: it is the Viennese version which is most often performed today.

A new Don GiovanniAfter recent productions of Idomeneo and Die Entführung aus dem Serail, the Opéra de Lyon is returning to Don Giovanni, an essential part of any programme, with a new production conducted by Stefano Montanari, now well known to audiences in Lyon, where he has conducted Mozart, Bizet and Rossini, in a production by David Marton, another regular of the Lyon stage

The productionDavid Marton will be directing this “opera of operas”, as Wagner put it. In Lyon, we owe him a Capriccio by Strauss, Gluck’s Orphée and Eurydice, and a Damnation de Faust which made waves during the last season. It is thus a poet of the stage who will be taking on this myth. His 2009 adaptation of Don Giovanni “Don Giovanni. Keine Pause”1 (Don Giovanni. No Break) won him the title of “opera director of the year”, awarded by the specialist magazine “Deutsche Bühne”2. In it, he analysed a hunt for interchangeable, consumable women, against time, continuing ceaselessly, without a break, breathlessly. There is no doubt that, as with his work on Gluck and Berlioz, we will be in for an innovative vision, from this young Hungarian director, based in Berlin, who is one of the modern stage’s most interesting figures

The castIt will feature young singers for the heroes, whose youth means that they live and breathe desire(s). Don Giovanni will be the young (not yet thirty) Canadian Philippe Sly, who was the Don Giovanni of Aix-en-Provence in 2017, and one of the most promising voices of the moment, Donna Anna will be Eleonora Buratto, who is highly sought-after for major operatic soprano roles, while Ottavio will be a young singer from Lyon, Julien Behr, who has successfully appeared here in Idomeneo. When it comes to Elvire, she will be entrusted to Antoinette Dennefeld, who has triumphed in Lyon as Isolier (Le Comte Ory) and Cunégonde in Le Roi Carotte. Stefano Montanari has accustomed us to seeing him put his mark on the operas he directs, in a genuine impulse born of his familiarity with the baroque repertoire; he has already conducted Don Giovanni several times, and he will doubtlessly mark it with his acute precision, but also with the urgency we expect from Mozart’s hero.Guy Cherqui

1 For small stages in Hamburg and Munich.

2 “The German Stage”

Don Giovanni Dramma giocoso in two acts Libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte In Italian

Conductor: Stefano Montanari Director: David Marton Staging assistant: Barbara Engelhardt Lighting: Henning Streck Sound design: Daniel Dorsch Don Ottavio: Julien Behr Elvira: Antoinette Dennefeld Don Giovanni: Philippe Sly Donna Anna: Eleonora Buratto Leporello: Kyle Ketelsen Masetto: Christian Oldenburg Orchestra and Choruses of the Opéra de Lyon

New production

June 2018 Monday 25th 8 pm Wednesday 27th 8 pm Friday 29th 8 pm July 2018 Sunday 1st 4 pm Tuesday 3rd 8 pm Thursday 5th 8 pm Saturday 7th 8 pm Monday 9th 8 pm Wednesday 11th 8 pm

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1814

THE D IARY OF ONE WHO D ISAPPEAREDLEOŠ JANÁ EK

An impossible love that takes on a universal dimension In 1916, Lidové noviny published a verse diary telling the story of a young man who falls head over heels in love with a gypsy girl, Zofka, and abandons everything to follow her. Janáček did not fail to make the connection with his own existence, dominated by his impossible love for a faraway loved one, Kamilia Stösslová. So, he decided to set the text to music for tenor, mezzo and piano, and explained to his muse: “This dark gypsy was you. That’s why this piece is so moving.” The young man leaves his country, becoming a stranger to it, just like refugees forced to leave in order to survive. He puts his very identity into doubt. Just like Janáček, who remained married, while living in the isolation of an impossible love. The work thus gains an incontestable dramatic resonance. Following several other directors, Ivo Van Hove, already responsible at the Opéra de Lyon for a gripping Macbeth by Verdi, has thus chosen to stage it along with the Flemish group, Muziektheater Transparent.

