Victoires! by Various, Minn (2023/2023), Auditorium du Conservatoire, Tourcoing, France

Like Louis XIV, Napoleon understood how useful art could be to promote his image and ideology. Opera was one of the cogs in his shrewd policy. His determination materialized thanks to an army of composers grouped together in the Conservatoire, which had opened in 1795, including Catel, Le Sueur and Méhul. His conquest of Italy also led to his discovery of Paisiello, and this decisive encounter opened the doors of the Paris Opera to composers such as Spontini and Cherubini, who would invent the monumental Romanticism that Wagner and Verdi would later feed on. The programme presented by Judith van Wanroij and the Quatuor Cambini-Paris aims to illustrate the ebullience of this laboratory for opera composition.