What if chamber music returned to it's traditional venue: within well-loved artists' homes? Initially, chamber music was composed for the private sphere, but ended up losing part of it's essence as this form started performing within venues that gradually expanded. This double program rekindles the origins of the genre by showing itself inside the living rooms of grand artists for original concerts, played in an intimate and privileged setting: at Daniel Barenboim's in Berlin, where he plays with Michael Barenboim and Kian Soltani; and at Martha Argerich's in Geneva, with Mischa Maisky. They invite us to hear masterpieces of the chamber repertoire in a new light: Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, Brahms... and between each movement, the artists confide about their lives and their art to presenter, Annie Dutoit, who has known them all since childhood. A tender musical lesson.

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Three romantic heroes each with a solitary destiny: Tatiana, a Romanesque young woman seeking absolution, Onegin, a distant dandy hiding emptiness under affected haughtiness, and Lenski, abandoned by his literary idol. Between these three, barren affections presage the inexorable social ruin. All the resources of the Bolshoi Theatre of Moscow are brought to bear to ensure this opera performance is exceptional evening of theatre and song: a vocal line-up of the highest order with notably the baritone Mariusz Kwiecien and the Bolshoi Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Alexander Vedernikov. With a stage setting as sombre as it is effective - a great dining table appears in the middle of a salon - the director Dmitri Tcherniakov separates two different worlds and lends the drama a clarity rarely reached. The exceptional quality of this production, and the great success encountered by its first edition, inevitably led to the remastering in high-definition of this program to celebrate the 10th anniversary of its original release.

Gioacchino Rossini was only 23 years old when he wrote what was to become his most famous opera, composed after the scandalous eponymous play by Beaumarchais. Il Barbiere di Siviglia premiered in Rome in 1816: an innovative work, full of sophistication and finesse that first intrigued the Italian public, before winning over the entire peninsula and the rest of the world. The opera displays with great clarity the essence of the Rossinian revolution: situation comedy, sharp criticism of social hypocrisy, together with a witty musical style, the glory of belcanto, and the contagious energy of assertive melodic lines. With the adventures of the factotum Figaro and his master Almaviva, looking to seduce the beautiful Rosina and steal her away from the old Bartolo; through the endless criss-crossing of this lover's chase, Rossini was to begin a new chapter in Italian opera, and forge a new brand that shaped the musical landscape of the 19th century. For this reprisal of Hugo de Ana's famous staging at the Arena di Verona, Rossini's masterpiece is conducted by Maestro Daniel Oren. Italian baritone Leo Nucci, a true connoisseur of the part, is a boastful and virtuoso Figaro, while soprano Nino Machaidze and tenor Dmitry Korchak are perfect as the not-so-candid lovers around whom the opera revolves. And who better than Italian bass Ferruccio Furlanetto, who shines in the "Calunnia" aria, for the part of Basilio?

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Léo Delibes’s Coppélia is not only a collection of fine dances. It is primarily an abrasive and sardonic comedy, which is somewhat unusual in the world of classical ballet. But most importantly, it is a comedy for which excellent music was composed. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s assessment of Delibes’s ballet scores, allegedly capable of overshadowing the choreography itself, is well known: “What beauty, what elegance, what richness of melody, rhythm and harmony!” It is not fortuitous that music from this ballet should be performed, for its own merits, during concerts. Funnily enough, the main theme of this light-hearted ballet is taken from E.T.A. Hoffmann’s anything but joyful novellas – mainly from The Sandman. In Hoffmann’s tale, the young man’s infatuation with the doll ends tragically, while in the ballet, the lively and energetic Swanilda (Frantz’s fiancée) is able to over wit the old Coppélius, the cunning inventor of the “Girl with the enamel eyes” and free her lover from the doll’s poisonous charm. Coppélia was premiered in 1870 at the Paris Opera on choreographer Arthur Saint-Léon’s initiative. A virtuoso dancer, Saint-Léon was Marius Petipa’s predecessor as Head of the Petersburg Ballet. His interest in folk culture, music and dance, is mainly responsible for the appearance in the music score of such a rich “selection” of dance melodies based on folklore, and especially Slavic and Eastern European themes. A few years later, Marius Petipa and Enrico Cecchetti brought the ballet “back” to the Russia that had proved such a vivid source of inspiration for its librettist, and adapted the choreography for the Russian stage. However, this new version fell out of interest during the 20th century, until Sergey Vikharev and Pavel Gershenzon’s revival in 2009. It is here interpreted by the Bolshoi Ballet’s finest dancers: Margarita Shrayner is the witty Swanilda, and Artem Ovcharenko the love-sick Frantz.