“Directing The Diary of One Who Disappeared”, he explains, “seemed very natural to me, so much its spoken, realistic, almost mongrel language is quite naturally that of a theatre of life, and so can be interpreted just as easily by an actor as a singer. But this tale still needed to be given a context. As ever, I of course started with the score, but I also soaked up the intense correspondence between Janáček and Kamilia Stösslova. I also wanted to add a contemporary touch, which will be provided by the texts (Moravian poems and some more modern extracts) which Annelies Van Parys will set to music.” This composer, who is part of the first generation of award winners at the Tactus contemporary music seminar, is greatly attached to the voice, and occupies an important place in a new generation of Flemish composers.

For Ivo Van Hove, the show will thus find its full dimension in the accumulation of various references, leading to a work about alienation and identity: “It is the assemblage of these very varied component parts which will give a modern resonance to a story which is deeply marked by the European spirit of the last century.” Janáček’s music is highly suited for this, given that it expresses at the same time a typically Moravian existence in the way it sticks to a spoken language, and a more universal dimension which provides this tale with the scope of an intimate epic.Serge Martin

OTHER VENUES

Zápisník zmizelého Cycle of 22 songs for tenor and alto, three female voices and piano, 1921 Poems by Josef Kalda

Director: Ivo van Hove Scenography: Jan Versweyveld Stage Assistant: Krystian Lada Costumes: An D’Huys Acteur: Hugo Koolschijn Mezzo-soprano: Silvia de La Muela Tenor: Ed Lyon Pianiste: Lada Valesova

Production by the Muziektheater Transparant Coproduction Klarafestival, De Munt/La Monnaie, Kaaitheater, Toneelgroep Amsterdam, Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Opera Days Rotterdam and Poznan Grand Theatre As a copresentation with the Théâtre National Populaire

At the Théâtre National Populaire, Villeurbanne

February 2018 Thursday 8th 8 pm Friday 9th 8 pm Saturday 10th 8 pm Sunday 11th 3.30 pm

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1815

OTHER VENUES

THE SOLD IER ’S TALEIGOR STRAVINSKY

Exiled in Switzerland after the Russian Revolution, the composer was in a financially precarious situation. With the help of Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz, who was asked to write the libretto, Stravinsky composed The Soldier’s Tale.

A Faustian storyAs he returns home, while playing the violin, a poor Soldier encounters the Devil, who offers to swap his instrument for a magical book which will make his fortune. As the money he has amassed has not made him happy, the Soldier decides to get his violin back, come what may, and ends up robbing the Devil. But his disobedience condemns him to hell. 

A demanding scoreWritten for a narrator who interprets three characters (the Soldier, the Devil and the Princess), the work is focused around seven musicians. Stravinsky wanted each instrument to act as a soloist. While the violin, as the tale’s central motif, symbolises the Soldier’s soul, the drums stand for the Devil. By mingling music, theatre and dance, The Soldier’s Tale participated in the birth of the 20th-century stage musical. 

Journeying with the imaginary Known for his powerful aesthetic approach and his virtuoso use of video, Alex Ollé from the Catalan group La Fura dels Baus (Alceste, The Flying Dutchman, Tristan and Isolde, Erwartung… ) has adopted this work only to magnify it. His production, at the service of the score and the libretto, will bring out the initiatory dimension of the tale. Blandine Dauvilaire 

LA BELLA DORMENTE NEL BOSCOOTTORINO RESP IGHI

Known above all for his symphonic diptych Fountains of Rome (1916) and Pines of Rome (1924), Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936) was, like all Italian composers, above all operatic. However, the nine operas and five ballets by this musician, remain rather unknown, with the exception of La Fiamma (The Flame, 1934), above all, and La Boutique fantasque (1919), after Rossini, written for Les Ballets Russes, in second place.

But Sleeping Beauty (la bella dormente nel bosco, 1923), a musical tale in three acts, after Charles Perrault, which has so many seductive qualities, had never crossed the Alps before being staged in Strasbourg by the Opéra Studio, Colmar, in January 2015. And yet, its charms are as potent as that of Humperdinck’s Hänsel and Gretel. Written at a distance of thirty years, these two operas for children of all ages both owe an equal debt to Richard Wagner. It seems quite clear that the awakening of the Sleeping Beauty by a Prince Charming is an allusion to Brünnhilde and Siegfried in the finale of the second day of Der Ring des Nibelung. In this Italian composer, there is also an incredible closeness to the orchestra and the flamboyance of Puccini. This new production, directed by the Czech Barbora Horáková Joly, is being performed by the young artists of the Studio of the Opéra de Lyon. Bruno Serrou

