The Nice Opera has unveiled its 2026-2027 season. Eight operas, three choreographic events, seven major symphonic concerts and numerous offerings for young audiences will make up a program built around the theme “Escaping Reality”.
Before subscribers and friends of the institution, the general director Bertrand Rossi presented the outline of the upcoming Nice Opera season. A program that aims to offer the public a space for escape through music, dance and live performance.
“Right now, reality weighs on us: news in the morning, emails all day long, bills in the evening, tax returns a few weeks ago… Nice Opera wants to become, for the duration of an evening, a refuge where one truly escapes”, explained Bertrand Rossi.
The season will open in autumn with Handel’s Orlando, presented for the first time in Nice. An evening devoted to operetta and Offenbach will follow in October, before Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow in November.
2027 will mark Richard Wagner’s return to Nice Opera with Tristan and Isolde, absent from Nice’s programming for fifteen years. The French premiere of Unsuk Chin’s Alice in Wonderland will also be among the season’s highlights.
The public will then see Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci and Sergio Monterisi’s Circo!, a closing show combining professional artists and young participants from the “All on Stage” project.
A program featuring opera, dance and symphonic concerts
Dance will also play an important role in the 2026-2027 season. An evening bringing together Jean-Christophe Maillot and Ioannis Mandafounis will open this section in autumn. Sleeping Beauty, a creation signed by Pontus Lidberg for Ballet Nice Méditerranée, will take place during the end-of-year festivities. In spring, a program combining a work by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and a creation by Fernando Melo will complete the choreographic lineup.
On the symphonic music side, seven major events are announced. The programs will bring into dialogue Brahms, Shostakovich, Strauss, Rachmaninoff, Dvořák and Beethoven. Jean-Louis Bringuier, Marc Leroy-Calatayud and Marzena Diakun will notably conduct these concerts.
The season will also feature several offerings for families and young audiences with The Ugly Princess, a Christmas concert, Discovering Brass, Mozart for Families around Così fan tutte and the “Your First Festival” event.
Complementary events will finally punctuate the cultural year of Nice Opera: dinner theater, afterwork events, Veglione ball, jazz café, lectures and meetings with artists.
Subscriptions for the 2026-2027 season have been open since May 28 and until June 22, 2026.
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