Petite Balade aux Enfers

A miniature opera presented as part of the Festival Op' en famille, a creation by Valérie Lesort, suitable from age 6

When love and death clash: Orpheus falls under the spell of Eurydice and marries her. But on their wedding day, the young woman is bitten by a serpent and succumbs. After a visit from the god Love, Orpheus bravely sets out to fetch his wife from the Underworld, facing monsters and furies to find her. Will he be able to bring her back from the dead without looking at her, as he promised the deities he would?

Orpheus is the founding myth of opera in the Western world because it shows music and song stronger than death, more powerful than the Underworld. Echoing Christoph Willibald Gluck's opera, visual artist and stage director Valérie Lesort has imagined Orpheus's journey in a fairy-tale version for piano, voice and puppets. A miniature opera, funny and tender, it introduces children to lyric voices and the magic of opera, and lets adults (re)discover this classic work in a playful form.