To celebrate the Music Day’s 35th anniversary, the Paris Opera gave on 21 June 2016 an exceptional concert at the Bastille Opera House. The program included excerpts of 19th century French and Italian classic repertoire, such as Verdi’s famous operas (Aida, Nabucco, La Forza del Destino, Il Trovatore and La Traviata), Bizet’s Carmen, Pucini’s Tosca, Saint- Saëns’s Samson and Delilah, Bellini’s Norma.This program featured the Paris Opera Orchestra and Choruses, conducted by Philippe Jordan, and three exceptional soloists: Sondra Radvanovsky, Anita Rachvelishvili and Aleksandr Antonenko. The Paris Opera Orchestra and ChorusesA co-production of the Paris Opera, Telmondis, ARTE France With the support of the Centre national du Cinéma et de l'Image Animée and the Orange Foundation, sponsor of the Paris Opera's audiovisual broadcastsDirector: François-René Martin © Opéra national de Paris – Telmondis – Arte France 2016Picture: Jean-François Leclercq / OnP

Concert symphonique

Exceptional lyric concert

To celebrate the Music Day’s 35th anniversary, the Paris Opera gave on 21 June 2016 an exceptional concert at the Bastille Opera House. The program included excerpts of 19th century French and Italian classic repertoire, such as Verdi’s famous operas

Verdi, Puccini, Saint-Saëns, Bizet, Bellini

Coming from an artistic Swiss family, Philippe Jordan’s is regarded as one of the most established and important conductors of our time. He has been appointed Music Director of the Wiener Staatsoper beginning in September 2020. 
Jordan started his career at the age of 20 as musical director at Theater Ulm. In 1998 he became assistant to Daniel Barenboim at the Berlin State Opera. From 2001-2004 he was principal conductor of Graz Opera and the Graz Philharmonic Orchestra. During this period he also debuted at several of the world’s leading opera houses and festivals, for example the Metropolitan Opera New York, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Teatro alla Scala, Bavarian State Opera, the Wiener Staatsoper and Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, and the festivals of Aix-en-Provence, Glyndebourne and Salzburg. From 2006-2010 Jordan returned to the Berlin State Opera as principal guest conductor. During this time he also appeared regularly in his hometown at the Zurich Opera. In the summer of 2012 Philippe Jordan debuted at the Bayreuth Festival. In Summer 2021, Philippe Jordan will leave his post as musical director of the Opéra national de Paris, which he has helmed since 2009. During his time as musical director in Paris he has conducted numerous premieres and revivals, including Moses und Aaron, La Damnation de Faust, Der Rosenkavalier, Samson et Dalila, Lohengrin, Don Carlos (French original version), Benvenuto Cellini, Bérénice and Les Troyens, Don Giovanni and the new production of Borodin’s Prince Igor. In his last season as musical director at Opéra national de Paris he will conduct Wagner’s “Ring” cycle in a concert version. 
As a symphonic conductor, Philippe Jordan has conducted the world’s most famous orchestras. He has also been principal conductor of the Wiener Symphoniker from 2014 to 2020. Together with the orchestra he has developed complete cycles of Schubert’s symphonies and Beethoven’s symphonies and piano concerti, and a cycle of J. S. Bach’s major masses and oratorios. In a three-part Bruckner project at the Wiener Musikverein, he performed the composer’s seventh, eighth and ninth symphonies in a contrast-filled dialogue with modern classics by Kurtág, Ligeti and Scelsi. For the Beethoven anniversary year, he also performed a reconstruction of the legendary Grand Concert of 22 December 1808 with performances in Paris and Vienna. 
His recording work with the Paris Opera Orchestra includes discs of Strauss’ Eine Alpensinfonie, Stravinski’s The Rite of Spring, Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, Verdi’s Requiem and Beethoven’s and Tchaikovsky’s Symphonies.

