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Claude Debussy
Pelléas et Mélisande
Budapest Festival Orchestra
Iván Fischer
Back on the bill at the Spoleto Festival isOpera with a new staging of one of the most fascinating titles in the repertoire, Claude Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, entrusted to the Budapest Festival Orchestra and conducted by Iván Fischer, among the top performers of the moment. At the center of the staging is precisely the musical performance: an unconventional stage arrangement combines music and theater, following the spirit of all the operatic productions signed by the Maestro with Marco Gandini. An international cast features Bernard Richter as Pelléas and Patricia Petibon as Mélisande. Nicolas Teste is Arkël Tassis Christoyannis is Golaud. Costumes are by Anna Biagiotti and sets by Andrea Tocchio.
"I dream of a dramatic poem that does not condemn me to of long, heavy acts; that provides me with moving scenes, of very different character from each other; in which the characters do not argue, but suffer life and fate," wrote Debussy, who chose Maurice Maeterlinck's The Drama as the ideal of a new theater. The poet is for Debussy someone capable "of saying things to half and creating a story without place and without time." In this non-place Pelléas loves the diaphanous Mélisande, wife of his brother Golaud: but upon discovering their love, Pelléas and Mélisande already know that it is lost.
Like the Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, Pelléas et Mélisande is the perfect synthesis of Claude Debussy's musical art: his unique musical drama marks the opening of the new century and inaugurates, with a profound shift in style and language, the twentieth-century opera house.
Lyrical drama in 5 acts and 12 pictures
musicClaude Debussy
booklet Maurice Maeterlinck
first performance Paris, Opéra-Comique, April 30, 1902
Budapest Festival Orchestra
director Iván Fischer
directed by Iván Fischer, Marco Gandini
scenes Andrea Tocchio
costumes Anna Biagiotti
lights Tamás Bányai
INTERPRETERS
Pelléas Bernard Richter
Golaud Tassis Christoyannis
Arkël Nicolas Testé
Yniold Oliver Michael
a doctor Peter Harvey
Mélisande Patricia Petibon
Geneviève Yvonne Naef
technical director Róbert Zentai
stage manager Wendy Griffin-Reid
assistant director Heide Stock
assistant conductor Johannes Marsovszky
with the cooperation of the technical staff of the Festival dei Due Mondi
production Iván Fischer Opera Company
co-produced from Müpa Budapest, Spoleto Festival dei Due Mondi, Vicenza Opera Festival
Text by Alberto Mattioli
There is a remote and precious sound document reminiscent of the premiere of Pelléas et Mélisande. It is an old to 78rpm record by Gramophone & Typewriter, now a superhit from collectors because no more than three surviving copies are known to exist, but which fortunately has been poured onto CD. In 1904, two years after the debut ofopera, two of its protagonists found themselves in front of the rudimentary recording machine. And so from a sea of rustling comes out, despite everything incredibly clear, the voice of Scottish soprano Mary Garden, the first Mélisande, accompanied at the piano from Debussy himself. It is the beginning of the third act, the monologue "Mes longs cheveux," she combing her very long dangling hair from a window of the chateau of Allemonde, a scene that is the delight of the listeners and the cross of the directors. Even in the precariousness of sound, the correspondence of musical senses between the two is perceptible and, one might say, intense. Artistically, they loved each other. In 1908, in the journal Musica, Debussy recounted the death of Mélisande in Garden's interpretation thus, "It was for me a surprise of which I cannot to express the emotion. It was the sweet voice I had heard in secret [...] that compelling art which until then I had not wanted to believe in and which later made the public's admiration bow with ever greater fervor before the name of Mlle Mary Garden." She, for her part, spoke thus of the Pelléas, "I know of no opera more full of mystery whose tender and melancholy charm knows how to awaken more the feeling of the afterlife." And to say that the lady was not exactly a pansy. She ended her career atOpera Chicago, of which she was also general manager, and where her performance of Strauss' Salome was thus described from a scandalized city police chief: "She was indecent, disgusting. Miss Garden was rolling around like a cat on a bed of catnip."
