“A program is made according to a theater, a place: we draw from its prestigious past to build the future. The greatest artists used to come to Nice: we wanted to get as close as possible to that period.” Thus expressed Alain Lanceron, Artistic Advisor to Jacques Hédouin, General Director of the Nice Côte d’Azur Opera during his presentation to the press on Friday, May 21, for the new 2010/2011 season. A challenge supported by an avalanche of figures: 180 curtain raises featuring seven operas, one hundred and twenty musical engagements, eighty concerts including four by the “Apostrophe” Ensemble, the “only group dedicated to contemporary music fully integrated into the Symphony Orchestra,” and four “new choreographic programs” devised by Eric Vu-An, Artistic Director of the Ballet Nice Méditerranée.
The opening of the lyric season will begin on Thursday, October 7, with “Dialogues des Carmélites,” the work of Francis Poulenc, conducted by Michel Plasson in a production by the “mythical” Robert Carsen. “An ideal Franco-Italian work,” according to Alain Lanceron, “to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Nice’s attachment to France.” “It has been 27 years since this opera was presented in Nice,” the Artistic Advisor further explained, noting that the repertoire pieces chosen for this season have not been produced by the Azurean institution for an average of 13 or 14 years. A repertoire that mixes German, Russian, and Italian styles where 95% of the opera artists, already famous on other French and foreign stages, will perform for the first time in Nice. Alongside soprano Karen Vourc’h, revealed at the 2009 music victories and recently appreciated by Monegasques in the role of Musetta, mezzo-soprano Sophie Koch will perform Mother Marie de l’Incarnation. Soprano Nathalie Dessay will offer Niçois an exceptional lyrical evening – including the famous “Air de la Folie” from Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” – on October 21 at the Acropolis. In March of next year, countertenor Philippe Jaroussky will assume the role of Ruggiero in Antonio Vivaldi’s “Orlando furioso,” a work never performed in Nice and which will be conducted by Jean-Christophe Spinosi, the founder of Ensemble Matheus.
In the commendable aim of democratizing opera, the new management is launching this year the project “1000 high school and college students at the Opera”: young people will thus be individually invited for the modest sum of 5 euros to first-rate evenings. The only condition, Jacques Hédouin explains, is to be “pedagogically prepared.” The idea of a too-precarious merger between the two orchestras of Cannes and Nice has been definitively abandoned, which will have another consequence: the appointment of a new musical director. The name of Philippe Auguin is repeatedly mentioned. Proof that the mandate to “refound the institutional identity and artistic project of the Nice Opera” entrusted by Christian Estrosi to the new team has also managed to adapt to artistic, financial, and human imperatives.
Photos: Dominique Jaussein