La bella dormente nel bosco Opera in three acts, 1922 Libretto by G. Bistolfi, after Charles Perrault. In Italian

Conductor: Philippe Forget Director: Barbora Horakova Sets: Eva Maria van Acker Lighting: Michael Bauer Orchestra and Studio of the Opéra de Lyon

New production

At the Théâtre de la Croix-Rousse

February 2018 Tuesday 6th 7.30 pm Wednesday 7th 7.30 pm Friday 9th 7.30 pm Saturday 10th 7.30 pm Sunday 11th 5 pm Tuesday 13th 7.30 pm Wednesday 14th 7.30 pm

Histoire du soldat Read, played and danced in two parts, 1918 Libretto by Charles Ferdinand Ramuz In French

Director: Alex Ollé (La Fura dels Baus) Sets and costumes: Lluc Castells The Devil, the Soldier and the Princess: spoken role Orchestra of the Opéra de Lyon

As a coproduction with La Fura dels Baus In partnership with Le Radiant-Bellevue

At Le Radiant-Bellevue

April 2018 Wednesday 25th 7.30 pm Thursday 26th 7.30 pm Friday 27th 7.30 pm Saturday 28th 7.30 pm Sunday 29th 4 pm

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1816

DANIELE RUST IONI NEW PERMANENT CONDUCTOR OF THE OPÉRA DE LYON

The appointment of the 34-year-old Milanese conductor, Daniele Rustioni, as the Opéra de Lyon’s Music Director from the beginning of the 2017/18 season marks a subtle change of emphasis for France’s most important regional company. Rustioni’s career to date has taken a far from expected path, for an Italian maestro anyway.

He spent two years as a young artist on the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden’s Jette-Parker programme, one of the few conductors to do so: his rise since leaving in 2009 has been meteoric, if not without pitfalls. Only two years after leaving, he was already in charge musically of a new production of Madama Butterfly shortly followed by his involvement in Welsh National Opera’s Tudor Queens project during which he conducts Donizetti’s Anna Bolena and Roberto Devereuz to enthusiastic acclaim in the British press, which, unusually for an opera conductor, has led to engagements with some of Britain’s leading orchestras, and a high-profile recording of Bellini’s rarely performed “opera-comique-style” semiseria, Adelson e Salvini which appeared earlier this year on the London-based label, Opera Rara.

That Rustioni comes from Milan – what we might call the “capital” of the operatic world – is clearly significant. He sang one of the Three Boys in Riccardo Muti’s La Scala performances of La Flute Enchantée although he declares he was not destined for a musical career. “In my family, I am the only musician. I am the black sheep!” he joked, when we met in London earlier this year.

My enthusiasm for Rustioni’s youthful dynamism took me to the Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari, Southern Italy, where his all-too-brief term music director climaxed in performances of Verdi’s Falstaff, in the last opera production of Luca Ronconi, with a cast almost entirely comprising Italian singers. An outstanding achievement in Verdi’s most complex opera to which sign-posted Rustioni’s commitment to ensemble values and a new kind of approach in Italy to the presentation of opera as theatre: a pared-down response to Verdi’s rumbustious comedy, focusing not on “Elizabethan” scenery, but on the interaction of characters.

Rustioni’s sojourne in Bari was not to last, mainly because of political interference with his artistic programming, but by this time he was already in demand in Italy and

abroad, conducting Rigoletto and La Traviata in the theatre La Fenice in Venice, where they were created, Il Trittico in Rome, and a new production of Un ballo in Maschera at La Scala.

To date, his biggest successes have been in Italian repertoire, but that has changed since his first appearance at the Opéra de Lyon in Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra in 2014. Since then he has tackled both French – Halévy’s La Juïve – and Austrian – Johann Strauss’s Une Nuit à Venise – and his opening show as Music Director is no less of a surprise: Britten’s War Requiem in a staging by Yoshi Oida.

“I’m proud to say that it is part of my British “luggage” acquired during the five years I was in London, 2006 to 2011. I was studying at the Royal Academy of Music and all the time I was travelling to Manchester to work as Gianandrea Noseda’s assistant at rehearsals of the War Requiem. He is my “godfather”. I feel I have benefited from the British system, in which I started really without any connections. It was a fresh start for me after leaving Covent Garden, I got engagements with Opera North – both Butterfly and concerts – and Welsh National Opera and now I have upcoming dates with the CBSO and LPO. I could never had done this in Italy in such a short time.” His second Lyon project is even more exciting. A complete French language production of Verdi’s Don Carlos, a huge undertaking for any opera house, but surely an essential one for the Opéra de Lyon.