It was precisely the choice of Garden that provoked the incredible rift between Debussy and Maurice Maeterlinck, the Belgian poet, Nobel Laureate for Literature in 1911, from whose 1898 Symbolist dramaopera was taken and a great inspiration for musicians (Fauré wrote the incidental music, which he later made into a suite, while Schoenberg, Sibelius and others also wrote on the same subject). Debussy had fallen in love with Maeterlinck's theater as early as the time of La Princesse Maleine, which he would have liked to set to music; the first and only Parisian performance of Pelléas et Mélisande, on May 17, 1893 at the Bouffes-Parisiens, so impressed him that, Enzo Restagno recalls in his recent beautiful essay on Debussy, "he kept the ticket for the rest of his life for that matinee that would seal his fate." Rodrigue et Chimène, theopera from Corneille's Cid he was working on, was abandoned instantly. Indeed, Debussy told his librettist, Catulle Mendès, I always quote Restagno, "that he had placed the manuscript of the now-completeopera on the edge of the fireplace from which it had then slipped fatally into the flames," and of course nothing was true: neither that theopera was complete, nor that it had ended flambé. The fact remains that as early as 1893 Maeterlinck gave permission to Debussy, later formalized in a regular contract, to write theopera on his drama. The trouble, and here we return to Garden, began when Pelléas, understood as opera, was finally put on the bill at the Opéra-Comique in Paris for April 30, 1902. Maeterlinck wanted, very badly wanted, the part of the leading lady to be given to his mistress, soprano Georgette Leblanc, who for her part declared to anyone who was to hearing her that Mélisande was just the character she had been from waiting for. Debussy, who was not exactly a lion's heart, did not disillusion her, going as far to as to rehearse the part with her. When Maeterlinck and Leblanc found out (from the newspapers!) that Mélisande would be Garden they did not take it well at all. The poet resorted to court, but lost; he then challenged Debussy to duel and then threatened to have him clubbed. Worse: on April 14, he wrote a letter to Figaro: "The Pelléas has become completely foreign to me, almost an enemy, and, deprived of all control over my opera, I see myself reduced to wishing that the performance would result in a resounding fiasco."
Thus, the April 28 dress rehearsal (in fact, the real premiere, in front of the usual audience of invited insiders and indeed, as will be seen, livers) took place in a somewhat overheated atmosphere. Gossip, anticipation and pre-emptive critiques had chased each other in the newspapers; "an auditorium program distributed at the entrance to the theater," recounts Fiamma Nicolodi, "ironized about double entendres, recounting the plot in maliciously voyeuristic terms [...], while Le Figaro jokingly announced the marriage of a certain P. Léas to Miss Méli Zandt. And so, more than the whistles, the laughter, the laughter, the shouts could. When Mélisande sang the line "I am not happy," one voice replied, "Neither are we!" while those who appreciated, who were there, reacted indignantly. As is often the case in theater, the opponents got the opposite result and the protesters were challenged. For the official premiere two days later, all of artistically progressive Paris mobilized. Although the director of the Conservatoire, Théodor Dubois, had forbidden his students to attend the performance, the "Apaches," the young innovative musicians, Ravel in the lead, militarily occupied the gallery and took to silence to those who booed. "We imposed silence to those who laughed, and the emotion and involvement won over men of good will a little at a time," pianist Ricardo Viñes wrote in his Intimate Journal. In short, it was a success, which grew further in reruns despite many critics' reservations and even a few hasty critiques. The hubbub, as usual worked from sounding board. Until Jean Lorrain, in Le Journal of January 22, 1904, ironized the most ardent supporters ofopera, renamed "Pelléastres" and described them as follows: "long-haired ephebes with a skilful parting in the middle, with dull faces and deep looks."