Born in Buenos Aires and of Italo-Argentian nationality, José Luis Basso studied piano and orchestral conducting at the University of his hometown. He was appointed Chorus Master at the Teatro Argentino in La Plata where he spent four years preparing operatic and choral works. In 1987, a grant permitted him to pursue his studies at Temple University in Philadelphia. In 1989, he took up the post of Chorus Master at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. That same year, he conducted the chorus of the Buenos Aires Wagner Association and in 1994, he became assistant to the celebrated Chorus master at La Scala Milan, Romano Gandolfi. He was then appointed Chorus Master at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples where he brought to the Opera Chorus a new dynamism, his conducting of Lohengrin and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony attracting considerable acclaim. In 1996, he joined the Maggio Musicale Fiorentine where he prepared the choir for Parsifal conducted by Semyon Bychkov, Turandot with Zubin Mehta and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk for which he received the INA-Assitalia Galileo Prize for young conductors 2000. In April 2001, he accompanied the Orchestra and Chorus to Tokyo for the inauguration of the “Italy in Japan 2001” event. He has made a number of recordings for Decca including Turandot, La Bohème, Tosca and Aroldo. As chorus master, he has been invited to the Shanghai Opera, the Mariinski Theatre in Saint Petersburg and the Lyon Opera for Aïda and Carmina Burana. In 2003, he won a Grammy Award with the Chorus of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the soprano Renée Fleming for the album Bel Canto. In the course of the last two decades, he has worked alongside many of the world’s leading conductors: Zubin Mehta, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Muti, Georges Prêtre, Antonio Pappano, Seiji Ozawa, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Carlo Maria Giulini, Myung-Whun Chung, Peter Schreier, Bruno Bartoletti, Rafael Frühbeck De Burgos, Semyon Bychkov, Daniel Oren, Valery Gergiev, Stéphane Denève, Jordi Savall, Fabio Luisi, Marc Piollet, Pinchas Steinberg, Michael Boder, Sebastian Weigle, Gerd Albrecht and Josep Pons. From 2004 to 2014 he was Chorus Master and Artistic Consultant at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelone. Since September 2014 he has been Chorus Master of the Paris Opera.

Sondra Radvanovsky was trained at the Metropolitan Opera New York at the end of the 1990s as part of the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. Since then, she has performed on the leading international opera stages, including the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Metropolitan Opera New York and Zurich Opernhaus. Last season, she appeared in the title roles of Medea the Metropolitan Opera New York, Tosca at the Zurich Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin and Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona, and in Turandot at the Zurich Opera. She gave a recital at Carnegie Hall in New York with pianist Anthony Manoli, and several recitals with tenor Piotr Beczała at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona and at the Cankarjev Dom in Ljubljana. The 2023/24 season sees her as Leonora (La forza del destino) at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, in the title roles in Turandot at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, Aida at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and Medea in Toronto. She also sings Lisa (The Queen of Spade) at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and Maddalena (Andrea Chénier) at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. She performs many recitals and has revived the program ‘The Three Queens’, based on Donizetti’s operas Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux at the Teatro Real in Madrid. Sondra Radvanovsky has also collaborated with various record labels. Her first album ‘Verdi Arias’ was released in April 2012 with the label Delos. Other recordings include a new Turandot album with Warner Classics, where she sings the title role under the baton of Antonio Pappano. Her performances can also be watched in DVD, including shows of Il Trovatore, Un ballo in maschera, Roberto Devereux and Medea for the series ‘Met: Live in HD’.

At the Paris Opera: Faust (Marguerite), 2001; Vespri siciliani (Hélène), 2003; Il Trovatore (Leonora), 2003, 2018; Don Carlo (Elisabetta di Valois), 2010; Aida (title role), 2016, 2021; Un ballo in maschera (Amelia), 2018; Turandot (title role), 2023