“Yes, it’s Don Carlossssss, “en français” , the five-act version in March 2018. I am so happy to do it in French, which I think is superior to the Italian translation. I have found another musical ‘family’ in Lyon. I already have a close relationship with Serge Dorny and we want to build bridges between the conductor and the director, very much in the sense of a real musical and theatrical collaboration. In the golden age of opera there were lots of rehearsals but nowadays often the conductor arrives after most of the stage rehearsals and I don’t like that.”Rustioni’s musical direction could prove the beginning of a new “golden age” in Lyon. The prospects are hugely inviting.

Hugh Canning, chief classical music critic of The Sunday Times in London. 

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1817

MUSSORGSKI / TCHAIKOVSKIDaniele Rustioni, conductor Ekaterina Scherbachenko, soprano Orchestra of the Opera de Lyon Modest Mussorgski: Night on Bald Mountain / Songs and Dances of Death (orchestration by Dimitri Shostakovich) Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovski: Symphony n° 5 in E Minor, opus 64 Sunday 24th September 2017, 4 pm

HAENDEL / PORPORA Stefano Montanari, Orchestra of the Opera de Lyon, I Bollenti Spiriti Lawrence Zazzo, countertenor Francesco Maria Veracini, Attilio Ariosti, Franceso Geminiani, Georg Friedrich Händel, Nicola Porpora, … Sunday 26th November 2017, 4 pm Tuesday 28th November 2017, 7.30 pm – Gala Concert

REC I TAL Stéphane Degout, baryton Simon Lepper, piano Gabriel Fauré : Aurore, opus 39/1 / Poèmes d’un jour : Rencontre ; Toujours; Adieu, opus 21 / Automne, opus 18/3 Johannes Brahms : Die Mainacht, opus 43 / Auf dem Kirchhofe, opus 105 / Feldeinsamkeit, opus 86 / Alte Liebe, opus 72 / O kühler Wald, opus 72 / Nicht mehr zu dir zu gehen, opus 32 / Willst du dass ich geh?, opus 71 Robert Schumann : Zwölf Gedichte, opus 35 Sunday 3 rd December 2017, 4 pm

CHRISTMAS SONGSKarine Locatelli, Choirmistress Children’s Choir of the Opéra de Lyon Christmas aroundthe world: France, the UK, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Armenia, Israel, Egypt, Finland… Christmas through different cultures: from We Wish you a Merry Christmas to Stille Nacht while taking traditional songs in Latin, Armenian, Egyptian, Basque… With airs by Bernstein, Sibelius, Martinu, Bach, Brahms, Britten, Purcell, or Bartók… At the Saint-Bonaventure Church, Lyon 2e Sunday 10th December 2017, 4 pm Tuesday 12th December 2017, 8 pm

NEW YEAR’S CONCERTMartyn Brabbins, conductor Orchestra of the Opera de Lyon Opera Extracts. Sunday 31st December 2017, 8 pm

BEETHOVEN / RAVEL Daniele Rustioni, Conductor Orchestra of the Opera de Lyon Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony n° 7 in A, opus 92 Maurice Ravel: Ma mère l’Oye Francis Poulenc: Histoire de Babar Sunday 4th February 2018, 4 pm

SERENADES FOR STR ING ORCHESTRA Piotr Ilitch Tchaïkovski, Anton Arenski, Antonín Dvo�ák At the théâtre de la Renaissance, Oullins Tuesday 24th April, 8 pm

MOZART REC ITALStefano Montanari, violon Alexander Lonquich, piano Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Sonatas for violin and piano: Sonata in G Major, K 301 ; Sonata in B-flat major, K 454 and Sonata in B-flat Major, K 378 Sunday 29th April 2018, 4 pm

BACH / HAYDN REC ITAL Christian Zacharias, piano Joseph Haydn: Sonata en G major, Sonata in A-flat Major and Sonata in E-flat Major Johann Sebastian Bach: Suite française in G Minor, Partita in A Minor Sunday 6th May 2018, 4 pm

CONCERT CALENDAR

CHAMBER MUSIC CONCERTS6 programmes on saturdays and sundays, one hour of music with the musicians from the Orchestra of the Opera de Lyon at the Dance Rehearsal Studio.

