Lighting Designer

“She is a statue of beauty when standing or sitting: grace itself when she moves,” the 18th century English writer and artist Horace Walpole wrote about the legendary Queen of France Marie Antoinette. This colourful character from French history inspired the ballet by the French choreographer Thierry Malandain that premiered with his own ensemble, Malandain Ballet Biarritz, in 2019 in the very theatre that Marie Antoinette inaugurated on 16 May 1770 to mark her wedding to Louis XVI: the Opéra Royal Château de Versailles.

Marie Antoinette’s life in Versailles is central to Malandain’s ballet, which the choreographer has created to music by two of her contemporaries – Joseph Haydn and Christoph Willibald Gluck. The piece depicts her arrival at court, her wedding day, the opening of the opera house with Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Persée – as a ballet within the ballet – the attempted escape that would ultimately be her undoing and the infamous parties and balls associated with the Queen.

Marie Antoinette

Volksoper Wien

The Chamber of Love, of which legend sings, is a cave on the Basque coast, once flooded by high tide and since the 18th century the scene of a sentimental tragedy. History calls it Ura and Ederra (Water and Beauty). At the very moment when they were savoring life and love at their most, the ocean swallowed them with its caresses and threats, its calm and its fury. In the morning, their bodies still lay entwined on the sand.

Lighting Designer

François Menou

Events

Upcoming events

Dec 20, 2025 - Apr 5, 2026

Marie Antoinette · Volksoper Wien

8 - 9 Jan, 2026

Love Room · Theater Bonn

About

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