Opéra dans le cadre du Centenaire de la villa Noailles

An exceptional musical tribute to the life, work and memory of Marie Laure and Charles de Noailles, based on an original idea by Jean-Pierre Blanc.

In partnership with the Opéra Toulon Provence Méditerranée

With the generous support of Aline Foriel-Destezet
And CHANEL, major sponsor of the Centenary

A musical project in three acts by :
Vincent Huguet, director
Raphaël Lucas, composer and orchestra director
Simon Johannin, writer

Production : villa Noailles

To reserve your tickets:
Saturday 16 September :
Réservez vos billets ici

Sunday 17 September :
Réservez vos billets ici

Monday 18 September :
Réservez vos billets ici

Tickets must be picked up in person at the Villa Noailles during the week of September 4 to 10.

WITH

Vincent Huguet
Director

Raphaël Lucas
Composer

Simon Johannin
Writer

Camélia Jordana ⁄ Jeanne Gérard
Bastien Rimondi / Malik Djoudi
Delphine Megret ⁄ Yanis Siah
Singers

Pauline Cheviller ⁄ Felix Maritaud
Actors

Compagnie Wonsembe
Acrobats

Patrick Bouchain
Scenography

Manon Daviet
Sets

Jean Colonna ⁄ Jacques Merle
Costumes

Nikita Vlassenko
Stylist

Karim Zeriahen
Filmmaker

Toulon Opera Symphony Orchestra
Music

Kema and Nelson Baliardo
Musicians

JUNK8
Electronic composition

Marie-Mathis Aubert
Assistant director

Olga Jegunova
Singing Director

The creation of one of the first cubist buildings in France,
That of its adventurous, audacious, fair patrons of the 20th century,
It will take place in Hyères in 2023,
100 years after the first drawings,
100 years after the sets of The Inhuman Woman.

Robert Mallet-Stevens was to be entrusted by Charles and Marie Laure de Noailles the construction of a holiday residence on the hill of the castle in Hyères, the little house interesting to live in would become a two-thousand-square-metre cubist castle.
The Saint-Bernard Castle of its real name, called villa Noailles with the custom, since it was acquired by the city on March 30th, 1973.
With the team of the villa Noailles, we chose to create during this year of celebration a musical object, a new-modern musical object that combines, invents,
celebrates youth, creation, talent, and enthusiasm!
Enthusiasm for life, for the creative life with singers, acrobats, musicians, creators.
You will discover an extract created for you here at Saint-Bernard
as part of the 37th International Festival of Fashion, Photography and Accessories, Hyères, thanks to the exceptional support of Madame Foriel-Destezet.

From March 30th, 2023 on and throughout the year, we will meet again, to celebrate this creative, generous and enthusiastic living space for the past 100 years!

Long live life
Long live creation
Long live Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles!

Jean-Pierre Blanc & Pascale Mussard,
october 2022

Not only what once was, but above all what still is, on the heights of the city, on this cubist acropolis, awake beauty, avant-garde headland with sea views. Corollary hypothesis: the villa Noailles has been a theater too, a stage, for almost a century, because this is where we meet, we look at and listen to each other, yesterday in a small circle today widened, all windows open. Gathering and inventing a story, telling it together, playing it, this is what children do, this is what the Noailles and their friends did in front of Jacques Manuel’s film camera from 1928 with “Biceps and Jewels” (a matchless title!), this is what actors at the theater and singers at the Opera do. The life of Marie-Laure and Charles is as lyrical as you could wish, so much that if it were a work of fiction, you would probably say it is a bit too much… just like the opera, often too much as well, and yet it may be part of its identity to be excessive, ultra-romantic, incapable of any tepidity, definitive. Therefore, we need an opera, or a form that is close, to celebrate this story: to excess, excess and a half.

Drawing directly not from the archives but from the vibrant heart of the works, inhaling the air of their nights, catching the rhythms of their enthusiasms, imagining the path of their desires, everywhere, on the terraces, on the roofs, in the gardens and every squared corner, in the books and on the surface of canvases. It is no surprise that Mallet- Stevens designed so many film sets: his architecture is an invitation to transcend everyday life, to live it otherwise. It is all there: the characters, the story, the scenery. In the almost infinite artistic profusion to which the name de Noailles is associated with, you will have to: choose, aim for, sometimes forget, radically get away to stay today, be in collusion rather than in reverence, try to preserve the essence of this adventure: curiosity, enthusiasm, generosity, inventiveness, humor, not to mention sports! The grandmother of Marie-Laure, Laure de Sade, Countess of Chevigné, served as a model for Proust’s Duchess of Guermantes. It is therefore a family tradition to inspire fictional characters. No doubt it is also a family tradition –princely legacy– to stage oneself, before the eye of a painter, the lens of a photographer, before friends or in any other society or official situation. Drawing inspiration from all this to embody it, nowadays.

Vincent Huguet,
April 2022

The villa Noailles thanks :

Madame Aline Foriel Destezet
for her generous support

The Opéra de Toulon Provence
Méditerranée and its director Jérôme Brunetière,

Patrick Bouchain

Pierre Biton

L’Atelier Montex