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1818

DANCEJI�Í KYL IÁNAt the Subsistances / 15th – 20th September 2017 Guest company 27th, 28th, 29th September EAST SHADOW / Choreography, concept and scenography: Ji�í Kylián / Music: Franz Schubert, Piano sonata D959 Andantino, Tomoko Mukaiyama Beginning and East Shadow after Charlemagne Palestine and Somei Satoh / Costumes: Joke Visser / Lighting: Loes Schakenbos / Video: Jason Akira Somma / Text: Neither, Samuel Beckett / Voices: Ji�í Kylián et Olivier Kruithof / Dancers: Sabine Kupferberg and Gary Chryst FREE FALL / Exhibition open from Friday 15th to Friday 29th September 2017 / Photographic study, images and concept: Ji�í Kylián / Performer: Sabine Kupferberg / Music: Johann Sebastian Bach, Kunst der Fuge, Kontrapunktus 1 / Lumières: Loes Schakenbos

J IR Í KYL IÁN / JOHAN INGER 19th – 25th April 2018 / Ballet of the Opéra de Lyon CRÉATION / Choreography and sets: Johan Inger Costumes: Catherine Voeffray / Lighting: Tom Visser PETITE MORT / Choreography and sets: Ji�í Kylián Music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Adagio from Piano Concerto n°23 in A Major, K.488, Andante from Piano Concerto n°21 in C Major, K.467 / Costumes: Joke Visser / Lighting: Joop Caboort NO MORE PLAY / Choreography, sets and costumes: Ji�í Kylián Music: Anton Webern, Five pieces for string quartet, opus 5 / Lighting: Ji�í Kylián, Joop Caboort et Kees Tjebbes

Honour to Ji�í Kylián, associate artistJiří Kylián will be adopting the role of a director with East Shadow, an adaptation of Neither, the opera by Morton Feldman and Samuel Beckett, from which he will be keeping only the libretto, attaching to it Schubert’s Piano Sonata D959I, as well as two exceptional interpreters, his muse Sabine Kupferberg and the former dancer and choreographer Gary Chryst. This is a piece which he created in 2013, after an invitation from the Aichi Triennale in Nagoya, as part of a reflexion about the catastrophe of Fukushima. To be discovered at Les Subsistances, alongside an intriguing photographic installation, a discipline to which Kylian is now devoting himself, and whose linchpin is once again Sabine Kupferberg. Right at the end of the season, the Czech choreographer will be offering a 12th piece to the Ballet, No more Play, written for NDT I in 1988, then revived in 1996. This is a razor-sharp quintet, in which already can be seen the enveloping roles of Petite Mort, also on the programme of an evening placed under the sign of beauty. This programme will reveal a creation for the Ballet by Johan Inger, whom audiences were able to discover in April 2017 with his piece I New Then.

WILL IAM FORSYTHE TR ISHA BROWN JÉRÔME BEL14th – 20th September 2017 / Ballet of the Opéra de Lyon SECOND DETAIL / Choreography, scenography and lighting: William Forsythe / Music: Thom Willems © Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Limited / Costumes: William Forsythe et Issey Miyake SET AND RESET/RESET / Choreography: Trisha Brown after an original idea by Robert Rauschenberg / Music: Laurie Anderson / Scenography: Michael Meyers / Costumes: Adeline André / Lighting: Patrice Besombes CRÉATION 2017 / Conception: Jérôme Bel / Assistant: Cédric Andrieux

Dance, dance on every frontJérôme Bel is opening this season’s ball. On this occasion, the enfant terrible of French dance will be answering to our invitation with a “carte blanche” made up of two pieces from the repertory, which he has chosen, and a proposition that chimes with these choices. So it is that the spectators will have the great pleasure to see (again) William Forsythe’s Second Detail and Set and Reset/Reset by the emblematic Trisha Brown in a single evening. Premiered in 1983, Set and Reset is a Brownian manifesto which has marked the history of contemporary dance, in the USA, France and elsewhere. After entering the Ballet’s repertory, in a special version remodelled for the company in 2005, and with a scenography which was redesigned for the occasion by Michael Meyers, William Forsythe’s Second Detail is a total deconstruction of the academic vocabulary, with its minimal purity and acidic soundtrack.

