The Genius of French Opera

La Marseillaise (Jean Béraud, 1880)

In honor of Seattle Opera's upcoming premiere of Beatrice and Benedict, today we celebrate French opera! (We're singing B&B in English, since our production kicks off Seattle Celebrates Shakespeare; but it's a very French opera.)

Ever since opera first came to France from Italy in the seventeenth century, the French have had their own wonderful way of blending the arts to create the hybrid which is opera. French opera has always been a balancing act: balancing poetry with music, musical delights with visual spectacle, dance with stasis, public with private, sorrow with high spirits, and above all balancing—and sometimes encouraging the tug-of-war between—passion and reason.

The following survey of French opera history features moments from some of our favorite French operas as performed at Seattle Opera. CLICK HERE to listen to a full playlist without interruption.

GLUCK TAKES REFORM OPERA TO FRANCE

Orphée Leads Eurydice from the Underworld (Corot, 1861)

Opera is fundamentally a fusion of music and drama, words and notes.

AIDAN LANG INTRODUCES BEATRICE & BENEDICT

Listen to or read this downloadable podcast by General Director Aidan Lang. To kick off Seattle Celebrates Shakespeare, we're proud to offer our first-ever opera by Hector Berlioz: Beatrice and Benedict, an operatic amplification of Much Ado About Nothing. Conducted by Seattle Symphony's Ludovic Morlot and directed by ACT Theatre's John Langs, this one-of-a-kind, all-new and all-Seattle production plays for only seven performances, February 24-March 10.

Hello, everyone, it's Aidan Lang here, and this time I'm here to talk about Berlioz's Beatrice and Benedict.

AN OPERA AND COMPOSER NEW TO US

We do like to give our audiences in every season one opera they've never seen before. This is the first time not only that Seattle Opera will be performing Beatrice, but also an opera by Berlioz.