From the very beginning one point was clear: Pelléas et Mélisande, however one judges it, is aopera different from all the others, a radically new hypothesis of musical theater destined to to exhaust itself. Of Debussy, to genius aside, the consistency is incredible. The musicologist Maurice Emmanuel published in 1926 the transcription of some conversations between the young Debussy, still a student at the Conservatory, and his composition professor Ernest Guiraud, today remembered mainly as, shall we say, the author of other people's works (it was he to reworking, among others, Carmen and Les contes d'Hoffmann). More than disciple and master, the two were friends, night owls united by a passion for billiards and cigarettes. Having passed the Wagnerian hangover, inevitable for any young composer of the time, Debussy was in search of his own path, but he already had very clear ideas. When asked by Guiraud which poet could offer him a satisfactory text from set to music, his answer was this: "The one who, by saying things to half, will allow me to graft my dream onto his; the one who will be able to conceive characters whose history and place do not place themselves in any time or place; the one who will not despotically impose on me the scene from build and who will leave me free, here and there, without fear of being more of an artist than he is and of completing his opera. I will not repeat the mistakes of the opera theater where poetry sidelined passes into the background, suffocated from an overloaded musical attire." This is exactly the operation carried out on Maeterlinck, who thanks to Debussy joins the large ranks of playwrights who were represented and hailed in their era and then survived only thanks to the operas they inspired (the list would be quite long and also includes very illustrious names: who has ever seen a tragedy by Voltaire in the theater? Instead Tancredi and Semiramis and even Alzira on stage are still there).
On the occasion of the debut of his opera, Debussy wrote a text, entitled Why He Wrote Pelléas, which contains a very precise statement of his intentions. They are the same as those he had expressed twenty years earlier, when he was still a student: "from long time I had been trying to make music for the theater, but the form I wanted to give it was so unusual that after several attempts I had almost given up. I wanted to give music a freedom that it contains perhaps more than all the other arts, since it is not limited to to a more or less exact reproduction of nature, but expands to the mysterious correspondences between nature and imagination. The drama of Pelléas, which to in spite of its dreamlike atmosphere contains much more humanity than the so-called "documents on life" [Debussy detested verism and realism beyond words, ed.], seemed to me admirably suited to my purpose. Indeed, it contains an evocative language, the sensibility of which could be prolonged in the music and orchestral ornamentation. I also tried to to obey to a law of beauty that seems strangely forgotten when dealing to with dramatic music; the characters in the drama try to sing like natural people, and in not in an arbitrary language made up of antiquated traditions. from this gives rise to the reproach that has been levelled at my allegedly taken party of monotonous acting, where nothing melodic ever appears. First, this is a false claim; second, it is impossible for a character's feelings to be continuously expressed melodically; finally, dramatic melody must be very different from melody in general. I do not pretend to have discovered everything with Pelléas, but I have attempted to open a path that others may follow, enlarging it with personal ideas that will perhaps rid dramatic music of the heavy constraint in which it lives from tento time."
Iván Fischer realized his dream when he founded the Budapest Festival Orchestra in 1983 together to Zoltán Kocsis. Thanks to its innovative approach to music and the unstinting dedication of its musicians, the BFO has become the youngest ensemble to enter the top ten symphony orchestras in the world. In addition to to Budapest, the orchestra regularly performs at some of the most important concert venues on the international music scene and is also featured on international streaming platforms. Since its inception, the BFO has been awarded from "Gramophone," the prestigious British music magazine, three times: in 1998 and 2007, the magazine's jury awarded the BFO the prize for the best recording, while in 2022, thanks to public votes, it was named Orchestra of the Year. The BFO's most important achievements are related to Mahler: the recording of Symphony No. 1 was nominated for a Grammy Award. In addition to its recording successes and acclaimed tours, the BFO has also become known to internationally through a series of particularly original concerts. The Autism-friendly Cocoa Concerts, Surprise Concerts - also appreciated at the London Proms -, music marathons, youth-oriented Midnight Music performances, outdoor concerts to Budapest, free Community Weeks, and the Bridging Europe Festival, organized in cooperation with Müpa Budapest - are all unique events to their own way. Another unique feature of the Orchestra is that its members regularly sing during concerts. Each year the BFO, in cooperation with the Iván Fischer Opera Company, Müpa Budapest, the Vicenza Opera Festival and Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, stages an opera production. Performances have been invited to New York's Mostly Mozart Festival, the Edinburgh International Festival and Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie; in 2013, The Marriage of Figaro topped New York Magazine's ranking of the year's best classical music events. The Vicenza Opera Festival, founded from Iván Fischer, debuted in fall 2018 at the Teatro Olimpico.