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The purity of classical dance meets the opulent exoticism of the Maharajas’ India in this 150-year-old ballet, glorified by Nacho Duato for the Mikhailovsky Ballet. Of Ancient India, composer Ludwig Minkus made in his La Bayadère the shiny background of the tragic love story between a priestess and a warrior, unable to get together in this world or in the next. For this new production with the Mikhailovsky Ballet, of which he is the artistic director, Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato created a new version extremely respectful of Marius Petipa’s original, preserving the traditional synopsis and the great coups de théâtre of the libretto, and keeping the original choreography for the most famous scenes. But at the same time, he liberates the ballet from the weight of its own anachronism, removes the episodes of pointless pantomime, and relocates it in a extravagant, lavish and colorful set. Before working on La Bayadère, Duato had already tackled some of the great classics of the Russian classical ballet school: his original versions of Sleeping Beauty (BAC131 BAC431) and The Nutcracker, both commissioned by the Mikhailovsky, have since then toured in the whole world and were met with tremendous success – from Milan and Berlin to Novossibirsk. For this new project, he surrounds himself with the excellent Principals Angelina Vorontsova and Victor Lebedev, but also with Andrea Laššáková, outstanding in the role of Gamzatti.

Two lovers, united by fate but kept apart by an old family feud, who can only be together in death: Shakespeare's timeless tale, set to ballet music by Sergey Prokofiev in 1935, needs no introduction. However, this production from the Ural Opera Ballet in Ekaterinburg, which won the prestigious Golden Mask Prize as "Best Ballet" in 2017, adds interesting twists to this well-known frame, as choreographer Vyacheslav Samodurov sets his performance in a dance studio, during a rehearsal of the Romeo and Juliet ballet. This way, the characters of the play are placed out of a specific country or era: the action could take place anytime and anywhere. It could even be happening in front of your window right now: it is not by chance that the dancers reminded the audience of today's 'boys and girls from the Uralmash district', as some viewers have noted in social media. The motive of struggle between the two clans disappears from the performance - it does not matter which families the street fighters belong to. The concept of repetition and inexorability of the theatrical ritual plays a central part: a tragedy is about to happen and the lovers will die today, but afterwards everyone will go home, a new rehearsal will start tomorrow, and the story will be repeated again from the start. With outstanding performances from principals Ekaterina Sapogova and Alexandr Merkushev, choreographer Vyacheslav Samodurov creates an intricate and surprisingly modern choreographical language that draws from classical movements but also from pantomime to best express the feelings and the drama at play in this eternal masterpiece.

Aleko, The Miserly Knight and Francesca da Rimini are the only three operas composed by Sergei Rachmaninov. Reunited here in an amazing production by Kirsten Dehlholm and Hotel Pro Forma under the name le titre "Rachmaninov Troika". Rachmaninov represents the waning of Romanticism in Russia yet, even by Russian standards, he was extremely fatalistic. His three one-act operas with libretti based on writings by Pushkin and Dante are linked by their theme: fat follows in the footsteps on sin, whether it be a matter of jealous murder, gree or illicit passion

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In 2018, the ‘‘Golden Gallery’’ of the Central Bank of France, and more precisely its renovation in the style of the 18th century by the Count of Toulouse, celebrated its tricentenary. Like the Hall of Mirrors at the Château de Versailles, it counts among the most lavish ceremonial galleries of France: it was in this glorious setting that several scenes of the movie Marie-Antoinette, by Sofia Coppola, were shot. On this occasion, the baroque ensemble ‘‘Concert de la Loge’’ and its musical director Julien Chauvin drew upon this incredible setting, its paintings and its sculptures but also its history, and brought together various pieces from the baroque and classical repertoire: Lully, Rameau, Couperin, Boccherini, Charpentier, Vivaldi, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Haendel… Thanks to an elaborate scenography and to a smart lighting design, the program is also a journey through the mysteries of the visual works displayed in the gallery : for instance the allegories of the young Louis XIV at the beginning of his reign, the story of Henry IV... all of which is explained at length in a gorgeous booklet written by art specialists.

