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The Bastille Opera 2017-2018 Season

The third season of Stéphane Lissner at the head of the Paris National Opera and already a statement in Paris, the city that is one of the world’s leading capitals of the Opera. The Opera Bastille offers high-quality shows with top performers and is likely to be fully booked at many dates.

Reserve your places promptly, especially for what promises to be one of the biggest highlights of the international season, the opera Don Carlos. Having chosen the original version in French of this masterpiece by Verdi, the artistic team aims high with an exceptional distribution in more ways than one. Understandably, the biggest tenor Jonas Kaufmann is present but the artists around him are at the same exceptional level. Sonya Yoncheva, Elina Garanca, Ludovic Tézier and Ildar Abdrazakov form a dream quintet.

But far from being an isolated production, the same excellence is also found with the new staging of La Bohème and the exceptional arrival of Gustavo Dudamel, a highly-anticipated conductor, in the orchestra pit of the Bastille Opera. The soprano Sonya Yoncheva, new international singing star embodies the moving Mimí alternating with a rising star Nicole Car.

Every great opera house must invite the superstars and Paris is really spoiled (we can not fail to mention Philippe Jordan, musical director and adored conductor of the audience). Roberto Alagna and Marcelo Alvarez are playing Il Trovatore facing the superb Sondra Radvanovsky. The soprano is equally distributed in A ballo in maschera alternating with another sublime artist, Anja Harteros. The undescribable Bryn Terfel, finally offers Paris one of his best roles, Sir John Falstaff. We only miss one last international superstar to complete the picture. Anna Netrebko is in Paris to play one of her biggest roles, La Traviata. Plácido Domingo will be her partner for three performances that are already being announced as historical.

But opera also stands for beautiful duets. The 2017-2018 season of Bastille opens with Die lustige Witwe, bringing together Véronique Gens and Thomas Hampson, two wonderful artists. Peter Mattei and Andreas Schager share Parsifal’s poster (directed by the well-known Richard Jones) with also Wagnerian Anja Kampe.

Other productions are also remarkable as Benvenuto Cellini, Berlioz’s little-played masterpiece that is staged by Terry Guilliam, former Monty Python. Boris Godunov is another highlight of the season with the arrival of the conductor Vladimir Jurowski and staging by Ivo Van Hove. With Janácek’s “From the House of the Dead”, another great name of the theater is being reverenced, Patrice Chéreau.

The Bastille Opera also includes ballet performances such as the classic Don Quixote by Nureyev, the splendid Romeo and Juliet by Sasha Waltz or the exceptional Millepied / Béjart evening with its famous Bolero.

The season of the Opéra National de Paris is divided between its two main halls. You will find the overview of the 2017-2018 season of the Palais Garnier by following this link.