Summary
An operatic comedy for two singers and a pianist
Laura Baudelet – Soprano
Anaïs Yvoz – Mezzo-soprano
Tristan Raës – Piano
Julien Ostini – Stage director
Stéphane Pézerat – Actor coaching
Pierre Daubigny – Lighting design
Running time: 1 hr 15 min, no interval
For all audiences aged 7 and up; school performances possible
Stage area: 7 x 4 m, acoustic piano (half-grand minimum)
Two sisters, one night out, a few love stories… and the whole of opera to tell them.
Six in the morning. The party’s over, the mascara has run, and two sisters are replaying the night. One is mourning a lost love; the other clearly didn’t waste her evening. Between confidences, digs and old scores to settle, they piece together their romantic adventures. There’s just one thing: in this family, emotions aren’t told. They’re sung.
A dress, a prop, three notes on the piano, and there they are, by turns seductresses, lovers, rivals or jilted. Carmen, Violetta, Marguerite, Musetta and the heroines of Mozart and Offenbach gatecrash their morning after. Great arias and duets burst out of the action like lines of dialogue, while a few nods to French chanson instantly win the audience over.
But the more they play, the more the game catches up with them. Beneath the squabbling, old wounds surface; beneath the closeness, rivalry. And as they tell each other their love stories, the two women end up putting to the test a story that has lasted forever: their own.
A show for lovers of the voice – and for everyone who still thinks opera isn’t for them.
Repertoire
Opera, operetta and musicals, with nods to French chanson: Mozart, Bizet, Offenbach, Puccini, Massenet, Verdi, Ravel, Bernstein…
Director’s note
“What if opera weren’t a world apart, but simply another way of telling our lives? Heartbreak, a sister who drives you mad, a night out that goes off the rails, the urge to seduce, jealousy, anger… For four centuries, opera has talked about little else – only on a much grander scale. There is something deeply joyful about hearing a heroine unleash the full power of her voice to settle… a petty little misery.”
Around the show
No need to know anything about opera to get into it: the arias are neither introduced nor explained – they spring from situations everyone recognises. Each performance can be paired with a meet-the-artists session or a voice and drama workshop, designed with the host venue. For schools, the show is an ideal first encounter with opera, with sessions built together with the teaching teams.
The performers
Laura Baudelet – Dramatic coloratura soprano and prizewinner at competitions in Berlin, Lille and Moscow, she refined her art with Montserrat Caballé and Ramón Vargas. Her roles include Violetta, Fiordiligi, Marguerite and Alcina, and she runs the company Minuit Opéra.
Anaïs Yvoz – Trained at the Haute École de Musique de Lausanne and a former member of the Opéra Studio of the Opéra national du Rhin, she has sung at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the Theater an der Wien and the Alte Oper Frankfurt, and is now taking on the great dramatic mezzo roles, from Carmen to Dalila.
Tristan Raës – Trained at the Paris Conservatoire (CNSMDP) and a prizewinner of the Nadia and Lili Boulanger Competition, he forms the Duo Contraste with tenor Cyrille Dubois, whose recording of Fauré’s complete songs was hailed by Gramophone as Recording of the Year.
Julien Ostini – Director of Faust in Saint-Étienne, Philémon et Baucis in Tours and Iphigénie en Tauride for Angers Nantes Opéra and the Opéra de Rennes, he founded Linière(s) in Mayenne and directs Petites Misères opératiques.
A production by the company Minuit Opéra, co-produced with Linière(s)