Founded in Tel-Aviv in 1964, the Batsheva Dance Company was headed from 1990 to 2018 by Ohad Naharin, an incredible dancer with a musical training, and a true passion for movement. Through his "Gaga" technique, a choreographic vocabulary that explores the sensations and the availability of the bodies, he made his mark on the dance world and offered the company it's finest hours. In 2015, Tomer Heymann's documentary "Mr. Gaga" paid tribute to the Naharin phenomenon, it's influence on the contemporary dance scene and in pop culture. The collection 'The Art of Ohad Naharin' is a showcase of Naharin's aesthetics and demanding technique: after a first volume featuring Naharin's Virus and Last Work, two of the most emblematic works in the company's current repertoire, this new release presents Sadeh21, created in 2011 in collaboration with the dancers, and interpreted by the 'junior' branch of Batsheva - The Young Ensemble. Transmission is a fundamental element of Naharin's philosophy. It is not surprising that Batsheva - The Young Ensemble was created the same year that the choreographer took over the Israeli company, on the contrary, it shows the choreographer's desire to nurture young dancers and help them develop their creative process, but also to deepen his own choreographic language by getting an outside look on his own work. This is what happens with Sadeh21: upon seeing it danced by the Young Ensemble, Naharin even said it felt like seeing it for the first time. This 'choreographic odyssee', this 'epic-dance expedition', with it's strong contrasting effects and it's bare simplicity, presents the essence of movement, stripped of all tricks or devices, and thus underscores the extraordinary emotional powers of dance. Rejuvenated by a new generation of interprets from all over the world, the choreography becomes incandescent and resembles an explosion of sensuality, radiant, dangerous and exciting.

When Debussy completes the score, based on the eponymous symbolist play by Maurice Maeterlinck, of Pelleas et Melisande in 1902, the world of opera still abides by Richard Wagner and the upheaval he caused with Tristan und Isolde. But Debussy decides to stand on the exact opposite side, and uses his new opus to preach a new aesthetic creed. In depicting the forbidden love story between the timid Pelleas and the beautiful Melisande, kept apart by an unfortunate marriage, the French composer brings us back to the immortal legend of Tristan and Isolde, but this time showing the world that the future of music could very well lie far away from Wagner’s overwhelming lyricism and outsized rhetoric. This new production, created by one of the rising stars of French stage direction Benjamin Lazar for the Malmö Opera (headed by Ingmar Bergman from 1952 to 1958), encapsulates all the different aspects of this mysterious work, from the oniric poetry invented by Maeterlinck and Debussy to the realism, poignant because openly simple and even mundane, of these profoundly human beings lost in a forest full of sound and symbols that will never let them escape. The young French conductor Maxime Pascal, the Orchestra of the Malmö Opera, and an almost all-French cast (among which the excellent Marc Mauillon and Jenny Daviet), bring forth with intelligence all the refinement and all the vitality this unique and fascinating score has to offer.

