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In a world premiere, mezzo-soprano Marina Viotti and tenor John Osborn combine their talents in a performance of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s gargantuan Le Prophète, conducted by Marc Leroy-Calatayud.

The two opera singers, among today’s greatest voices, will not be alone when they take on this work. They will be joined by the Ensemble Vocal de Lausanne, assisted by children from the Conservatoire populaire and singers from the Haute école de musique. Such an abundance of talent will make this a grandiose evening.

” Le Prophète is a generous, flourishing work, but it’s given very little because even in its shortened version, it lasts over three hours. The OCG is proud to bring it to life with Marina Viotti and John Osborn in the international premiere in the title roles, and three days before it is performed at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris.” – Frédéric Steinbrüchel

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If there’s one place above all others associated with children’s stories, it’s the forest. Schumann and Ravel, excellent musical narrators of these universal stories, are brought together in this concert around fairy tales: those from Ravel’s Ma mère l’Oye and Schumann’s forest paintings(Waldszenen). In this woodland universe, the chirping of birds twirls lightly. A natural addition to this concert are Messiaen’s Oiseaux exotiques and Ravel’s Concerto in G for piano.

“Conceived as a giant piano recital, this concert makes you dizzy: on the one hand, by the instrumental colors, as if from an aviary, invited into the intimacy of works for solo piano(Waldszenen and Ma mère l’Oye were originally written for piano). On the other hand, Bertrand Chamayou’s extraordinary personality, Papageno for an evening, dominating the king-instrument, in a light-hearted dialogue with the OCG”. – Raphaël Merlin

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Participatory concert open to amateur musicians and amateur singers

It’s a universal story that’s been told many times: two lovers who can’t marry because someone’s standing in their way. In Ethel Smyth’s Der Wald, a jealous witch tries to prevent the tenor from marrying the soprano. To thwart their wedding plans, she casts a spell on them… What will become of the protagonists? Will they suffer the same fate as Romeo and Juliet, or Tristan and Yseult?

You’ll find out all about it when you attend this opera featuring the Le Motet choir and additional amateur musicians and singers, set against a backdrop imagined by HEPIA students. A unique participatory evening in Switzerland.

To top it all off, Celia Cano, the second winner of the OCG’s prize for a particularly brilliant graduate, will conduct theOverture to The Wreckers.

“Ethel Smyth, a British composer trained in Leipzig, a great personality, an author-conductor and a feminist activist, wrote the one-act opera Der Wald at the turn of the twentieth century. Never before performed in Switzerland, it is a rare fresco of underestimated scope, in the vein of the great German Romantics.” – Raphaël Merlin

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