Two opera singers explore the a cappella voice, out of doors. From Inuit songs to Sicilian, Berber, Yemeni and Romani laments, Margaux Toqué and Sarah Laulan bring chapels, barns, courtyards and gardens to life, right beside their audience. A lively, shared concert, designed around each venue.

This is the story of three friends – soprano Amélie Robins, tenor-guitarist Florian Laconi and baritone-pianist Philippe Brocard – who met during their international opera careers...
Three talents who share an eclectic, unconventional path and a taste for mixing genres – but above all a love of opera, the joy of sharing it, and the urge to sometimes transform it, always to make it shine, for audiences new to great music and seasoned music lovers alike.
With humour and plenty of self-mockery, these three artists will take you on a journey through a world that is operatic, yes, but above all unexpected – from Donizetti to Piaf by way of Verdi and Ella Fitzgerald. A world for everyone, where they’ll pretend to be anyone... but never take themselves seriously!

Who benefits from the crime? Everyone – if it sets emotions free, shatters prejudice and blows convention sky-high.
Martini in hand and dark glasses on, the Sisters kick down the doors of propriety without ever breaking a nail. They embezzle money, men – and music… only to hand it back to the poor!
From Bernstein to Gershwin by way of Cole Porter, timeless classics and rare gems alike, this high-octane trio celebrates the joys of cultural crossover and women’s emancipation.

Six in the morning: the party’s over and two sisters are replaying their love lives. In their family, emotions aren’t told – they’re sung! Carmen, Violetta, Musetta and the heroines of Mozart and Offenbach crash this funny, tender operatic comedy for two singers and a pianist, for ages 7 and up.

Lyrica shakes up the traditional recital, bringing opera and operetta into dialogue with the world of tap dance. Soprano Mathilde Lemaire, pianist Charlotte Gauthier and brothers Dorel and Costel Surbeck, fifteen-time world tap-dance champions, bring lyricism and percussion together, from Carmen to Offenbach by way of Mozart.

A rehearsal that was never meant to have witnesses is suddenly thrown open to the public. Since the audience is here, they might as well give them a concert! If only the Maestro and the Diva can get to the end of their rehearsal without killing each other…
Offenbach, Chabrier, Chopin, Bizet, Saint-Saëns, Donizetti, Rossini: a real opera concert served up with a dash of fantasy – laughing with classical music, never at it.

1955: the Salon des Arts ménagers opens its doors. Four employees of the Hôtel moderne share their lives, their hopes and their struggles – four points of view, sometimes in unison, sometimes at odds: four ways of being women, and free. A committed, joyful musical comedy, carried by the operettas of Offenbach, Messager, Yvain and Christiné and by the Quatuor Ariane’s humour.

4 women, 1 piano: a quirky, committed, feminist recital that breaks the codes of opera. The Quatuor Ariane brings women composers past and present back into the light, from Pauline Viardot and Lili Boulanger to Ethel Smyth and Florence Price, with new works by Isabelle Aboulker, Tatiana Probst and Lise Borel. Theatre, clowning and dance blend with singing, with humour and high standards.

Opera show

Marion Lebègue – Mezzo-soprano
Benjamin Soistier – Percussion and electronics
Apolline Pouchard – Actress
Luc Betton – Stage director

Running time: 1 hr 15 min
Audience: families, ages 6 and up

There is almost no repertoire for cello and mezzo-soprano voice – apart from Ophelia’s Song by Shostakovich.
Needless to say, Albane and Raphaël’s duo seemed off to a bad start. Yet their rapport triumphed over this limitation, and by straying off the beaten track they invented their own dialogue. Playing with traditions, mixing classical and popular song, picking up a cello as if it were a guitar, switching between head voice and chest voice – in short, practising the art of rupture – led our two protagonists to build a programme in three acts. From Baroque to bossa nova by way of British Romantic music, they offer a musical journey that is by turns mischievous and melancholy. Talking directly to the audience, they guide it through historical shifts and original adaptations, inviting it to join in by singing a drone over which Irish variations unfold, or by taking a piece apart to reveal its structure.

