Season tickets [ABONNEMENT GRANDS CLASSIQUES] - Grand Théâtre de Genève

Here is another monument to the fascinating and questionable genre of French grand opera: Fromental Halévy's La Juive (1835). La Juive was Halévy's first great success, with its colossal spectacle and final execution scene, the stuff of operatic legend. Beneath its sumptuous stage finery, La Juive speaks of religious intolerance, imperialism and the tragedy of medieval Jewish life in Europe threatened by Catholic fanaticism and forced to migrate constantly. The goldsmith Éléazar and his daughter, the beautiful Rachel, take in a young man who introduces himself as Samuel, but the truth and the price of love will only too soon become clear to the protagonists. American director David Alden will treat the harsh and disturbing plot of La Juive with his trademark sense of irony and black comedy. At his side to rekindle this complicated, exciting and dangerous operatic artefact, Marc Minkowski reigns as the undisputed maestro of French grand opera.

Something is rotten in the state of the Grail knights. Their king Amfortas has lost the Holy Spear to the fiend Klingsor. Amfortas is crushed with shame and his wound festers horribly without killing him. In the midst of this ailing world, young Parsifal appears and the Grail knights make him their champion. Trials and temptations ensue for the pure-hearted Parsifal who finally retrieves the Holy Spear, the cause and the cure of Amfortas’ wound. Amfortas may now die and Parsifal take his place as king. German director Michael Thalheimer sees Parsifal as the “wound” of bidding farewell to the world. The world must bid farewell to the Grail knighthood and the knights to their past and their worldly works. Jonathan Nott already has a legendary performance of Wagner’s Ring cycle at the Lucerne Festival under his belt. With the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and some of the best Wagner singers of the day, they embark on the great spiritual journey that is Parsifal.