Gala Dinner

We are delighted to welcome back Sophie Bricaire for this new edition of the Gala Dinner, an invitation into a world of illusion, enchantment and make-believe. This year, the evening draws inspiration from Georges Méliès — his whimsical moons, apparitions and cinematic dream machines — but also from the world of fairground entertainment, with its delightfully old-fashioned charm, sideshows and penny-arcade magic. Street performers, conjurers, witches, music-hall figures and theatrical characters wander through an atmosphere where wonder springs as much from performance itself as from illusion. The repertoire lends itself perfectly to this celebration. Jacques Offenbach naturally takes centre stage, from Le Roi Carotte to Le Voyage dans la Lune, with their taste for disguise, fantasy and irony. But the evening will also venture into the worlds of Les Saltimbanques by Louis Ganne, Mozart’s Magic Flute, and the great imaginative realms of Orphée and Faust. More than a dinner, this is a dazzling old-world celebration in which, for one night only, the Opera becomes a theatre of illusions.