Cantu intimu brings together traditional and contemporary Corsican song and the language of classical music.
Amélie Tatti’s operatic voice, carried by the elegance of a string quartet and sometimes a piano, makes the island’s most beautiful melodies her own. Between fervour and tenderness, she explores the richness of Corsican song in all its poetry, sensuality and depth.

In a children’s bedroom, the Sandman and his two magi arrive with a barrel organ to chase away the children’s sadness… and tell them the story of The Magic Flute. Just three performers play eleven characters in a musical tale full of humour and magic, for ages 6 and up.

Carmen told to children – and freed from her fatal destiny! In an intimate, pared-down version carried by the marimba, mezzo-soprano Sarah Laulan and tenor Christophe Poncet de Solages revisit Bizet’s masterpiece through today’s questions: freedom, equality and how we look at women. Ages 8 and up.

Three children who won’t go to bed, and a whole menagerie of toys that starts to sing! A soprano, a baritone and an improvising pianist introduce the very young to opera with music by Mozart, Offenbach, Ravel and Poulenc. A light, easily toured 40-minute show, performed at the Théâtre du Châtelet as well as in nurseries.

Mina doesn’t want to go to sleep – and her cuddly toys come to life! Together they turn a witch into a cat and then a crocodile, and become a princess or a pirate… A funny, magical 35-minute show where opera slips into a child’s bedroom, to music by Mozart, Dvořák, Gounod and Offenbach and nursery rhymes the little ones know.

Hansel and Gretel, two mischievous children who love to dream, set off with their nanny to explore the world of fairy tales – all the way to the Sugar Plum Fairy… A 35-minute recital for ages 2 to 6, with two opera singers and a pianist, from Humperdinck and Tchaikovsky to Disney songs.

A real little opera for the very young: in her garden, Papagena wakes up and discovers the sun, the rain and the colours, to music by Mozart, Pergolesi, Massenet and Bernstein. A 25-minute show devised with early-years professionals, for babies and grown-ups to share.

A capricious king, his loyal servant and a genie who gives him one year to find love… Letters arrive from princesses all over the world, each one carried by an aria: Carmen for Spain, Delage for India. An interactive musical tale that introduces children aged 6 and up to opera, with a mezzo-soprano and a pianist.

Love is the common thread of soprano Vannina Santoni’s first solo album – and a chance to look back on fifteen years on stage, through signature roles, cherished fellow musicians and personal touches. She lends her sensual voice to famous arias from the operas of Gounod and Massenet, to the great romantic heroines of Puccini (“O mio babbino caro”) and Catalani (La Wally), and to Verdi with the heart-rending Ave Maria from Otello. The programme also features a far rarer but sublime excerpt from Franco Alfano’s Risurrezione (1904), as well as the magnificent Saint-Sulpice duet from Massenet’s Manon with tenor Julien Dran. Finally, Vannina Santoni pays tribute to her Corsican roots with a new orchestration of the lullaby “O Ciucciarella”, which Corsican mothers have sung to their children for generations.

This album is especially close to my heart, for more than one reason.
First, I wanted to pay tribute to the work of Maurice Ravel, who at the age of 20 harmonised and orchestrated these folk songs from my native island, Corsica – songs that bear true witness to our customs and our island history.
By coincidence, the manuscript of this vocal work is kept at the Musée de la Corse in Corte, the town where I grew up. That shows how symbolic this project is to me.
Second, I naturally wanted to sing my Corsica, this “mountain in the sea”, a land admired by Rousseau, Flaubert, Stendhal and Nietzsche, which inspired Mérimée, Matisse and Saint-Saëns, an island that took its full place in the Age of Enlightenment and gave birth to Napoleon… I wanted to pass on the strength that emanates from this ancestral land – “A Voce di a Terra”, the strength of the “Voice of the Earth”, which expresses our attachment to our roots, our values and our heritage, and which has always nourished my singing.