Lyric Arts France and Festival Opéra Bastide 2025
Villefranche-de-Rouergue
June 24 - July 27, 2025
Lyric Arts France is a professional training and performance-centered Young Artists Program for emerging professional singers, and a limited number of stage directors, stage managers, pianist-coaches and administrators. It offers a wide variety of solo and ensemble performance opportunities for all participants alongside a comprehensive training program. The Program takes place in the lovely mediaeval town of Villefranche-de-Rouergue in the Aveyron region of southwestern France, not too far from Rodez, Albi and Toulouse. Lyric Arts France partners with the Festival Opéra Bastide; together, we mount full-scale opera productions with chamber orchestras, concerts of a variety of vocal music including French Art Song, and public masterclasses.
The 2025 season will be the second iteration of the festival and program; the first, last summer, was a huge public success, with sold-out performances of The Magic Flute, seven-minutes standing ovations, and including the concerts and cabarets, 21 public events.
Young Artists work in collaboration with world-class singers, directors, conductors, coaches, and choreographers, both in production rehearsals and in training sessions. These include individual and group vocal and repertoire coaching, masterclasses, auditioning classes, and career seminars addressing opportunities in Europe and the United States. There is also a focus on singing in French, French arias and Art Songs, and (new this year) with daily French language classes available for non-French participants.
Most activities take place in the ‘Bastide Royale,’ the historic mediaeval center of the old town, including in its charming 400 seat theater, a spectacular baroque chapel, and the main town square. After many of the opera performances our artists relax singing cabaret music until late in the evening in our festival bar. In addition to an abundance of public performances, the program offers a marvelous opportunity for participants to enrich their understanding of French music, culture, and language, to live and work in the heart of France for five weeks, and to broaden their knowledge of French and European opera and vocal literature.
Opera Repertoire for 2025
Carmen
Presented in an intimate new version, incorporating all the musical and dramatic highlights of the opera, and accompanied by a flamenco-flavored ensemble, performed in French.
The Fantasticks/Les Romanesques
Did you know this famous American musical is based on an equally famous French play by Edmond Rostand, the renowned creator of Cyrano de Bergerac? Our production takes place in French with mostly French dialogue, and this work will favor French singers or those with excellent French and skilled in ‘crossover’ or lighter music.
Our Educational Mission – the Young Artist Program
Our goal is to work with the best young artists from anywhere in the world to help them round out their interpretative and performing skills so that they become viable professionals in the highly competitive world of opera. We do this by combining training and extensive performance experience onstage with top professional colleagues. We want to help each participant to become the best performer that they can be.
Our Artistic Mission – the Festival
Our goal is to reach out across traditional lines of demarcation in the arts, presenting works which engage diverse, new and younger audiences, bringing in supporters of music, theater, dance and the visual arts, for high-quality productions of French works, old works done in new ways, and new works. Our festival features a company of performers including top national and regional French singers, and rising stars from around the world in its international Young Artists Program.