Les Enfants du Paradis at Opéra national de Paris - Opéra Bastille

Drawing essentially on Prévert’s poetic screenplay for Marcel Carné’s film masterpiece, the Étoile José Martinez creates his first major ballet for the Company, Les Enfants du Paradis.
With staging designed by Ezio Toffolutti to evoke a film set and costumes by the Étoile Agnès Letestu, the choreographer brings to life a Paris long since disappeared, the Paris of the aptly named Boulevard du Crime in the early 19th century with its artists, theatres and cabarets,. Here, Baptiste the mime artist unravels the thread of his memories: his meeting with Garance, his impossible love for this marvellous, elusive woman, the magical world of the theatre, both on stage and behind the scenes and the slender boundaries between reality and illusion. With an original score by Marc-Olivier Dupin, the choreographer contrasts large-scale ensembles with the intimacy of the lovers’ pas de deux.