Conductor, composer, director d'opera, thinker and educator, Iván Fischer is considered one of the most visionary musicians of our time. His goal is always music and, to that end, he has developed several new concert formats and reformed the structure and working method of the symphony orchestra. to mid-1980s he founded the Budapest Festival Orchestra and from then introduced and established numerous innovations. Fischer envisions an ensemble of musicians serving the community in various combinations and musical styles. His work as music director of the Budapest Festival Orchestra has turned into one of the greatest musical success stories of the past 30 years. With international tours and a series of recordings for Philips Classics and Channel Classics, he has earned a reputation as one of the world's most celebrated conductors, for whom tradition and innovation go hand in hand. He has founded numerous festivals, including the Budapest Mahlerfest, the "Bridging Europe" festival and the Vicenza Opera Festival. The World Economic Forum gave him the Crystal Award for his achievements in promoting international cultural relations. He has been principal conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, the Opéra National de Lyon and the Konzerthausorchester in Berlin, the latter of which named him Conductor Laureate. The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra named him Honorary Guest Conductor after many decades of collaboration. He is a frequent guest conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Iván Fischer studied piano, violin and cello to Budapest before joining Hans Swarowsky's conducting class to Vienna. After spending two years as an assistant to Nikolaus Harnoncourt, he embarked on an international career as winner of the Rupert Foundation conducting competition to London. After several guest appearances in internationalopera theaters, he founded the Iván Fischer Opera Company. His stagings always aim at the fusion of music and theater. IFOC's productions, which often unite instrumentalists and singers in the space, have been received with great success in recent years to New York, Edinburgh, Abu Dhabi, Berlin, Geneva and Budapest. Fischer has been active as a composer since 2004. His opera The Red Heifer has attracted great interest to internationally; hisopera for children The Gruffalo has had numerous revivals to Berlin; his most frequently performed opera , Eine Deutsch-Jiddische Kantate, has been performed in several countries. Iván Fischer is an honorary citizen of Budapest, founder of the Hungarian Mahler Society and supporter of the British Kodály Academy. The President of the Republic of Hungary awarded him the Gold Medal and the French government honored him as Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. In 2006 he was awarded the Hungarian Kossuth Prize, in 2011 the Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awarde the Dutch Ovatie Prize, and in 2013 he was made an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music in London.
Marco Gandini has been a directing collaborator alongside Franco Zeffirelli and Graham Vick. He has worked in major Italianopera theaters (including Teatro alla Scala, Teatro dell'Opera in Rome, Teatro San Carlo in Naples, Teatro del Maggio Musicale in Florence, Arena di Verona, Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Teatro Massimo in Palermo, Teatro Comunale di Bologna) and international opera companies (Metropolitan Opera House in New York, Washington and Los Angeles Opera, NNT in Tokyo, Royal Opera House in London, Teatro Real in Madrid, Teatro Liceu in Barcelona, Marinsky Theatre in San Pietroburgo, Kremlin Theatre in Moscow, Odeo of Herodes Atticus in Athens). His most recent and future engagements include: La Bohème at Teatro alla Scala in Milan (revival of Franco Zefirelli's La Bohème ); co-director of L'incoronazione di Poppea with Iván Fischer at Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, as part of the Budapest Festival Orchestra's tour; Il Trovatore at Novaya Opera in Moscow and Birgitta Festival in Tallinn; Le Nozze di Figaro and Giovanna d'Arco atOpera Estonian National; Don Giovanni, Survivordi Warsaw and Ullman's Der Kaiser von Atlantis (in semi-staged form) at the Teatro Massimo, Palermo; La Fille du Régiment at the Teatro Massimo Bellini, Catania; co-director of Britten's Turn of the Screw with the Budapest Festival Orchestra to Budapest and Vicenza; Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così Fan Tutte at the Giglio Showa Theater, Tokyo; Il Campiello at Fujiwara Opera, Tokyo; I Capuleti e Montecchi with the Simon Bolivar Orchestra, Caracas.