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'The Passion according to Mark-A Passion after Auschwitz,' premiered in April 2017. The project was commissioned to French composer Micha�l Levinas by the Swiss association "Musique pour un temps pr�sent", as part of the events commemorating the 500th anniversary of Luther's reform. This original oratorio is not only a reinterpretation or a mere revisitation of the Passion, it painfully faces, indeed, the irreconcilable nature of the Passion and the Holocaust. What is the object of this Passion after Auschwitz, which revolves around what can link two musical traditions, two religions that have been separated by barbarism. Which music, which tradition, which language can the composer use in order to express this double silence, both historical and theological, both human and divine? "After the Holocaust, is it possible to compose without crying and trembling?", Micha�l Levinas asks. It is not about anger or compassion. Because of the subtle polyphonies written for the chorus, the voices and the orchestra, and also because of the way the different languages - Old French, Yiddish, Aramaic, German - create meaning out of one another, both the structure and the musical language of this Passion are incredibly intricate. But they are so for a reason: by putting side by side western musical traditions and the tragic component of modern history, Levinas manages to "shake," during the artistic process, the future of the Holy Language and of the Gospel after Auschwitz. What separates therefore the Gospel of Mark from the Jewish prayer for the dead (Kaddish) or from the El male Rahamim, or from the two poems by Paul Celan ending the work, is not so much a question of representation, but more accurately it is a way to make the tragedy resound, without any artifice and without any safety net.

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Kurt Weill wrote Street Scene shortly after fleeing Nazi Germany to the United States. When he discovered the vitality of the American musical scene, his focus became to reconcile the Broadway “musical” with European traditional opera, jazzy and North-American tunes with an almost Puccinian-like lyricism. In his mind, opera had to embrace and reclaim its own theatricality : thus he wrote his Street Scene, meant to be a truly American opera, half-way between his Brechtian Threepenny’s Opera and Bernstein’s later West Side Story and drawing from the famous play by Elmer Rice (recipient of the Pulitzer Prize when it was published in 1928). The main plot of this rampant collection of scenes from the streets of the lower East Side of New York revolves around Frank and Anna Maurant and their daughter Rose. A violent and tough character, Frank fails to see his wife’s growing despair due to his lack of affection. When he discovers her with her lover, he shoots them both and goes to jail, leaving behind a heartbroken Rose who, after having experienced relentless harassment by two aggressive suitors, misses her one true chance at love. The opera ends by showing the streets of New York City moving on from these mundane events in total indifference. Under Tim Murray’s vivid and precise baton, this superb production by John Fulljames perfectly renders the vitality and energy released by the streets of New York, that proved to be a great inspiration to the theatrical mind of the composer.

When she is finally released from an evil spell by the kiss of a young prince, the Sleeping Beauty awakes and is- in spite of a hundred years of sleep- as beautiful as a young woman. The love of the prince is simply stronger than the curse that rests on the haunted princess. The artistic director of the Staatsballett Berlin, Nacho Duato, has brought new life to this beloved classic, which itself is over a hundred years old and for which Tchaikovsky has composed the unforgettable music. This production demonstrates that Nacho Duato can also tackle classical ballets with dance en pointe with great success. Nothing in this production is old and dusty, rather the entire choreography looks fresh and is bursting with vitality and brings an air of spring to the stage. The costumes by Angelina Atlagic deserve likewise admiration as they sparkle on stage like spring buds in morning dew. The stage design, also designed by Atlagic, offers a refined setting for the ballet fairy tale. The décor of this production is highly imaginative and colorful, yet at the same time very elegant and stylish.

A modern and visionary work, this ballet, set to music by Dmitri Shostakovich, was created in 1930. It's central theme was the highly moralized battle and triumph of the proletariat against the decadent bourgeoisie, set in europe during the roaring twenties. Surprisingly, the score by Shsotakovich raised political controversies, probably because it borrowed much to European dance forms and consequently, the ballet vanished from the theaters until 1982, when Yuri Grigorovich restaged it with sets by Sion Virsaladze and a completely new libretto mainly revolving around the love story between Rita, a cabaret dancer, and Boris, a young idealist. The conflict in teh original production was also recast as a clash between fishermen - the morally superior workers - and society's criminal elements. To bring back on stage The Golden Age in autumn 2016, a few months prior to Yuri Grigorovich's 90th birthday, was a highly symbolic choice for the Bolshoi Ballet: this work, teh last Grigorovich would ever choreograph for his company, hadn't been staged for almost 10 years. A rare and refined ballet, which ran the risk of falling into oblivion twice, is danced by the new generation of the Bolshoi Ballet, among which Nina Kaptsova et Mikhail Lobukhin.