Giacomo Puccini's opera
Madame Butterfly will be
presented by the traveling festival Opéra en plein air this summer, from June to September, facing an audience reduced by a third
.
Only 2000 spectators instead of 3000 will enjoy the show every evening directed by Olivier Desbordes and directed by Dominique Trottein for the 20th anniversary of the festival announced on Tuesday by the organizers.
“Despite the terrible year we have just passed, the Open Air Opera Tour will be able to resume.
We have the chance to play outdoors, which I hope will reassure the public, ”
said Estelle Martin, one of the event managers.
Read also: While waiting for the reopening on May 19, the masterpieces of the Musée d'Orsay "vibrate in music"
Since 2001, the Opéra en plein air tour has been offering great classical works performed under the stars in unpublished staging, on exceptional heritage sites in the Paris region
"to bring opera out of the great lyric theaters and raise awareness among all. audiences ”
to this art.
"We are moving forward with government directives and an adaptable health protocol according to the progress of the situation
," said Estelle Martin, about the conditions of reception of the public.
At each place, we start with a 65% gauge with 2,000 spectators per evening, instead of 3,000, ”
she added, pending decrees specifying the measures for welcoming the public outside. "
If in June the curfew remains fixed at 11pm, even for people who can justify a show ticket, we plan to bring the performances forward to 7:30 pm
”, also indicated Estelle Martin.
The return of festivals
While the places of culture should reopen on May 19, the Minister of Culture Roselyne Bachelot assured, at the end of April, that the festivals and other major cultural events of the summer should indeed take place, on condition of respecting distancing and health control measures.
Despite the appeasement of the pandemic during last summer, the festival was forced to postpone its programming scheduled for 2020. Thanks to a crowdfunding campaign launched in the spring, Opéra en plein air should find its audience as early as next month.
One of the most popular operas in the lyric repertoire,
Madame Butterfly
evokes the tragic fate of a young geisha, married to an American officer. Since 2001, Opéra en plein air has attracted nearly 775,000 spectators with performances of many major works of the repertoire, such as
Aïda
by Verdi, La
Tosca
and
La Bohème
by Puccini,
Les Noces de Figaro
and
La Flûte enchantée
by Mozart, or again
The Barber of Seville
by Rossini.