Swiss-born, he is a guest at the most importantopera international theaters, including La Scala in Milan, the Royal Opera House in London, the Staatsoper in Vienna, the Teatro Real in Madrid,Opera in Zurich and the Grand Théâtre de Genève. Major roles in his repertoire include Pelléas et Mélisande, Idomeno and La Clemenza di Tito, as well as to Don Ottavio (Don Giovanni), Lurciano (Ariodante) and Chevalier (Dialogues des Carmélites). In addition to his work on the great stages ofopera, Bernard Richter is also a sought-after singer from concert. He performs with major orchestras and collaborates regularly with renowned conductors such as Zubin Mehta, Daniele Gatti, Teodor Currentzis, Philippe Jordan, Daniel Harding, Adam Fischer, Kent Nagano, Marc Minkowski, and Fabio Luisi.
Born in Athens, he was one of the leading baritones of the Greek Opera house (1995-1999) and the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf (2000-2006) where he sang Posa, Germont, Conte(Figaro), Don Giovanni, Figaro(Barbiere), Guglielmo, Onegin, Hamlet, Pelleas. As a guest singer to New York (Carnegie Hall, Electra), Glyndebourne Festival and Geneva(Falstaff), Brussels(La Traviata), Amsterdam(Lucia di Lamermoor), Berlin(Il barbiere di Siviglia), Frankfurt(Don Carlo, Il Trovatore), Nantes(Falstaff), Budapest(Così fan tutte, Don Giovanni, Falstaff with Iván Fischer), Faust, Il barbiere di Siviglia, I Pagliacci and Il ritorno di Ulisse in patria to Paris, Il Barbiere di Siviglia to Vienna, La Traviata at Covent Garden, Macbeth and Simon Boccanegra to Bordeaux etc. Especially noteworthy is his performance of Wozzeck in Athens in early 2020 and Sharpless(Madame Butterfly) at the Opéra national du Rhin. Recently he has sung Campra's Idoménée to Lille and at the Berlin Staatsoper, Abramane(Zoroastre) with Les Ambassadeurs to Namur, Anvers and Tourcoing, Don Andrès de Rebeira(La Périchole) at the Opéra Comique- Paris, Cinna (La Vestale) at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Iago(Otello) and Scarpia(La Tosca) in Athens. His plans for the 2022/2023 and subsequent seasons: Falstaff (title role) to Lille and Luxembourg, Coelenus(Atys) on tour, Golaud(Pelléas et Mélisande) to Toulouse, Germont(La Traviata) to Geneva. His recording of Handel's Tamerlane has been awarded and praised to internationally, as well as Handel's Julius Caesar, Gretry'sAndromaque and Verdi's Falstaff under the baton of Vladimir Jurowski on DVD, Reynaldo Hahn and Charles Gounod's melodies.
