It is with great pleasure that the entire team of the Opéra Royal de Wallonie-Liège and I present to you our 2024-2025 season.

We have chosen Trajectories as its title. Throughout this season, the programming will explore both individual and collective journeys of characters through works that engage with the universal themes of choice, transformation, and the quest for identity. Each opera featured reflects an aspect of this exploration, offering our audience a deep resonance with the shifting dynamics of our time. Trajectories is an invitation to follow the winding paths of the human soul, across ages and cultures, in an ever-evolving world.

This season, we continue the momentum started in 2023, which aimed to schedule, alongside great titles that regulars will be pleased to revisit and novices delighted to discover, works or composers that have been absent for a long time. Foremost among them is Richard Wagner with Tristan und Isolde, which has not been performed in Liège for at least 60 years! As for Kát’a Kabanová by Janáček, Werther by Massenet, Guillaume Tell by Rossini, or La Périchole by Offenbach, these pieces have been missing from our stage for nearly 25 years. For these titles, as well as La Traviata, Don Pasquale, and Le Nozze di Figaro that complete the season’s opera lineup, our ambition is always to present them with the utmost care for elegance and relevance in staging, as well as the high quality of the entire cast, within which we will find familiar faces and discover new ones.

Beyond the series of operas that form the heart of our season, we have also chosen to present two shows aimed at young audiences (Le Château enchanté and La belle et franche aventure de Petit-Guillaume), a staple of the classical ballet repertoire, a series of chamber music concerts, a grand French opera in concert version, an exceptional evening in tribute to Giacomo Puccini, and the third edition of our International Opera Orchestra Conducting Competition… This dense and varied program, designed for everyone, aligns perfectly with the values of excellence, sustainability, and openness that are fundamental to the identity of our House.

To conclude, I would like to once again highlight the dedication and commitment of the teams at the Royal Opera of Wallonia-Liège in their daily work, be it artistic, technical, or administrative. Tackling the challenges posed by the variety of our activities, the ever-evolving technical constraints, and the necessary focus on environmental issues, the collective efforts of our House form the foundation on which our Opera develops and offers the best to its audience.

Together, with you, the adventure continues.

Stefano Pace, General and Artistic Director