I. History.
A non profit organization engaged in professional training, the Academy Lyrique pursues a global project concerned with all the professions and skills involved in producing an opera. Launched in 2006, its activities were initially limited to young singers and conductors with a prior professional experience or in the course of graduate studies, but they will progressively expand to include by 2010 all the artistic and technical professions concerned with opera, including stage and costume designing and construction.
The first session of the Académie Lyrique opened on July 10, 2006 and brought together 5 conductors and 10 singers, with the aim of mounting, under the supervision of an international pedagogical staff, Mozart’s opera Cosi fan Tutte in quasi-professional conditions. The session ended on July 21, 22 and 23 with three public performances, sung and conducted by the participants.
This workshop benefited accommodation and rehearsal facilities worthy of a big campus, those of the Training Centre of the Monceau Insurance Company, where the first performance of the opera took place, while the two others were mounted at the nearby Poissonnières Manor, the birthplace of the famous French Renaissance poet Pierre de Ronsard.
The Académie Lyrique workshop, without equivalent in France, was hailed by the press as one of the main cultural events of the year in the region. For its institutional partners the Académie Lyrique and its project of a European Training Centre for the Professions of Opera represents one of the chief pillars of the decentralized cultural policy in the Centre Region.
II . Project 2007.
2006 was for the Académie a year of tryout. Having met all its objectives, both artistic and organizational, the Académie Lyrique will develop in 2007 a more ambitious project, marked by a two-fold extension: that of its pedagogical activities on the one hand and of its festival on the other.
1. Training :
The extension of the activities of the Académie Lyrique will concern both the content and public of its training program, and the duration of the session.
a) In preparation to the extension of its activities to all the professions of opera, the Académie Lyrique has set up a partnership with the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Appliqués et des Métiers d’Arts (National College of Applied Arts and Design) Olivier de Serres, and will take in residence three interns who will design and construct the sets and costumes for the Magic Flute.
b) The duration of the 2007 session of the Académie Lyrique is extended to three weeks, from Monday 2 to Sunday 22 July.
2. Teaching Staff :
The teaching staff will be comprised of:
.
Anne Ringart, former director of the Paris Opera Young Singers
Program (Centre de Formation Lyrique), director of vocal
studies;
. Alexandre Myrat (Grece), conductor, music director
of the Athens Camerata;
. Edouard Reichenbach, stage
director;
. Ruth Orthmann, stage director, German coach;
.
Helen Collyer (Great Britain), vocal coach from the Glyndebourne
Festival;. Itai Daniel (USA), vocal coach.
See biographies.
The teaching team is under the supervision and artistic direction of Amaury du Closel, conductor and music director of the Académie Lyrique and of the “Opéra Nomade” Opera Company; he will also act as conducting coach. The presence of a professional orchestra (in 2006 the Chamber Orchestra of the Romanian Radio) and of the Académie Chorus are two key elements of the pedagogical approach, as they give the participants a chance to be in the genuine conditions of preparation and performance of a professional opera production.
III . Venues.
The training centre of the Monceau Insurance Company, near the TGV train station of Vendôme-Villiers.
1. Workshop Venue.
The Académie Lyrique is accommodated by its main sponsor, the Monceau Insurance Company, in the latter’s Professional Training Campus, with a 400 square-meter auditorium, various rehearsal studios, 18 bedrooms and catering facilities for the participants, the teaching staff and the orchestra. The first performance of The Magic Flute will take place at the workshop venue on July 20 at 21.30.
2.
Venue of public performances.
The
performances of The Magic Flute, upon completion of the
workshop, will take place at the Rochambeau Castle on July 20, 21
and 22 at 21h30 and will be sung and conducted by the
participants, with the Tirgu Mures Philharmonic Orchestra.