TOURSBALLET OF THE OPERA DE LYON

THREE GRAND FUGUES (LUCINDA CHILDS, ANNE TERESA DE KEERSMAEKER AND MAGUY MARIN) – Festival Beethoven, Bonn 26th and 27th Sept 2017 – Festival Reggio Emilia Danza, Italy 30th Sept 2017 – Festival Dance Umbrella, Sadler’s Wells, London 19th and 20th Oct 2017 – deSingel, Antwerp, from 8th to 10th Feb 2018 – L’Archipel, Perpignan, 14th and 15th Feb 2018

SECOND DETAIL (WILLIAM FORSYTHE) DANCE (LUCINDA CHILDS) – Charleroi Danses, Belgium,12th Oct 2017

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ROLAND PET I T18th – 24th November 2017 / Ballet of the Opéra de Lyon L’ARLÉSIENNE / Choreography: Roland Petit / Music: Georges Bizet, L’Arlésienne / Libretto: Roland Petit, after Alphonse Daudet / Sets: René Allio / Costumes: Christine Laurent / Lighting: Jean-Michel Désiré CARMEN / Choreography: Roland Petit / Music: Georges Bizet, Carmen / Libretto: Roland Petit, after Alphonse Daudet Sets and costumes: Antoni Clavé / Lighting: Jean-Michel Désiré

Honour to historyAfter the indisputable pleasure of (re)seeing Roland Petit’s Carmen and his Arlésienne, which entered the repertory in November 2015, Yorgos Loukos has not resisted the temptation of reviving them for this season. It has to be said that these two (almost) forgotten pieces are not lacking in charm. They are reflections of their times. Carmen, premiered in 1949, attracted just as much scandal as it did enthusiasm, thanks to its daring postures and pointes en dedans. It opened the path to other experiments which were to sow the first seeds of French contemporary dance. L’Arlésienne, which premiered 25 years later, reflected the quintessence of Roland Petit’s “style”, a subtle mixture of abstraction and narration which delights lovers of technical prowess and choreographic fantasies. 

RUSSEL MAL IPHANT BENJAMIN MILLEP IED WILL IAM FORSYTHE1th – 4th February 2018 / At Le Radiant-Bellevue Ballet of the Opéra de Lyon CRITICAL MASS / Choreography: Russell Maliphant Lighting: Michael Hulls / Music: Andy Cowton, Richard English / Lighting: Michael Hulls SARABANDE / Choreography: Benjamin Millepied Music: Johann Sebastian Bach, extracts from Partita for solo flute and Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin / Costumes: Paul Cox Lighting: Roderick Murray STEPTEXT / Choreography, scenography, costumes and lighting: William Forsythe / Music: Johann Sebastian Bach, Chaconne from Sonata n°4 for solo violin in D Minor

Honour to menA composite programme is bringing together William Forsythe, Russell Maliphant and Benjamin Millepied in February, with a series of light forms exclusively danced by men, with an exceptional female presence in Steptext. Steptext is a sort of manifesto for an immaculate deconstruction of the classic vocabulary, in which bodies are twisted and extended as if they were extremely taut lines, and in which the choreographer delves into the sound codes of J.S. Bach’s Chaconne in D Minor. Meanwhile, Russell Maliphant’s Critical Mass, a sublime male duet, is more attached to a study of doubles, mirrors, otherness, in a sensually virile confrontation that sculpts space and gives the air a particular density, while remaining firmly fixed to the ground. On the contrary, Benjamin Millepied’s Sarabande seeks an elevation while revisiting the classical, academic, vocabulary in its own impulsive way, so as to extract from it its musicality, as though with a modern Balanchine. Gallia Valette-Pilenko 

SECOND DETAIL (WILLIAM FORSYTHE) SET AND RESET / RESET (TRISHA BROWN) CREATION (JÉRÔME BEL) – Festival d’Automne, Paris, Maison des Arts de Créteil and Théâtre de la Ville off-site, from 29th Nov to 2nd Dec 2017

SECOND DETAIL (WILLIAM FORSYTHE) TURNING MOTION SICKNESS VERSION (ALESSANDRO SCIARRONI) – Festival December Dance,Bruges, Belgium, 9th Dec 2017

