Would things finally move for women at the Paris Opera? Extremely rare, the venerable institution announced on Wednesday March 30 that it will entrust three of the six new lyrical productions planned for the 2022-2023 season to female directors, and that it will also feature three female conductors.
At the end of January, the British director Netia Jones pointed out in an interview with Franceinfo Culture the misogyny of the world of opera. “I really looked: where are the women? I came to Paris, I went through the Opera catalog for the current year, and there wasn’t a woman! Not a single director! So I looked to the previous year, not either. It struck me, if the men had been in this situation, we would have taken to the streets!“, she told us. Would she have been heard?
Invited for the first time to the Opera, the British Deborah Warner, the American Lydia Steier and the Argentinean Valentina Carrasco have been entrusted respectively for next season with the staging of Peter Grimes by Benjamin Britten Salome by Richard Strauss and above all the highly anticipated Nixon in Chinaa flagship opera by American composer John Adams, which is entering the repertoire.
The new season unveiled at the Palais Garnier also features more female conductors, with the Italian Speranza Scappucci, who will conduct The Capulets and the Montagues of Bellini, the Australian Simone Young, at the baton for Salome and the German Joana Mallwitz for Peter Grimes.
“This is an essential issue for the Paris Opera (…) it is important to promote and promote talent, including women“, says the director of the institution, Alexander Neef. “Their look, their requirement promise us exceptional shows“, he adds in reference to the guests of the next season.
Other new productions, the rare Hamlet by Ambroise Thomas, entrusted to the sought-after Polish director Krzysztof Warlikowski, the Romeo and Juliet by Gounod according to a version by the Frenchman Thomas Jolly and Ariodante Handel, which will be signed by Canadian Robert Carsen.
On the dance side, several entries in the repertoire, including The Dante Project by Wayne McGregor (music by Thomas Adès), a co-production with Royal Opera House where this choreography was presented in October, the ballet Mayerling (1978) by Kenneth MacMillan, which had been canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic, or even Kontakthof by Pina Bausch.
The dance director, Aurélie Dupont, who since her appointment in 2016 has been commissioning the new generation of contemporary choreographers, calls on the Norwegian Alan Lucien Oyen and the American Bobbi Jene Smith for the two creations of the season, and invites a dance-theatre collective from Brussels, PeepingTom. A great academic ballet, the Swan Lakeis on the program and a tribute evening will be dedicated to the former French dance star Patrick Dupond, who died in 2021.