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DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE
The videographer Clément Cogitore takes a bold approach to Mozart’s masterpiece, while Cappella Mediterranea and Leonardo García-Alarcón reveal its full expressive power. […] Driven by the great spontaneity of the child actors, this reading possesses a truly organic dramatic force.
— Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Clément Cogitore’s intelligent staging […] delicately interweaves the story of Mozart’s couples with the reconstruction of Germany after the Second World War. […] Cogitore brings this initiatory journey through time with extraordinary precision and sensitivity.
— Salzburger Nachrichten
At the Festival d’Aix, Clément Cogitore removes the Singspiel from Mozart’s Egyptian temples and transforms it into a masterful journey through the traumas of the 20th century.
— Le Temps
There is a provocative genius to this production, rooted in its bold historical-materialist reading. […] The concept gives rise to sequences of remarkable and poignant beauty.
— Libération
From Mozart’s landmark opera – an initiatory tale celebrating the advent of a new order – the videographer Clément Cogitore creates a brilliant film parable about the rise of the West after 1945, from the rubble of war to the apogee of Western industry.
— Mouvement
Cogitore’s approach is remarkably coherent and extraordinarily fertile – the production should definitely be seen more than once.
— Forum Opéra
La Flûte enchantée de Mozart
Festival d'Aix-en-Provence 2026 © Jean-Louis Fernandez
DIE FRAU OHNE SCHATTEN
This "Frau" is a triumph […] Barrie Kosky’s production confidently focuses Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s convoluted fairy tale into a moving portrait of what it means to be human.
— New York Times
Klaus Mäkelä, conducting the opera for the first time with the Orchestre de Paris, echoed Kosky’s staging with a nearly Impressionistic evocation of the magic of Strauss’s score — including a transparency that never overwhelmed the singers or obscured the text. […] To say that the audience could not have been more pleased would be an understatement.
— Oper!
Klaus Mäkelä and Barrie Kosky have brought forth a great operatic miracle in Aix-en-Provence. […] An extraordinary landmark production by the Australian stage director.
— El País
At the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, The Woman Without a Shadow — a production for the annals — received a standing ovation […]. It was one of those providential evenings that etches itself in the memory as it unfolds. Nothing surpasses opera when the planets that orbit within its galaxy are in alignment.
— Le Monde
Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s operatic blockbuster is served by the superb artistic understanding between conductor Klaus Mäkelä and stage director Barrie Kosky, an orchestra at its peak, and a first-rate cast.
— Télérama
An exceptional cast, inspired conducting and dreamlike staging. An aesthetic revelation.
— La Marseillaise
La Femme sans ombre de Strauss
Festival d’Aix-en-Provence 2026 © Monika Rittershaus
ACCABADORA
All [the singers and musicians] help to ensure that this richly sonorous score […] will undoubtedly be recognised as one of Aix’s great creations.
— Die Welt
A stylistic originality between abstraction and reality, brilliantly conveyed by the instrumentalists of the Orchestre national de Lyon under the impeccable direction of Lucie Leguay.
— Le Monde
Family, religion, love, and the transmission of heritage are at the heart of Francesco Filidei’s new opera, brought to an emotional peak by Valentina Carrasco’s delicate staging and Lucie Leguay’s subtle conducting.
— Les Échos
An existential, radiant and utterly precise opera exploring end-of-life issues.
— Télérama
[Filidei’s creation] was enthusiastically received by the Festival d’Aix audience and can only help to establish the work in the long term.
— Olyrix
Accabadora de Francesco Filidei
Festival d'Aix-en-Provence 2026 © Jean-Louis Fernandez
REQUIEM
Raphaël Pichon, accompanied by his Pygmalion musicians, transforms all this — thanks in particular to the subtle and superb chorus, who sing, act and dance — into a fluid, transcendent yet sensual musical world, which serves never as mere background, but rather as a central element. […] Simple. Magical.
— Die Welt
The Pygmalion chorus is so essential, homogenous, and consistently nuanced in its dynamics that the soloists seem to be its natural extension. […] Pure emotion is guaranteed.
— Bachtrack
In perfect harmony, Romeo Castellucci and Raphaël Pichon offer us, with simplicity, a natural and peaceful vision of death while celebrating life.
— Inferno
At the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Romeo Castellucci and Raphaël Pichon transcend Mozart’s final masterpiece, with an organic and moving staging in which death converses with reminiscence.
— Première Loge
Raphaël Pichon presides as the master of ceremonies over a fresco in which music and visual power move as one.
— La Provence
Requiem de Mozart
Festival d'Aix-en-Provence 2026 © Monika Rittershaus
EL CIMARRÓN
On stage at the Jeu de Paume, Iván García gives a breath-taking performance as both actor and singer in the role of the Cuban slave.
— Le Figaro
Elayce Ismail’s staging of El Cimarrón at Aix-en-Provence places much of its trust in the score; it reveals rather than conceals, with everyone participating in the same theatrical ecosystem. Despite the protagonists’ extraordinary vitality, the poetic quality of the work is never lost. The stage movements seem to follow a choreography.
— Forum Opéra
In an exceptional theatrical and vocal performance, Iván García portrays this man as both an individual shunted by history and, in his very flesh, the symbol of the fate of a nation. Singing baritone, he delivers the text in Spanish, dances, and transforms his entire body into the instrument through which a life is recounted with rawness and sincerity.
— La Marseillaise
El Cimarrón de Henze
Festival d'Aix-en-Provence 2026 © Jean-Louis Fernandez
