Name: Bows and banderillas
Start: 2026-05-17T16:00:00
Location: Lille Opera

Jonathan Brown

Abel Tomàs

Vera Martínez Mehner

Arnau Tomàs

Opéra de Lille

Cuarteto Casals

In Béla Bartók's only opera, Judith leaves her family and fiancé to become Bluebeard's wife. He welcomes her to a dark and solitary castle, a reflection of his own private life. Judith wants to bring light into the castle and forces him to open, one by one, the seven tightly locked interior doors, behind which lie repressed desires and traumatic memories. In this early 20th-century masterpiece , Bartók conveys the full force of the couple's violence and sensuality through music of great evocative power.

Bluebeard's Castle

Lille Opera

For Elina Makropoulos, this dream becomes reality in an involuntary and paradoxical experience. Long ago, her alchemist father tested an elixir of life on her. Since then, she has traveled throughout Europe, constantly changing her identity and her lover. Now 337 years old, an opera singer known as Emilia Marty, she finds herself embroiled in an inheritance dispute. While her beauty and undiminished voice still captivate, her sole objective is to rediscover the formula for the elixir, whose effects are threatening to fade. But is eternal life truly an enviable destiny?

The Makropoulos Affair

Every day, different unusual, fun and participatory activities invite children to discover the fascinating world of music and dance.

Opera Games

In Terminal Beach , six individuals searching for a future seek a way out of an impenetrable world, as black as night. By turns knights, cowboys, or revolutionaries, they tread well-trodden paths, explore uncharted territories, and replay history, embarking on grand journeys and small escapes. In a dazzling choreographic, visual, and musical collage, they blend eras, styles, and techniques, revealing the emancipatory power of a creative youth. From this hallucinatory fresco, where Brueghel might meet Monty Python, where Verdi rubs shoulders with Johnny Cash, emerges a new narrative of our time, poised between the possibility of a horizon and the temptation of turning back.

Terminal Beach

In Jean Cocteau's novel, the "enfant terribles" are named Paul and Élisabeth. They are brother and sister, teenagers and orphans. Alone in a society they reject, they transform their room into an imaginary kingdom, a sanctuary of a symbiotic relationship where love borders on obsession and conceals a latent violence. When two friends, Gérard and then Agathe, intrude upon their private world, the threat of losing Paul draws Élisabeth into a vicious cycle of dangerous games, jealousy, and manipulation. In this short novel published in 1929, the author illuminates the fragility of adolescence, the impossibility of suspending time, and the disastrous consequences of an all-consuming passion.

The Terrible Children

A child of separation, the American Steve Reich, a pioneer of minimalist music, regularly traveled back and forth by train between New York and Los Angeles. During these long journeys, one thought constantly preoccupied him: had he been born a little earlier in Europe, with his Jewish heritage, he would undoubtedly have traveled on different trains. This is what gave rise in 1988 to Different Trains , a string quartet with a soundtrack.

Leave

Prince Tamino must find Pamina, daughter of the Queen of the Night, who is being held captive by a tyrant. To help Tamino in this quest, the Queen entrusts him with a magic flute that will allow him to face all dangers. Accompanied by his new friend, the birdcatcher Papageno, Tamino embarks on his adventure. He then discovers that Sarastro, who holds Pamina captive, has supposedly kidnapped the princess to protect her from her mother's evil spells. Whom to believe? How to distinguish truth from falsehood, good from evil, friend from foe? For Mozart, the heart must always be the compass! But before Tamino and Pamina can be together, they must overcome various obstacles and find their own path.

The Magic Flute

The Catalan quartet Casals brings together in the Lille arena two late works by Mozart's Viennese "colleagues", in which the wisdom of age is expressed as much as the permanent desire for novelty.

Bows and banderillas

In each of her pieces, Marlene Monteiro Freitas choreographs bodies and faces to reveal contrasts, juxtaposing opposites with the eccentricity of the popular processions of her childhood in Cape Verde. "In the carnivalesque, ugliness and beauty, pleasure and sadness, what we reject and what attracts us, walk side by side, hand in hand," she observes. In Canine Jaunâtre 3 , all of this is present.

Yellowish Canine 3

This creation by Mylène Benoit for the Lille Opera gives children a voice through words, gestures, and song. Based on the unique approach of American composer Meredith Monk, who explores the voice as an instrument, the sung and danced performance highlights children's natural capacity for empathy.