Anita Rachvelishvili made her debut at the Tbilisi Opera (the city of her birth). In 2007, she entered the La Scala Academy in Milan, where she was discovered by Daniel Barenboim. In 2009, the latter picked her to perform the title role in Carmen alongside Jonas Kaufmann. Soon thereafter, her career took on an international dimension. She made house debuts in the same role at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, the Seattle Opera, the San Francisco Opera, the Teatro Regio in Turin, the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto, the Rome Opera, the Verona Arena, and the Royal Opera House in London. She sang Dalila in a concert performance of Samson et Dalila at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and appeared as Dulcinea (Don Quichotte) at the Teatro Lirico in Cagliari, Princess de Bouillon (Adriana Lecouvreur) at Carnegie Hall, Isabella (L’italiana in Algeri) at Milan’s La Scala, Amneris (Aida) at Milan’s La Scala and the Verona Arena, Liubacha (Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride) at the Berlin Staatsoper, Konchakovna, (Dmitri Tcherniakov’s production of Prince Igor) at the Metropolitan Opera, Verdi’s Requiem at Milan’s La Scala and the Salzburg Festival (conducted by Christian Thielemann), and Marfa (Khovanshchina) at the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam. After making her house debut at the Paris Opera in the role of Amneris (Aida) she was invited back to appear in Samson et Dalila, Carmen, Il Trovatore (Azucena), Don Carlo (Eboli), and Prince Igor (Konchakovna,). She also sang the title role of Carmen at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, the Lyric Opera in Chicago, the Semperoper in Dresden, and the Athens Festival. She also sang Azucena at London’s Royal Opera House, New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Berlin’s Deutsche Oper, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, and the Vienna Staatsoper; Amneris at the 2017 Chorégies d’Orange, the Teatro Regio in Turin, and the Vienna Staatsoper; Santuzza (Cavalleria rusticana) at the Rome Opera and the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam; Amneris, Dalila and Princess de Bouillon at New York’s Metropolitan Opera; Dalila at the Monte Carlo Opera, and Princess de Bouillon at the Salzburg Festival.&nbsp;

The Latvian tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko made his debut at the Riga Opera, where he sang the major roles in the repertoire (including Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni, Alfredo in La Traviata, Erik in Der fliegende Holländer, Ismaele in Nabucco, Ferrando in Così fan tutte, Lensky in Eugene Onegin, Don José in Carmen and Cavaradossi in Tosca). In 2002, he won the Paul Sakss prize in Latvia. He then began an international career in the lyric spinto tenor repertoire. He made his French debut in 2005 at the Bordeaux Opera (Hermann in The Queen of Spades). He has sung at the Dresden Semperoper, (Cavaradossi, Otello), Berlin’s Deutsche Oper, (Turiddu in Cavalleria rusticana), the Deutsche Oper am Rhein (where he notably sang Joseph Hagenbach in La Wally), the Royal Opera in Stockholm (Des Grieux in Manon Lescaut, Dick Johnson in La Fanciulla del West), the Oslo Opera (Des Grieux, Don José in Carmen, the Monte Carlo Opera (Turiddu), the Baden-Baden Festival (Cavaradossi), the Frankfurt Opera (Gabriele Adorno in Simon Boccanegra), the Bavarian State Opera, Munich (Ismaele), the Paris Opera (Otello), the Grand Théâtre, Geneva (Samson et Dalila), the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London (Luigi in Il Tabarro, Otello), and La Scala in Milan (Cavaradossi). He made his Salzburg Festival debut in 2008 in the title role of Otello under the baton of Riccardo Muti and he made his debut appearance at the Verona Arena in 2012 in Tosca. More recently, he sang Radames in Zurich, Riga and at the Paris Opera, Manrico (Il Trovatore) at the Staatsoper, Berlin under Daniel Barenboim, Calaf (Turandot) at Milan’s La Scala, and the Metropolitan Opera, Don José, Pollione, and Otello at the Metropolitan Opera, Turiddu (Cavalleria rusticana), Canio (Pagliacci) and Des Grieux (Manon Lescaut) at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Samson at the Paris Opera, Dick Johnson and Cavaradossi at the Vienna Staatsoper and Otello in Zurich.

