- NEW PRODUCTION → OPÉRA ROYAL DE WALLONIE-LIÈGE
- WITH THE SUPPORT OF TAX SHELTER OF THE BELGIAN FEDERAL GOVERNEMENT AND CASA KAFKA PICTURES
LIBRETTO BY JULES BARBIER AND MICHEL CARRÉ
BASED ON GOETHE’S WILHELM MEISTER’S APPRENTICESHIP
“Do you know the land where the lemon trees grow? […] It’s there I’d be gone, to be there with you, O my beloved one!”. These beautiful lines written by Goethe and put to music by Schubert, Schumann, Liszt and many others, magnificently carry the most famous aria in Mignon, the favourite opera of Ambroise Thomas after Hamlet. It was the very young Célestine Galli-Marie who first performed the leading role, a Parisian idol from her debut in 1862 and who also went on to become, in 1875, the first… Carmen!
Barbier and Carré, the librettists of Faust and Mignon carried out an amazing feat by transforming the very complex works of Goethe into coherent and sensitive librettos full of freshness. Ambroise Thomas did the rest for Mignon: superb music, masterfully orchestrated, tinged with magnificent melodies admired by Georges Bizet and received triumphantly by the Parisian audience on its first performance at the Opéra Comique in 1866. As the heir to Gounod and director of the Conservatoire de Paris music academy from 1871, Thomas was clearly familiar with the sonorous enchantments of the “land where the lemon trees grow”, since he had lived in Rome in his youth and was a friend of Ingres. His music, sometimes accused of conventionalism, is always subtle. As Berlioz said, “It unveils grace, fire, intensity, zest, emotion and plenty of tact!”
💻 The replay of this show will be available for free on France.TV Culturebox platform from 12 April
