Gustave Charpentier: LouiseFestival d'Aix-en-Provence

As a young working-class woman, Louise feels the pull of the big city. Determined to leave her stifling family behind, she decides to make her way to the capital to live out her love for Julien, a penniless poet. Despite the excitement she feels at her new-found freedom, her happiness is marred both by the guilt she feels at abandoning her parents and by the social pressure that is brought to bear on her...

Her father’s hold over her

A huge success when it premiered at the Opéra-Comique in 1900, Gustave Charpentier’s (1860-1956) “musical novel in four acts and five scenes” was panned by the critics, who considered its depiction of female desire and its heroine’s rebellion against her family to be scandalous. In this new reading, Christof Loy (Salomé) – famous for his meticulous productions, precise direction and refined aesthetic – has detected beneath the innovative theme of female emancipation an unspoken aspect of Charpentier’s libretto: the toxic family relationship in which Louise finds herself trapped, and the hold that her possessive – even abusive – father exerts over her with the complicity of her mother. Keen to tell the story without judging the characters, the director draws the audience into Louise’s subconscious, highlighting the darker side of a society that, far from emancipating its daughters, only offers them cheap romance as a deflection from the frustrations of their limited prospects. In this new Festival d’Aix-en-Provence production, soprano Elsa Dreisig (Così fan tutte) is surrounded by a brilliant cast.

Recorded in Aix-en-Provence on 11 July 2025.