CENDRILLON (MAGUY MARIN) – Royal Opera House Muscat, Oman from 21st to 23rd Dec 2017

CRITICAL MASS (RUSSEL MALIPHANT) SARABANDE (BENJAMIN MILLEPIED) STEPTEXT (WILLIAM FORSYTHE) – Espace Cardin – Théâtre de la Ville, Paris from 2nd to 12th May 2018 – L'Espace des Arts, Chalon-sur-Saône, 21st Feb 2018

SARABANDE (BENJAMIN MILLEPIED) PETITE MORT ET NO MORE PLAY (JI�Í KYLIÁN) – Théâtre des Gémeaux, Sceaux, from 16th to 18th May 2018

SECOND DETAIL (WILLIAM FORSYTHE) PETITE MORT ET NO MORE PLAY (JI�Í KYLIÁN) – La Comédie de Valence from, 24th to 26th May 2018

SECOND DETAIL (WILLIAM FORSYTHE) SARABANDE (BENJAMIN MILLEPIED) PETITE MORT (JI�Í KYLIÁN) – MC2 Grenoble from 29th to 31st May 2018

JI�Í KYLIÁN PROGRAMME – Japanese tour from 22nd June to 1st July 2018

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HUMAN RESOURCES 1

F INANCIAL MEANS 2

THE OPERA IN F IGURES

PUBL IC F INANCE 29 998 306 €

City of Lyon 60,8 %

Greater Lyon 9,8 %

State 19,7 %

Region 9,7 %

OVERALL BUDGET 37 486 682 €

City of Lyon 48,6 %

Region 7,7 %

Greater Lyon 7,9 %

Own income 20 %

State 15,8 %

Category Permanent staff Full-time equivalent staff *

Full-time equivalent extra staff

Full-time equivalent total

Artistic personnel 165 152,95 72,83 225,78including: – Orchestra 62 56,98 12,68 69,66

– Chorus 35 32,84 17,33 50,17– Ballet 32 31,89 0,94 32,83– Other Artists 3 2,00 33,78 28,04– Management 33 29,23 8,10 45,08

Administration 26 26,06 1,02 27,08Communication 55 34,83 3,40 38,23Technical 108 99,47 55,87 155,33

TOTAL 354 313,30 133,12 446,42

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OCCUPANCY RATES 2

Operas 90 % Ballets 89 % Concerts 90 % Récital 84 %

THE BUDGET 2

RECE IPTSOwn resources 7 406 976 € Ticket sales 3 431 211 € Tour revenues 1 659 895 € Other income 2 315 870 € Conventional subsidies 18 379 974 € State 5 919 507 € City of Lyon 6 615 690 € Greater Lyon 2 947 778 € Region 2 897 000 € Other public assistance 11 699 731 € Provision of personnel / City of Lyon 10 288 754 € Personnel subsidy / City of Lyon 1 329 577 € Personnel subsidy / City of Lyon 81 400 € TOTAL RECEIPTS 37 486 682 €

EXPENDITUREProduction costs 12 327 355 €Permanent personnel 16 143 875 €Occasional and extra personnel 2 259 624 €Operating costs 2 961 465 €Exploitation of buildings 3 570 967 €Depreciations and funds 527 465 €Transfer of reserves -304 069 €

TOTAL EXPENDITURE 37 486 682 € 1 Figures based on the year 2015 2 Figures based on the year 2016 * Full-time equivalent

FREQUENTAT ION AND ACT IV ITY 2

MAIN THEATRE Performances Spectators Operas 58 55 682 Ballets 20 16 864 Concerts 9 8 534 Recitals 3 2 768 TOTAL 90 83 848

CHAMBER MUSIC Performances Spectators 8 774

SCHOOLS Performances Spectators 13 7 510

AMPHITHEATRE Performances Spectators 129 22 786

PER ISTYLE Performances Spectators 74 32 930

OTHER S I TES IN LYON Performances Spectators 19 9 188

TOURS Performances Spectators Opera 2 1 617 Ballets 43 33 387 Concerts 3 4 073 Chamber music 2 424 + schools TOTAL 50 39 501

