2023 INTERNATIONAL OPERA AWARDS

The Aix-en-Provence Festival named best Opera Festival at the 2023 Opera Awards Ceremony in Warsaw.

IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

He engulfs his Listeners in Sound. The conductor Maxime Pascal wants new music to be heard.

By Joshua Barone, from Aix-en-Provence

August 17, 2023

Full article here

CONCERT PERFORMANCES OF OPERAS, BEGINNING 15 JULY 2023

© Benjamin Ealovega, © Victor Santiago, © Blandine Soulage

Three operas in concert version are being performed as part of this anniversary edition of the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence.

On Saturday 15 July, Meyerbeer’s Le Prophète, conducted by Sir Mark Elder, takes you into the world of grand opera, a spectacular, large-scale genre that transformed the Opéra de Paris into the leading stage in Europe. Come and listen to top performers – John Osborn, Elizabeth DeShong and Mané Galoyan – accompanied by an exceptional orchestra and masterful singers – the London Symphony Orchestra and the Chorus of the Opéra de Lyon.
On Monday 17 July, tenor Arsen Soghomonyan takes on the role of Otello for this exceptional performance, alongside Maria Agresta and Ludovic Tézier, and with the forces of the Teatro di San Carlo Choir and Orchestra of Naples conducted by Michele Mariotti.
On Monday 24 July, the Festival concludes its 75th edition with a performance of the very rare Lucie de Lammermoor conducted by Daniele Rustioni and performed by the Opéra de Lyon and the finest representatives of the new generation: Pene Pati, Florian Sempey and Nicolas Courjal. Lisette Oropesa, the preeminent performer in the role of Lucia today, makes her debut in this French version, and at the Festival d’Aix as well.

8 JULY 2023 — PREMIERE OF BALLETS RUSSES

Three scandal-scented masterpieces of modernism, Igor Stravinsky's The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring, resonate in the striking setting of the Stadium de Vitrolles, reopened last season by the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence. Conducted by the prodigious Klaus Mäkelä, the Orchestre de Paris’ orchestra sections compete in commitment and virtuosity to bring to life in a single evening the infinite variety of rhythms and colours of these spectacular scores. Filmmakers Rebecca Zlotowski, Bertrand Mandico and Evangelia Kranioti revisit each fable through their own free reveries. The three films in this original performance are parables in which art, the human condition and nature grapple with the idea of excess, profoundly renewing the relationship between music and image. An innovative technical device makes each performance unique: the process of temporal adjustment between image and sound takes place live. It's a show that's more than live, a total art work form that echoes the fascination we've always felt for these hard-hitting compositions.

7 JULY 2023 — PREMIERE OF WOZZECK

A terrible crime that opens the door to unprecedented musical modernity: that's the story of Wozzeck, an opera of powerful dramatic intensity composed by Alban Berg at the beginning of the 20th century. After The Magic Flute in 2014 and The Rake's Progress in 2017, Simon McBurney returns to the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence to denounce the exploitation of man by man as revealed in all its horror by the butchery of the First World War. An unvarnished confrontation with the violence and cumulative oppressions – political, moral and economic – born of modernity, the work underlines the extent to which the misery of the most exploited is, even today, more topical than ever. By choosing to blur the boundaries between reality and what exists only in the head of the title role, Simon McBurney, alongside Sir Simon Rattle at the helm of the London Symphony Orchestra, gives a new dimension to this realistic, raw and deeply expressive composition.

L’artiste britannique Simon McBurney révèle la noirceur de l’opéra d’Alban Berg dans une mise en scène époustouflante. Un temps fort du Festival.
— LE TEMPS.CH

La perfección en ópera sí existe, aunque raras veces se disfrute, y así acaba de demostrarlo el gran director británico con una puesta en escena virtualmente perfecta de la desasosegante obra maestra de Alban Berg
— EL PAÍS

George Benjamins grandiose Oper "Picture a day like this" und Simon McBurneys artistischer "Wozzeck": Die Opernfestspiele in Aix-en-Provence zeigen Wundervolles.
— DIE SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG

Simon McBurney offre au chef-d'œuvre de Berg une magistrale entrée au répertoire, magnifiée par une luxueuse distribution vocale et le chef d'orchestre Simon Rattle à la tête d'un London Symphony Orchestra, époustouflant.
— LE MONDE

Au Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, un “Wozzeck” triplement enchanteur
De bonnes fées se sont penchées sur le chef-d'œuvre d'Alban Berg, monté pour la première fois à Aix : la prestation du baryton Christian Gerhaher, bien entouré, la direction musicale de Simon Rattle et la mise en scène de Simon McBurney font de cette production une réussite totale.
— TÉLÉRAMA

