Camera Lucida

Among Seville’s cigar makers, Carmen is the most attractive woman around. Arrested for the assault of a friend, she enthralls the brigadier Don José who lets her escape. For her, José abandons his childhood sweetheart, he gives up his rank, deserts the army… and to what ends will passion drive him when he loses Carmen's love to the glamorous bullfighter Escamillo? We can only imagine the reactions of the first Parisian audiences at the Opéra Comique, who are said to have been shocked to see the incarnation of such an independent heroine. But what would those audiences in 1875 have actually seen on stage? With the support of Palazzetto Bru Zane (Centre de Musique Romantique Française), Opéra de Rouen Normandie have (re)created Bizet’s Carmen with the original costumes, sets and staging of the 1875 premiere.

In February 1972, the American president Richard Nixon went to China to meet Mao Zedong. In the context of the war in Vietnam and the cold war, this encounter marked a turning point in Chinese‑American relations. John Adams, a major musical figure of the last forty years, made this event of contemporary history the subject of his first opera. Nixon in China tackles the political thaw instigated by ping-pong diplomacy, begun by the invitation of the American table tennis players by their Chinese counterparts, one year before the presidential visit. A mesmerising work in which the pulsations and repetitions typical of minimalism are combined with melodic lines of great lyricism. For its entry into the Paris Opera repertoire, this work has been entrusted to the director Valentina Carrasco, who underlines the importance and the mediating power of Chinese national sport in history.

Man has always sought to seek further afield. After the seafaring explorers of the 16th century, 21st century cosmologists today navigate more celestial oceans, with each mission providing an ever-broader and more impressive cartography of our surroundings. At the avant garde of modern technology, these strange travellers are actually immobile, and their vessels are powerful and spectacular telescopes, on the Earth or in space, constantly widening the limits of our knowledge and giving form to our dreams of infinity. From Hawaii to Australia, via South Africa and China, we set out on an incredible scientific and human adventure to visit the planet's greatest cosmic exploration centres to discover the new challenges involved in understanding the universe. A journey on Earth and in the heavens that will take your breath away!

How only one man all at the same time painted the Mona Lisa, conceived ball bearing and gave the first clinical description of atherosclerosis? On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of his death, this documentary will answer these questions and much more, gathering clues thanks to research on the field and encounters with the most outstanding specialists on Leonardo Da Vinci. Travelling through time thanks to an imaginary museum, we will track back the Renaissance genius and give you to see Leonardo’s relentless ingenuity!

Go inside the building that has been the source of some of the greatest moments in music, ballet and opera.

The Philharmonie de Paris celebrates its tenth anniversary and invites Klaus Mäkelä and Gustavo Dudamel to perform a concert of changing colours, from modernism to impressionism, with works by Boulez, Beethoven, Poulenc, Moussorgski and Ravel.

The prodigious genesis of a monument of world literature, too often reduced to its popular success, also recounts the tormented conversion of its author, Victor Hugo, to the ideal of social progress.

In 1965 Ingmar Bergman filmed “Persona”, the cult film that brought together all of the Swedish filmmaker’s obsessions and became a turning point in his career.

Is a spectacular journey across 4 billion years of evolution exploring how the Moon has been essential in setting up the pace to create life on Earth and how it has been a source of inspiration and fascination for men ever since

Two young adults, Clara and Hidalgo, meet in the Verdon canyon. Everything opposes them: interests, skin color, openness to others. Hidalgo decides to relive, a hundred years later, the adventure of Édouard-Alfred Martel, the first explorer of the Verdon canyon, when Clara comes to hike in the region. This meeting, at a turning point in their lives, will allow them each to live a strong experience that will mark them for a long time...

Between Russia and the USA, an enchanting concert in summery tones, led by young Finnish conductor Tarmo Peltokoski and South African soprano Golda Schultz. On the program: works by Dmitri Shostakovich, Igor Stravinsky and Samuel Barber, as well as George Gershwin's classic "Summertime".

In 1965, Bob Dylan recorded "Like a Rolling Stone", one of the greatest songs of all time... A recreation of a show given by the troupe of the Comedie-Francaise from the book of Greil Marcus.

Elliott Erwitt has spent his entire adult life taking photographs, of presidents, popes and movie stars, as well as regular people and their pets. His work is iconic in world culture while his life is largely unknown.

Accompanied by a child, the mathematician Galileo observes the firmament with a telescope. Ten years ago, the philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned in Rome for having supported the idea of an infinite and centerless universe, based on the work of Copernicus. By dint of observations and calculations, Galileo seeks proofs for his hypothesis of a cosmic system where the Earth is "an ordinary celestial body, one among thousands". From Padua to Venice, the mathematician shakes certainties by confronting the power of a Church which wishes to maintain its absolute power in the "crystal spheres" where Ptolemy has hitherto locked up the world.