Summary
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
About the show
Sorcières is a musical stage show that explores the figure of the witch and the place of women through the operatic repertoire and a contemporary sound creation.
Combining singing, spoken texts, percussion and live electronics, the voice of Marion Lebègue – actress, mezzo-soprano and renowned opera singer – becomes a space for transformation and transmission: incantation and reflection, between reality and the collective imagination. Works by Ravel, Bizet, Dvořák, Vivaldi and Verdi converse with an electronic soundworld and live percussion, creating a rich, original soundscape that serves the story told by the three performers on stage.
The witch appears here as a many-sided figure: a woman who is marginalised, feared, powerful, sometimes sacrificed. She is the one to whom powers are attributed, the one who is accused, the one who is silenced. Through music and acting, Sorcières questions how this figure was built and what it reveals about our relationship to the feminine, to transmission and to freedom. The text offers both a contemporary and a historical perspective: a story of women – brilliant women, sometimes forgotten or made invisible.
Staged like a ritual, the performance calls on the collective imagination while echoing deeply contemporary issues.
Director’s note
Wicked, jealous, criminal, poisoners, child-killers: from very early on, these female figures appeared on opera and theatre stages. Mythology and opera offer a whole gallery of so-called malevolent women, from Circe to Medea, from Ježibaba to Carmen.
These women unsettle and fascinate. Through them emerges a view of femininity – its powers and its transgressions – across the centuries. The figure of the witch crystallises these fears and fantasies: a free woman, she owns her desires, her choices and her voice – and that is precisely what makes her unsettling.
Sorcières revisits these figures through music and theatre, bringing the operatic repertoire into dialogue with contemporary sound writing. The voice of singer-actress Marion Lebègue becomes the site of every metamorphosis, between embodiment, accusation and reclaiming.
Theatrical texts punctuate the musical show. They set these characters against the condition of women, past and present, opening up a space for reflection accessible to all audiences. Through this musical and dramatic journey, Sorcières questions how these figures were constructed and what they reveal about our relationship to women’s freedom and to power.