6 JULY 2023 — PREMIERE OF COSÌ FAN TUTTE

The final fruit of the collaboration between Mozart and da Ponte, and 75 years after the start of a rich history with the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, Così fan tutte returns to the stage of the Palais de l’Archevêché. This opera is an ode to desire, to the incessant reconfigurations of love and to theatrical illusion: the lovers' exchange, far from being a frivolous game, confronts them in spite of themselves with the instability of their feelings and their certainties. Dmitri Tcherniakov renews our understanding of the work by turning the four young lovers into adults in their prime. By exploring what happens during the mid-life crisis between two couples who have been together for several years, this production sheds a disturbing light on what makes and breaks couples today. The enfant terrible of Russian theatre is accompanied in this powerful rereading by Thomas Hengelbrock, another familiar figure at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, who conducts the Balthasar Neumann Academy and Orchestra, with a cast perfectly suited to this staging.

En convoquant un aréopage de chanteurs ayant tous passé la cinquantaine, le metteur en scène russe offre au chef-d’œuvre de Mozart et de Da Ponte une nouvelle dimension. Dans la fosse, la baguette de Thomas Hengelbrock joue sur du velours.
— LE MONDE

Le russe Dmitri Tcherniakov parvient à adapter l'œuvre invraisemblable de Mozart dans un réalisme franc [...]
— LIBÉRATION

[…] le Balthasar Neumann Orchestra sous la direction de Thomas Hengelbrock offre une sonorité mozartienne moelleuse. Le diapason abaissé à 430 (l’orchestre joue ainsi plus bas qu’à la normale) apporte à la partition une volupté orchestrale qui révèle toutes les subtilités des plans sonores.
— LE TEMPS.CH

Così fan tutte au Festival d'Aix-en-Provence : du noyau au joyau lyrique
— OLYRIX

5 JULY 2023 — PREMIERE OF PICTURE A DAY LIKE THIS

WORLD PREMIERE

Picture a day like this is the moving story of a bereaved mother who is promised a miracle if, in one day, she meets someone perfectly happy: a quest into which she throws herself body and soul, punctuated by the mysterious encounters that crop up in this tale in the manner of Le Petit Prince or Alice in Wonderland. George Benjamin and Martin Crimp return to the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence for their fourth opera, following the historic success of Written on Skin, and reunited with their faithful collaborators, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and stage-directors Marie-Christine Soma and Daniel Jeanneteau. The result is an intimate, dreamlike work that also features an enigmatically beautiful installation by visual artist Hicham Berrada. It's a subtly understated plunge into the depths of the human soul, through an initiatory journey embodied by charismatic performers, including mezzo-soprano Marianne Crebassa in the lead role; a gripping, edgy tale.

Five stars for “Picture a day like this”, George Benjamin’s beguiling, unsettling new opera
— FINANCIAL TIMES

An exquisitely crafted fable of loss and hapiness
— THE TELEGRAPH

Le nouvel opus lyrique du compositeur britannique George Benjamin brille comme un joyau, rare et familier, léger et poignant. La mezzo-soprano Marianne Crebassa y est bouleversante.
— LA CROIX

4 JULY 2023 — PREMIERE OF THE THREEPENNY OPERA

Irresistible rhythms and heady songs underpinned by wry humour: the masterpiece of social satire The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill and Elisabeth Hauptmann is being performed for the first time at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence. On stage, the members of the Comédie-Française, funny and touching virtuosos, portray the colourful characters in this story set in the heart of London's underworld, in which the crooks play the middle classes and the police is in league with the underworld. Maxime Pascal and his ensemble Le Balcon revisit the original orchestral colours in the light of modern technology, mixing jazz band, electronic music and a Central European colours. For his first opera production, Thomas Ostermeier transposes Brecht's cynical portrayal of his time to our own time, based on a scathing translation by Alexandre Pateau, complete with previously unpublished songs. It's a picture of today, both raw and poetic, where hypocrisy and forced laughter go hand in hand with immorality and corruption.

Les comédiens-Français ouvrent la 75e édition du Festival d'Aix avec une interprétation unique de la pièce de Brecht et Weill. À la tête de l'ensemble Le Balcon, Maxime Pascal décape le rythme et le ton.
— LE FIGARO

Dans la fosse, Maxime Pascal, à la tête de son ensemble, Le Balcon, a tenu le pari du "multi-instrumentalisme". On a adoré, parmi les cuivres et les claviers, les accents de basse électrique, de balalaïka et de guitare hawaïenne.
— LE MONDE