Giuseppe Verdi was born in 1813 into a modest but relatively well-to-do family in the hamlet of Le Roncole, near Busseto. He received his first musical training from the village organist. In 1824, he became the organist at the church in Busseto. After following music lessons with the organist and composer Ferdinando Provesi, he was noticed by Antonio Barezzi, a spirits merchant and music aficionado who also founded the Filarmonici (Societa filarmonica), the town’s amateur orchestra. Barezzi would become Verdi’s patron and sponsor and the composer would ultimately marry Barezzi’s daughter Margherita in 1836. A stipend enabled him to continue his studies in Milan where he took private lessons with Vincenzo Lavigna, a teacher at La Scala, and a friend of Rossini. On the recommendations of the impresario Bartolomeo Merelli, his first opera, Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio was performed at La Scala in Milan. For a short while following the death of his two children and then his wife Margherita, and after the relative fiasco that befell his second opera, Un giorno di regno, Verdi considered abandoning music altogether. However, he started composing again when Merelli offered him the libretto for Nabucco. That opera was a huge success at its premiere at La Scala on March 9, 1842 and it did not take long before all of Italy was singing Va pensiero, the anthem in which the chorus of slaves lament their lost freedom. From then on, Verdi became the bard of Italian unification. Most of the works that followed would be operas with patriotic undertones (I Lombardi alla prima crocciata, Ernani, Giovanna d’Arco, Attila, La Battaglia di Legnano…). In 1847, Verdi left for London for the world premiere of I Masnadieri, then settled in Paris where he met up with Giuseppina Strepponi, who would create the role of Abigaille. They would never be separated again. Verdi purchased the property at Sant’Agata, near Busseto and openly enlisted in the struggle for the liberation of Italy, which was then occupied by the Austrians. After 1850, Verdi was unrivalled in Italy. In particular, his popular trilogy, Rigoletto – Il Trovatore – La Traviata dates from this period.Les Vêpres siciliennes (Paris, 1855), Simon Boccanegra (La Fenice in Venice, 1857), Un ballo in maschera (Rome, 1859), La Forza del destino (Saint Petersburg, 1862), Don Carlos (Paris, 1867), Aida (Cairo, 1871), the Messa di Requiem (Milan, 1874), Otello (Milan, 1887), and Falstaff (Milan, 1893) would follow. In 1861, he was elected deputy of Busseto. He passed away in Milan on January 27, 1901. With no heir at the time of his death, Verdi bequeathed his copyrights to the retirement home for aging musicians that he had founded in Milan.

La Forza del destino - ouverture

Giacomo Puccini was born in 1858 in Lucca, Italy, to a family of organists (his father was a notorious theoretician and music teacher). A performance of Verdi's Aida, which he saw in Pisa in 1876, convinced him that his vocation was to become a composer. He studied at the Milan Conservatory with, among others, Amilcare Ponchielli. On Ponchielli's advice, he took part in a composition competition launched by the Sonzogno publishing house in 1883 for a one-act opera. Although he did not win the prize his piece, Le Villi, was staged in 1884 in Milan with some success. The music publisher Ricordi then commissioned him a second opera, Edgar. His third opera, Manon Lescaut, brought him lasting fame and marked the beginning of a fruitful collaboration with the librettists Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. Together, they wrote Puccini's three greatest masterpieces: La Bohème (1896), Tosca (1900) and Madama Butterfly (1904). In 1910, the premiere of La Fanciulla del West took place at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Puccini then composed a lighter piece, La Rondine, performed without much success at the Monte-Carlo Opera. After that, Puccini slowed down his compositional work. A car accident left him lame for the rest of his life and it was not until 1918 that The Triptych (Il Tabarro, Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi) premiered at the Metropolitan Opera. He died in Brussels in 1924 of throat cancer. His last opera, Turandot, remained unfinished. The last two scenes were completed by Franco Alfano. However, when Toscanini premiered Turandot at La Scala in Milan on 25 April 1926, he hold his baton to mark the point Puccini had reached before dying and turned to the audience: “Here the master laid down his pen. He stopped there when he died”. Puccini also wrote a number of religious works (Salve regina, Messa di Gloria).

Tosca - « E lucevan le stelle », « Vissi d’arte »

Born in Paris on October 9, 1835, Camille Saint-Saëns showed an early gift for music. A child prodigy on piano, organ, and composition, he gave his first private recital at the age of four and a half (reported in the Moniteur Universel of August 1, 1840), and at eleven he performed in public at the Salle Pleyel. He entered the Conservatoire at the age of thirteen and won the first prize for organ in 1851. At the age of eighteen, he was appointed organist of the Saint-Merri church and created his first symphony. In 1857, he became titular of the Cavaillé-Coll organ at the church of La Madeleine, a position he held for twenty years. Liszt hailed Saint-Saëns as "the first organist in the world". From 1861 to 1865, he taught piano at the École Niedermeyer in Paris, where his students included Gabriel Fauré and André Messager. Although he failed twice in the Prix de Rome competition, he quickly became well known. As a composer, he distinguished himself in all fields: twelve operas, including La Princesse jaune (1872), Samson et Dalila (1877), Henri VIII (1883), Déjanire (1911), religious works, including a Messe solennelle and a Requiem, numerous oratorios, symphonic poems (Le Rouet d'Omphale, 1871; Phaéton, 1873; La Danse macabre, 1875), five symphonies, the last of which, called No. 3, with organ (1886), five piano concertos, three violin concertos and two for cello, chamber music, picturesque pieces (Le Carnaval des animaux, 1886), etc. In 1908, he was the first renowned composer to write a film score, for The Assassination of the Duke of Guise. In addition to his own compositional work, he collaborated in the publication of the works of Gluck, Beethoven, Liszt, Mozart and, in the 1870s, he wrote regularly in newspapers, including La Gazette musicale. In 1871, he founded the Société nationale de musique with Romain Bussine, Alexis de Castillon, Gabriel Fauré, César Franck, Louis Lalo. The society encouraged French music and created works by Saint-Saëns, Chabrier, Debussy, Dukas and Ravel. In 1886, he broke with the Société nationale de musique, because they decided to play foreign composers. In 1901, he was elected president of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Polyglot, he has a taste for travel and travels the continents to give concerts and recitals, attend performances of his works and promote French music and culture. From 1873, he regularly visited Algeria and Egypt. He died in Algiers on December 16, 1921.