French bass Nicolas Testé studied piano, bassoon and music history to Paris before embarking on a singing career. He studied at the Opéra National de Paris and the Centre de Formation Lyrique. In 1998 he won second prize in the "Voix Nouvelles" competition.Nicolas Testé performs regularly at many renowned theaters d'opera such as the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Staatsoper in Munich, theOpera in Los Angeles, theOpera in San Francisco, the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, the Opéra National de Paris, the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, the Grand Théâtre de Genève, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the Teatro La Fenice, as well as at the Glyndebourne Festival and the Chorégies d'Orange.His extensive repertoire includes leading from roles in Iphigénie en Aulide (Agamemnon), Roméo et Juliette (Frère Laurent), Manon (Des Grieux), Hamlet (Claudio), Il Trovatore (Ferrando), Die Zauberflöte (Sarastro), Castor et Pollux (Jupiter), Faust (Mephisto), Les Contes d'Hoffmann (The Four Villains) and The Barber of Seville (Basilio).In previous seasons, he has performed at the Bayerische Staatsoper in La Bohème (Colline), at the Metropolitan Opera in Carmen (Zuniga), at the Opéra de Paris in Samson et Dalila (Abimelech), and atOpera in Los Angeles as the Four Villains in Les Contes d'Hoffmann.Other performances include Nicolas Testé's return to the Bayerische Staatsoper in the production of Lucia di Lammermoor (Raimondo). He also performed at the Opernhaus Zürich in Maria Stuarda (Giorgio Talbot) and at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in the same role. Other productions at the Deutsche Oper Berlin include Faust (Mephisto) and La Gioconda (Alvise Badoero). In January 2018 he performed at the Opéra National de Paris in Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Basilio).In October 2018 Nicolas Testé returned to the Opéra Bastille to sing in Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots as the servant Marcel, followed from an engagement at the MET performing in Les Pêcheurs de perles (Nourabad).In spring 2019 Nicolas Testé made a celebrated debut as Sarastro in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte at the Opéra Bastille in Paris and made his debut as Claudio in concert version performances of Hamlet to Barcelona and at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. In the fall of 2019 Testé returned to playing Sir Giorgio in Bellini's I Puritani at the Opéra Bastille.In the 2021/22 season he was on stage as Comte des Grieux in Manon at the Opéra de Lyon, as Ramfis in Aida at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, in Norma as Oroveso at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, and as Colline in La Bohème at the MET.Besides to numerous opera productions, Nicolas Testé regularly performs with internationally renowned symphony orchestras. In November 2017 he embarked on an Asian tour together with renowned soprano Diana Damrau performing gala programs and recitals d'opera with concerts to Singapore, Shanghai, Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei and Beijing. As part of the VERDIssimo tour, he gave concerts in major European from concert halls to May and June 2018.In the coming seasons Nicolas Testé will again tour Europe and Asia together with soprano Diana Damrau, presenting their new program "Kings and Queens of Opera".
He studied English and French at Magdalen College, Oxford, and later at the Guildhall School of Music in London, where he won the Walther Grüner International Lieder Competi- tion, the English Song Award and the Peter Pears Award. He makes more than a hundred recordings in a repertoire spanning eight centuries, with special emphasis on the music of the High Baroque.Among the leading interpreters of Bach's works, he is connected with the J.S. Bach Foundation St. Gallen. Over to proven early music specialists such as John Eliot Gardiner, Philippe Herreweghe, Masaaki Suzuki, Christophe Rousset, Hervé Niquet, Ton Koopman, Paul McCreesh and to greats such as Gustav Leonhardt and Michel Corboz, has performed Bach's works with orchestras such as the Boston Symphony Orchestra/Bernhard Haitink, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal/Kent Nagano, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Oslo Philharmonic/both with Herbert Blomstedt.In addition to German and English Baroque, Peter Harvey has also become known for his recordings of the French Baroque repertoire, as well as later works, such as his award-winning recordings of Haydn's Creation and Fauré's Requiem. His current collaborations include: Hans-Christoph Rademann/Internationale Bachakademie, Lars Ulrik Mortensen/Concert Copenhagen, Iván Fischer/Budapest Festival Orchestra and Richard Egarr/Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
