Costume Designer

Mozart’s famous opera is a whirlwind comedy of betrothal, betrayal and deliciously bad behaviour.

The Marriage of Figaro

London Coliseum

SINGING MIGHT MAKE MORE SENSE OF LIFE THAN LIVING HAD TO START WITH.</q><cite>— RICHARD POWERS (THE TIME OF OUR SINGING)</cite> <p>After a year of anticipation, Kris Defoort’s new opera will finally be brought to the stage! Black Lives Matter, police brutality, rigged elections: these are themes that have remained at the forefront of current affairs over the past year. There are clear parallels to be drawn between the recent history of the US and <em>The Time of Our Singing</em>, which was inspired by the Richard Powers novel of the same name. The work depicts the life of a mixed-race family that is both united and divided by music, against the backdrop of segregation in the post-war United States. In collaboration with the librettist Peter van Kraaij, the conductor Kwamé Ryan, and the stage director Ted Huffman, Kris Defoort conjures an imaginary space in which official history and personal histories intertwine, in which people come together to weave a narrative, and in which jazz and classical music are enriched by one another. ‘To my mind, it doesn’t happen often that a contemporary opera is so profoundly rooted in the “now” and yet raises so many universal themes.’ (Kris Defoort)

EPSG:4326

The Time of Our Singing

La Monnaie

Massenet is the composer who did the most to establish the Opéra-Comique as a major performing arts center. Paradoxically, his adaptation of Goethe's first novel was rejected by the director at the time, who preferred to offer his bourgeois audiences happy love stories. The Viennese triumph of Werther quickly opened the doors to our institution, where it has become one of the most performed titles.

Werther

National Theatre of the Opera Comique

With his poetic opera The Cunning Little Vixen, Leoš Janáček brought nothing less than the eternal cycle of becoming and passing to the stage. It tells the life story of the young, rebellious vixen Bystrouška, or Sharp Ears, who is captured by the forester and starts a revolution at his homestead before she succeeds in escaping. Back in the freedom of the forest, she founds a family with a fox and is then shot by a poacher. The seemingly so civilized human world looks wistfully at wild nature, which follows its own laws of life and love.

Costume Designer

Astrid Klein

Events

Upcoming events

19 - 29 Jan, 2026

Werther · Opéra Comique

Feb 28 - Mar 15, 2026

Das schlaue Füchslein · Staatsoper Berlin

Past events

5 - 22 Feb, 2025

The Marriage of Figaro · English National Opera

14 - 26 Sep, 2021

The Time of Our Singing ·

About