Creation the 8th of october at Théâtre des Champs-Elysées
Performances from the 8th to the 18th

After La petite renarde rusée, by Janacek, directed by Nicholas Hytner and presented at the Châtelet in 1995, Jean-Claude Gallotta returns to the opera world this season in the company of conductor William Christie and director Robert Carsen.

William Christie is the great architect of the rehabilitation of Lully as the inventor of French opera. Exiled in France since 1971 (As an American, he refused to take part in the Vietnam war), he founded the “Arts Florissants” in 1979, a formation specialising in Baroque repertoire, which he still conducts today. With the opera-ballet Armide, he offers us one of the finest works by Jean-Baptiste Lully and Philippe Quinault, who are often considered to be one of the most famous composer-librettist pairings in the history of music.

Immediately hailed as a masterpiece, Armide, the plot of which is taken from Jerusalem delivered by the Italian poet Tasso, is based on a heroic , not mythological subject, signalling a change in the choice of librettos during that period. The work has been revived on many occasions over the centuries, in France and abroad.

Born in Canada, director Robert Carsen works with the leading opera houses: La Scala in Milan, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the English National Opera, the Vienna Staatsoper, the Paris National Opera and many festivals, such as Aix-en-Provence and Salzburg. One of his triumphs is A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Britten, performed at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in 1991. At the Paris National Opera, he has directed Manon Lescaut, Nabucco, Lohengrin and the Tales of Hoffmann.
He was awarded the Abbiati Italian Critics’ Prize for Dialogues des Carmélites at La Scala in Milan in 2000 and for Fidelio at the Musical May in Florence in 2003.

Distribution