She studied with Rachel Yakar at CNSM in Paris and was then discovered from William Christie making a name for herself as one of the most versatile singers in her field, with a repertoire ranging from French baroque to contemporary music. Patricia Petibon has collaborated with Alain Altinoglu, Giovanni Antonini, Bertrand de Billy, Ivor Bolton, Frédéric Chaslin, Daniele Gatti, Bernard Haitink, Emmanuelle Haïm, Daniel Harding, Kristjan Järvi, Andrea Marcon, Josep Pons, Paavo Järvi, Lorenzo Viotti, and many others. Highlights of her career include Ginevra/Ariodante, the title role in Alcina at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, Euridice in Orfeo et Euridice at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris. In addition to to Giunia in Lucius Silla to Vienna under the baton of Nikolaus Harnoncourt, with whom she works regularly, debut in the title role in Berg's Lulu to Geneva, Barcelona and Salzburg and Blanche/Les Dialogues des Carmélites at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. In May 2017 she celebrated a great success as Mélisande in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. In 2019, she returns to the Opéra-Comique de Paris for Massenet's Manon, to followed by the three female roles in Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann at the Monnaie de Bruxelles. In 2021, Patricia Petibon was first heard in Poulenc's La Voix Humaine and Thierry Escaich's Point d'Orgue and returned as Mélisande in Pelléas et Mélisande at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées. Last season she sang in a new production of Poulenc's La Voix Humaine conducted from Katie Mitchell at the Opéra National du Rhin in Strasbourg. Besides to numerous recitals, she has toured with the La Cetra Baroque Orchestra and Andrea Marcon and with the French baroque ensemble Amarillis. She could also be heard in Ravel's Shéhérazade with Les Siècles and François-Xavier Roth, as well as the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg and Jérémie Rohrer. Being equally to comfortable on the big recital stages, he often performs to Paris, Lyon, Lille, Strasbourg, at the Musikverein and Konzerthaus in Vienna, the Salzburg Festival, to Graz, Geneva, Dortmund, Hamburg, Wigmore Hall in London, to Edinburgh, Aix-en-Provence, Luxembourg, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Madrid, Granada and Bilbao. In 2019 he signed a recording contract with Sony Music Masterworks. The first recording under the Sony Classical label, entitled L'amour, la mort, la mer, is released in February 2020. The new album from solo entitled La Traversée, which Patricia Petibon recorded with Andrea Marcon and La Cetra, was released in late March 2022
Originally from Switzerland, she collaborates with the most prestigiousopera theaters and halls from concert. Her vast repertoire consists mainly from roles in Verdi's operas (Aida, Il Trovatore, Don Carlo, Un ballo in maschera), which she has sung in such important theaters as the Metropolitan Opera House, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the Vienna State Opera and the Opéra de Paris. In the French repertoire, she has excelled in such operas as Ariane et Barbe-Bleue, Carmen, Les Troyense and La damnation de Faust, in addition to her fondness for Russian operas and those of Richard Wagner. On concert stages, Naef performs composers ranging from Bach to Boulez with some of the most prominent orchestras and conductors. A specialist in Mahler's symphonies and song cycles, he has performed Symphonies no. 2, 3, and 8, the Kindertotenlieder, the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, and the Lieder aus des Knaben Wunderhorn under such conductors as Marin Alsop, Pierre Boulez, Semyon Bychkov, Sylvain Cambreling, Gustavo Dudamel, Christoph Eschenbach, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, James Levine, Kent Nagano, Jonathan Nott, and Franz Welser-Möst. Other notable conductors with whom she has worked on numerous and diverse concert and opera projects include James Conlon, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Iván Fischer, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Daniele Gatti, Michael Gielen, Bernard Haitink, Mariss Jansons, Philipp Jordan, Jesús López Cobos, Marc Minkowski, Seiji Ozawa, Sir Simon Rattle, Georges Prêtree, and Michael Tilson Thomas. Since 2014 Yvonne Naef has been a professor of voice at the Zurich University of the Arts.
Musicisti della Budapest Festival Orchestra
Orchestra da Camera di Perugia