TOTAL 383 196 537

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CULTURAL AND EDUCATIVE ACTIONSEach season, the cultural development pole pilots around twenty different projects, involving over 250 partners and more than 34,000 participants. The Opéra de Lyon thus acts on a daily basis in the heart of its social environment. Cultural activities and artistic and educational projects are set in a variety of forms: the academic season of the Opera, participatory creative projects, and discovery of the Opera and its professions. They concern the inhabitants of priority neighbourhoods, including children or adults who are handicapped, seeking social insertion, are hospitalised or in prison. Chiming with the Opera’s artistic identity, projects aimed at openness and accessibility are always multi-disciplinary and linked to contemporary creation; they mobilise the opera “house” in its entirety. There are two flagship projects for the 2017–18 season:

Duos of tradesThis participatory, political and poetic project is based on the conviction that it is vital to educate future generations about the possibility to see beauty and art in everyday existence, at the heart of our lives and town. Drafted and directed by the composer and musician Nicolas Bianco, “Duos of Trades” associates 340 junior high-school students from the Plateau des Minguettes, employees of Greater Lyon, adults in social insertion and artists from the Opéra de Lyon. The departure point is the creation of “Duos” in situ between trades people (a butcher, hairdresser, mason…) and artists from the Opera (a double-bassist, harpist, singer…) during which each will interpret their “score”. Filmed and photographed, these duos stand as pretexts for weekly workshops with junior high-school students and adults following a social insertion programme. On this inspirational basis, they then participate with Nicolas Bianco and his artistic team in the creation and performance of a show which will be presented in the Opera’s Amphitheatre in June 2018.

Operatic and DigitalThe development of technologies and their influence on our relationship with the world is leading artists to adopt digital tools so as to create a contemporary language. How to approach pieces in the operatic repertory via the prism of the digital arts? Since the beginning of the school year in 2016, the Opéra de Lyon, in association with the artistic group Le Matrice, has been conducting a participatory project aimed at teenagers, as part of a school programme for 14/15 year-olds, or during training sessions during the holidays for 12/15 year-olds. The six artists in the group - Pascal Caparros (image), Benjamin Nid (musician, sound-painter, creator of interfaces and control of electronic objects), Enrico Fiocco (engineer, sound designer and composer), Audrey Pévrier (vocalist, choir leader and violinist), Sébastien Eglème (sound-setter, violinist and developer), Laure Tejeda (song and sound poetry) initiate them into the operatic and digital arts through practice: construction of sound set-ups (everyday objects, percussion/motors, sound recordings from the environment…), images (shadow play, microscopic cameras, video feedback, filming) and discovery of the particular tools of digital creation (software, peripheral devices, embedded electronics). By playing with the voice, sounds, images and light, the participants discover how artists transform Wiimotes, kinects and computers into creative tools.

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SPONSORS & PARTNERSThe Opéra de Lyon warmly thanks its sponsors and partners for their trust and generosity. For many years, both enterprises and foundations have shared our project and our values. Their support and commitment are essential for carrying out the Opéra de Lyon’s project to attain artistic excellence while practising an openness to all publics: artistic creation, training young talents in the Children’s Choir and the Opera’s Studio, cultural and educational actions in schools and for socially-challenged audiences, accessibility to the handicapped, openness to the young, open-house days, video-transmission of performances in several towns in the region… Contact: Judith Moreau Sponsors – Enterprises Department Manager Tel: +33 (0)4 72 00 47 92 mecenat@opera-lyon.com

MEDIA PARTNERS

SPONSORS

Founding sponsor

Skills sponsors

Project sponsors

OPENING DATES FOR RESERVAT IONSSeason-tickets as of 10th May 2017 at noon Unit ticket sales as of 7th June 2017 at noon.

AT THE OPERA’S T ICKET OFF ICEFrom noon to 7pm, Tuesday to Saturday (and on Mondays on performance days). One hour before each performance (for tickets to that day’s performance only) The off-premises box offices are open 1h before each performance.

+33 (0 )4 69 85 54 54From noon to 7pm, Tuesday to Saturday (and on Mondays on performance days).

AT WWW.OPERA-LYON.COM

General Director: Serge Dorny Communication media: Pierre Collet Tel. +33 (0)1 40 26 35 26 collet@aec-imagine.com

Contact: Sophie Jarjat Press service Tel. +33 (0)4 72 00 45 82 sjarjat@opera-lyon.com

Opéra de Lyon Place de la Comédie – BP 1219 69 203 Lyon cedex 01 – France

THE OPERA IN PRACT ICE BUYING T ICKETS TO PERFORMANCES