Opera in Paris - Tchaikovsky, Bizet, Verdi, Adams

Opera and Paris are intricately intertwined: opera and ballet are central to the city’s social and cultural life, and Paris in turn has shaped the art-form to an extent few other places can rival. The city boasts not one but two of the world’s greatest opera houses: the sumptuous Opéra Garnier, completed in 1875, and the monumental Opéra Bastille, opened in 1989 for the bicentenary of the French Revolution. This tour features performances at both these iconic theatres, and the chance to witness some of the world’s greatest singers interpreting some of opera’s most intriguing stories, both personal and public. 

We begin our musical programme with two of the most searing stories of frustrated love ever set to music. Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin and Bizet’s Carmen are perhaps the most popular operas ever produced in Russia and France respectively: premiered within four years of each other, each sets a literary text well known and much loved by its first audiences. 

Eugene Onegin is a fascinating choice of work for the opera-directing debut of Ralph Fiennes. The world-renowned actor’s long-standing interest in Russian literature and culture was deepened by working on The White Crow, the 2018 film about the life of Rudolf Nureyev which he directed from David Hare’s screenplay. Fiennes learnt Russian in order to play the role of a different Alexander Pushkin, the Kirov ballet master. His new production of Eugene Onegin at the Garnier, with a cast most of whom have studied or worked in Russia, promises to draw out the intimacy and beauty of Tchaikovsky’s text-setting.  

Only two months after the opening in January 1875 of the house that quickly became known as the Palais Garnier, Carmen was premiered in the Salle Favart, then as now the home of Paris’s Opéra-Comique. Our tour includes a visit of the theatre, which still stands in the Place Boieldieu, less than half a mile from both the Garnier and our hotel. The spectacular title role of Carmen will be taken at the Bastille production by Stéphanie d’Oustrac, a favourite at Glyndebourne as well as in Paris for her interpretations of French opera. 

We remain at the Bastille for our final two performances, for which the focus shifts from the personal to the public. Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera and John Adams’ Nixon in China both feature stories of intrigue among the politicians of the United States of America and their families. Verdi’s opera recounts the love affair between Riccardo, the Governor of Boston, and Amelia, the wife of his best friend, who takes his revenge by killing him. Verdi originally intended to depict the assassination of Sweden’s King Gustav III at a masked ball in Stockholm’s Royal Opera House, but was foiled by the Roman censors before the 1859 premiere could take place. The director of the Paris production, Gilbert Deflo, retains the American setting but shifts it to the time of Abraham Lincoln to sharpen the political subtext.

Adams composed Nixon in China to a highly praised libretto by Alice Goodman, an American poet who now works as an Anglican priest in Cambridgeshire. Since its premiere at Houston in 1987 it has become perhaps the most popular and widely performed of recent operas. It tells the story of President Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit to Mao Zedong, chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, and the remarkable rapprochement in Cold War relationships that resulted. Valentina Carrasco’s Bastille production was first seen in 2023 and has been widely praised for its poetic and imaginative response to Adams’ pulsating score. The roles of Richard Nixon and his wife Pat are taken in the performance we see by two of America’s best-loved opera singers, baritone Thomas Hampson and soprano Renée Fleming