Samson et Dalila - « Amour, viens aider ma faiblesse », « Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix »

Il Trovatore - « Coro degli zingari »

Born on October 25, 1838 in Paris to a family of musicians, Georges Bizet studied piano at an early age and was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire at 10, where he studied with Halévy. His brilliant studies culminated in 1857 when he won the Prix de Rome. The same year, his first stage work, the one-act operetta Le Docteur miracle performed at the Bouffes Parisiens and was awarded a prize by Offenbach, shared with Lecocq. During the next three years that he spent in Rome, he composed an opera buffa, Don Procopio. But his first operas, Les Pêcheurs de perles (The Pearl Fishers, 1863) and La Jolie Fille de Perth (The Fair Maid of Perth, 1866) were not successful. Djamileh composed to Musset and performed in 1872 at the Opéra Comique, or his incidental music composed for Daudet’s play L’Arlésienne and staged in October 1st at the Vaudeville, were both failures. However, an orchestral suite derived from L’Arlésienne and performed at the Concerts Pasdeloup in December, was instantly popular. Encouraged by this success, Bizet began composing Carmen, interrupted by the writing of a grand opera based on Corneille, Don Rodrigue, which remained unfinished after the fire that burned the opera house where it was to be performed. Sadly, the premiere of Carmen was another failure that hastened his end. He died on June 3, 1875 in Bougival, at only 37 years old.

Carmen - « L’amour est un oiseau rebelle », « La fleur que tu m’avais jetée »

Aida - « O patria mia »

Nabucco - « Va pensiero »

Born in Catania, Italy, in 1801, a contemporary of Donizetti, Vincenzo Bellini was, at first, considered as the heir of Rossini. Yet, he was able to distance from the Rossinian example, as he strove for an ideal of virtuosity. Bellini always put first in his work the quality of the melody, the search for dramatic expression and the portrayal of emotions. His early death (he died in 1835) deprived the history of a musician who could have become Verdi's only great rival. Raised in Naples, he studied composition with Giovanni Furno, Giacomo Tritto and Niccolo Zingarelli. He had not yet completed his studies when he created a small opera entitled Adelson e Salvini (1825) on the conservatory stage. Almost immediately he was commissioned to write Bianca e Fernando (1826) for the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. The piece was so well received that Bellini was immediately invited to compose Il pirata (1827) for La Scala in Milan, which was a great success. Bellini went on to compose La straniera (The Foreign Woman), Zaira and I Capuleti e i Montecchi (1830). His fame was already growing when he returned to Milan to give La sonnambula, which earned him an international reputation. At the end of that same year, and again in Milan, he had his masterpiece Norma performed. In 1833 Beatrice de Tende was premiered in Venice and it was then that, thanks to Rossini's influence, he was commissioned to compose an opera for the Théâtre-Italien in Paris. He settled in Puteaux, where he wrote I puritani, performed in 1835 to great acclaim. The composer died a few days later.

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Exceptional lyric concert

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La Forza del destino - ouverture

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Tosca - « E lucevan le stelle », « Vissi d’arte »

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Samson et Dalila - « Amour, viens aider ma faiblesse », « Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix »

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Il Trovatore - « Coro degli zingari »

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Carmen - « L’amour est un oiseau rebelle », « La fleur que tu m’avais jetée »

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Aida - « O patria mia »

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Nabucco - « Va pensiero »

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Norma - « Casta diva »

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La Traviata - « Brindisi »

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