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Opéra national de Lorraine

Conductor

Conductor (+1)

Sora Elisabeth Lee

Chorusmaster

Conductor (+2)

Guillaume Fauchère

Stage director

Anthony Almeida

Set designer

Set designer (+2)

Basia Bińkowska

Costume designer

Lighting designer

Lighting designer (+3)

Franck Evin

Mezzo-soprano (+4)

Anaïk Morel

Susanna

Mezzo-soprano (+2)

Rosie Aldridge

Klementia

Orchestra

Orchestre de l'Opéra national de Lorraine

Chorus

Choeur de l'Opéra national de Lorraine

Bass (+6)

Joshua Bloom

Bluebeard

Judith

Bass-baritone (+7)

Yannis François

Un valet

Soprano (+1)

Apolline Raï-Westphal

Une servante

Alto

Soprano

Baritone

Singer

Salma-Faïhrouz Jacquot-Anseur

Une fillette

Adèle Thirion

Choirs Of The Conservatoire Régional Du Grand Nancy

Choreographer

Choreographer (+2)

Rosabel Huguet

Assistant Choreographer

Assistant Stage Director

Stage director (+1)

Alixe Durand Saint Guillain

Language Coach

Soprano (+2)

Borbála Szuromi

Assistant Music Director

Music director

Silvina Peruglia Nogues

Mezzo-soprano (+3)

Séverine Maquaire

Die alte Nonne

Claire Wauthion

A woman

To open the season, this evening, consecrated to the transgression of things forbidden, combines three rare works in a single artistic endeavour. Sancta Susanna streaked through the skies of opera like a meteor one evening in March 1922. Driven by a burning desire, a nun strips naked and embraces the statue of Christ. This thirty-minute work, never performed, caused a scandal when it premiered at the Frankfurt Opera and provoked the fury of the Church. The sultry deeds of Sancta Susanna are matched by Judith's thirst for knowledge: Bluebeard's Castle is a disquieting “huis clos”, a confrontation between Bluebeard and his wife who obliges her jailer to open the doors of his castle one by one, to the point of no return... To accompany this plunge into the unknown, Bartók composed a spellbinding nocturnal score, imbued with fantasised Hungarian folklore. Honegger's Danse des morts, another little-known if not unknown work, completes the evening. In this choral work composed to a poem by Claudel, the dead become a joyful and subversive community. The composer plays with the frontiers between scholarly and popular music, incorporating unexpected songs such as Sur le pont d'Avignon into his inferno.

Winner of the European Opera Director Prize, Anthony Almeida presents a woman at three different stages of her life. Each piece depicts one of the social rituals - baptism, marriage and death - that punctuate her existence. This modern-day heroine becomes the common thread in this fiery triptych.

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