Royal Opera of Versailles: "Everything for the music!" Close panel Open panel Plume Le Figaro App -icon - 512px V1 1 - Style/Logotypes/Le Figaro/Apps/jeux

By Ariane Bavelier Published , Updated

After a year of closure, the new line-up is off to a resounding start.

The Royal Opera of Versailles, a blue and gold bonbonniere built for the wedding of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, may well be adorned with Cupid, but it also hides furies. They almost stifled the music during the terrible year 2020-2021. What pythia would have prophesied it? On paper, the Royal Opera was celebrating its 250th anniversary, the brochure announced a season with drums and trumpets, to the excess of the event. The Covid curse has struck. Closed doors at the theater and, above all, tragically empty boxes.

The shows at the Opera were financed thanks to the windfall from the Grandes Eaux. These have remained dormant, in pain of confined spectators and tourists under house arrest in the distance. Was silence going to become master of this place?

It would have been a tragedy! Since the restoration in 2009 of this jewel decorated by Pajou, it had taken thirteen years of programming masterfully led by Laurent Brunner to establish Versailles as one of the capitals of Baroque music. William Christie, John Eliot Gardiner, Leonardo Gracia Alarcon, Cecilia Bartoli, Raphaël Pichon… These big names who serve the repertoire from Salzburg to London had found sense in putting Versailles on their route: it is one of the most beautiful cradles of this music -the. Even today, Laurent Brunner has managed to hatch a new generation there. Thus Valentin Tournet or Gaétan Jarry.

Lavish programming

Alerted by the disaster, the gods of Olympus flew to the rescue. The state provided special assistance and the Friends of the Royal Opera set up a foundation to strengthen their support. The blue and gold bonbonnière reopens this year with a sumptuous programme, Atys by Lully, Le Palais des sortilèges by Rossi, Alcina by Handel, Platée by Rameau… in new productions, a hundred concerts and a consequent tribute to Molière, born in 1622, who companioned with Lully and Charpentier. The music will also resume its quarters in the Royal Chapel, restored from the frame to the door frames and gilding, after three and a half years of work. The most beautiful? The light flooding in through the "white mirrors", or stained glass windows.

“During the second confinement, the music continued,” recalls Catherine Pgard, president of the Château de Versailles. “We had proposed to the artists to record the scheduled shows here. This allowed us to keep track of these concerts through our record label Château de Versailles Spectacles. While the castle was completely closed, these recordings brought a tension that is essential to us. Passing in front of the chapel and hearing a rehearsal broke the silence in which we lived day after day. There was still music at Versailles. How to imagine that it stops there?