The 2026 season at Opéra de Lille promises a captivating journey through the timeless world of opera, ballet, dance, and chamber music. From the haunting narrative of 'The Makropoulos Affair' to the vibrant exploration of youth in 'Terminal Beach', each performance captures unique themes and emotions. Featuring artistic talents like Véronique Gens and Nikola Printz, and creative works from legendary composers such as Mozart and Steve Reich, the season at the Lille Opera House celebrates art's profound impact on our lives. Families and music enthusiasts alike can look forward to a series of unforgettable experiences.

Exploring the Opéra de Lille's Diverse and Captivating 2026 Season

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

Like Pina Bausch before him, Aurélien Bory was invited by the Teatro Biondo to work in Palermo between 2020 and 2023. In the Sicilian capital, at the Palazzo Abatellis, he discovered The Triumph of Death , a fascinating monumental 15th - century painting. Reproduced to scale (six meters by six), the anonymous work became the backdrop for a moving human fresco that stages the invisible: the disappearance of life.

invisible

In both song cycles performed by Petr Nekoranec and Ahmad Hedar, the subject is always a young man who embarks on a path paved with uncertainties out of love.

The heart has its reasons

A joyful weekend awaits children and their families at the Lille Opera House! With the help of the irresistible Zonzo Compagnie, the entire building will be transformed into a labyrinth of colorful musical adventures. Vibrant shows, sound installations, a mini-disco, a treasure hunt, and a creative workshop will delight all lovers of unusual experiences!

Big Bang Happy Days for children

In a striking icy landscape, a ship is trapped in polar waters. Its GPS coordinates – S 62° 58', W 60° 39' – place it off the coast of Deception Island. Panicked, the passengers struggle to survive in this hostile environment. When a performer confronts the director, the drama gives way to another reality: that of the artists creating the piece from scratch, as if stranded on a blank page. Their search for truth and authentic emotion pushes them beyond their limits. The days are long, the conditions grueling. The crew's struggle for survival becomes a struggle for the survival of the artistic process itself. And paradoxically, for the performers who have sacrificed their lives for their art, leaving the stage is an agonizing prospect.

S 62° 58', W 60° 39'

Colin delights his friends with dishes prepared by his cook Nicolas, invents a pianocktail to match drinks to melodies, and dreams of true love. When Chloé enters his life, happiness seems complete. But a sinister water lily slowly grows in the young woman's lung.

Foam of the Daze

Opéra de Lille

Liebestod , literally "death of love," refers to the famous finale of Richard Wagner's opera Tristan and Isolde . In this tragic scene, Isolde dies before Tristan's lifeless body. The term more broadly evokes the radical idea of ​​love made perfect by death.

Songs of love and death

At the beginning of the last century, the American composer Charles Ives had a rather crazy dream: to create radically new music by layering all the styles he loved. Let's be crazy too and make this dream a grand celebration!

Parade

Place du Théâtre

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.

Opéra de Lille

5 - 16 Feb, 2026

The Makropoulos Affair

19 - 23 Feb, 2026

Opera Games

Feb 28 - Mar 1, 2026

Terminal Beach

20 - 26 Mar, 2026

The Terrible Children

Mar 31, 2026

Leave

18 - 19 Dec, 2025

Bluebeard's Castle

12 - 13 Dec, 2025

invisible

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