opéra-ballet salon series:
A three PART virtual EXPERIENCE

In preparation for our performance of Opéra-ballet: Rameau’s Io and de La Garde’s Léandre et Héro (coming to Washington, DC May 2 & 3, 2023 and NY on May 9, 2023), Opera Lafayette and guest scholars will be hosting a Salon Series for three weeks in March, on Wednesdays the 1st, 15th, and 29th at 6 PM EST. Join us as we delve further into the Rococo influences of Madame de Pompadour, who is the inspiration for our 2023 musical season (get tickets). Each session of this Salon Series will feature a unique look into our upcoming production.

All sessions: $26 or $10/session
*There is a small fee associated with each ticket purchase.

Going Rococo with Madame de Pompadour

With Guest Scholars Melissa Hyde, Mark Ledbury, and Meredith MartiN

Wednesday, March 1, 2023, 6 PM EST

This session features a discussion about the Rococo as an eighteenth-century mode that encompassed the visual arts, material culture, fashion and music, providing context for Rameau’s Opéra-ballets, and include some discussion of the culture of the opera-comique, the ballet, and its generative qualities.

Rococo Now and Then

With Guest Scholars Melissa Hyde, Mark Ledbury, and Meredith Martin and special guest machine dazzle

Wednesday, March 15, 2023, 6 PM EST

Our second session focuses on a discussion of the Rococo and its afterlives in the twenty-first century, including work by contemporary artists who have engaged directly with this artistic mode in a variety of media. It will also feature a conversation with Rameau’s costume designer, Machine Dazzle, hailed as a “theatrical genius” (The New Yorker), and “renowned, multifaceted artist” (Vogue).

Dance and Pantomime in Mid-18th-Century French Opera

With Guest Scholars Rebecca Harris-Warrick & Hedy Law.

Wednesday, March 29, 2023, 6 PM EST

Dance was an essential part of all French operas of the 18th century. In this presentation, Rebecca Harris-Warrick and Hedy Law will discuss what the inclusion of dancing meant to these operas, the multiple ways in which it functioned within a primarily vocal environment, and how the emergence of pantomime offered a new paradigm, both aesthetic and intellectual, to French conceptions of choreographed movement.