La Plage
2024-2025 Season
2024-2025 Season
La Plage: three original shows, a host of activities, collaborations and partnerships, educational programmes for schools and organizations and bespoke projects for all those who want to come ashore and allow us to make some space for them at the beach.
Grand Théâtre Jeunesse
For Young Audiences
Listen, see, experience and feel…
Sponsored by
Whether it’s a tour, a workshop, a project or a production specially conceived for young audiences, every year we renew our forms to offer you an experience adapted to the age and profile of your students.
Thanks to our partnerships with École et Culture for schools run by the Canton of Geneva’s Department of Public Education, and with the AGEP’s cultural service for Geneva’s private schools, every season more than 3,000 students from 1P to grade 4 in secondary schools throughout the canton (and sometimes beyond) discover opera and ballet with the Grand Théâtre Jeunesse.
For public schools in the Canton of Geneva, the educational programme brochure and online registration form will be available from June 11, as well as on the École et Culture website. Participants will be selected by 10 September 2024.
For private schools, the educational programme brochure form will be available from June 11, as well as on the AGEP website.
Contact: [email protected]
In the SAPE – Structures d’accueil de la petite enfance – educational and cultural activities are special moments that allow children to develop and find their bearings. Because the last year before starting school is a pivotal moment for children, the Grand Théâtre has designed a programme of opera discovery especially for 3-4 year olds, La Fabrique d’Opéra, in collaboration with early childhood professionals.
After an initial meeting with a singer in their school, preschoolers can settle comfortably in the foyer with their educators and let the magic of this strange place where people dress up and sing happen.
Contact: [email protected]
Partnerships, workshops, discovery visits… Each season we work with several higher education institutions such as
the HEAD, the HEM or the musicology department of the University of Geneva… Please check the news section of our website to find out more about these collaborations!
Because family outings are also a good way of getting to know the Grand Théâtre, the Grand Théâtre Jeunesse offers a multitude of activities. New this season: Siestes musicales, accessible to parents and toddlers from 6 months! For older children, there are discovery workshops on Wednesdays (les Mercredis du GTJ) and during the school vacations (les Vacances du GTJ), with a program that’s always full of surprises.
Siestes musicales (Musical naps)
Why not take a nap with your child at the Grand Théâtre? After a successful first attempt last season, the Grand Théâtre is now offering a time dedicated to parents and their very young children. Close your eyes, open your ears wide and, in the company of an instrument, let yourself be lulled to sleep by the music!
Children from 6 months accompanied by an adult
Duration: 45 minutes
Stroller garage and changing table available
Tickets CHF 15.- for parents with child under 3 / CHF 10.- for children aged 3 to 12
Wednesdays at 2PM
October 9, 2024 Autumn nap
December 11, 2024 Winter nap
March 12, 2025 Spring nap
June 4, 2025 Summer nap
At the GTG
Family Workshops
Singing, dancing, discovering costumes made in our workshops: once a month, the Grand Théâtre is the place to be for families!
Discovery workshops for children aged 6 to 12 accompanied by an adult
Duration: approx. 1h
Wednesdays at 3PM
October 30, 2024 The Magic of Costumes
November 20, 2024 The Magic of Costumes
December 4, 2024 Singing Christmas
December 18, 2024 Singing Christmas
January 15, 2025 Enter the dance
February 5, 2025 The Magic of Costumes
March 12, 2025 Enter the dance
April 9, 2025 Enter the dance
May 14, 2025 The Magic of Costumes
At the GTG
Activities before, after and about the performances
Chop chop! 45 minutes before the bells call you into the house, it’s time to refresh your memory and go back to the beginnings of the opera: we offer a brief introduction to remind you what the work is all about and what kind of magical, apocalyptic, critical or hyper-realistic worlds the people behind the production have in store for you. Lickety-split, there’s just enough time to grab some bubbly before you take your seats under the star-studded ceiling of a thousand and one shows!
45 minutes before each opera or ballet performance
Free admittance with performance tickets
In the main foyer of the GTG or in the foyer of the alternative performance venue
A slice of life, a slice of laughter and a slice of music to garnish the canapé that comes with our urban apéritif! Have a spritz or a vermouth while we supply the entertaining company. Apéropéra is a relaxed, fresh and unstuffy way to (re)discover a composer, a work, a topic, miles away from the usual lectures you get before the performance. Get ready for some good stories, from the past and especially the present. And in between, there’ll be live music from the show (or in the same vein) performed by artists on the production!
La clemenza di Tito3.10.2024
Ihsane 7.11.2024
Fedora 28.11.2024
Salomé 16.1.2025
Dido & Aeneas 13.2.2025
Khovantchina 13.3.2205
Stabat Mater 24.4.2025
La Traviata 5.6.2025
Tickets CHF 25.-
First drink included (except cocktails and champagne)
At the GTG
Let’s try a different approach to opera and ballet…
With every Grand Théâtre production this season, there will be a Saturday morning of creative workshops related to the upcoming opera or ballet. Song, dance, drama, text, visual arts, it’s all there waiting to surprise you and help you express yourself: voice, stage, theatre and image professionals will guide you through the many aspects of opera, the art that has everything!
La clemenza di Tito 5.10.2024
Ihsane 9.11.2024
Fedora 30.11.2024
Salomé 11.1.2025
Dido & Aeneas 8.2.2025
Khovantchina 15.3.2025
Stabat Mater 3.5.2025
La Traviata 7.6.2025
Tickets CHF 15.– / CHF 10.– (up to 12 years old)
Various meeting points
Haven’t you ever wondered what it’s like on the other side when the curtain falls on a performance? How does all the technical machinery work? What do the stagehands have to do to get things back into working order? Or maybe just bump into one of the stars of the show? So let us raise the curtain on all this for you. With every production, we give our patrons an opportunity to come backstage with us, raise their eyes to the flies and take a good look at what’s behind the sets. It may be dark in the wings but there’s a whole lot going on there! And because it’s a busy place, we can’t really do this more than once per performance run. You will need to book your visit beforehand, so don’t delay!
A member of the theatre staff who can answer all your questions and show you some of the very impressive features of our opera house takes you backstage for free.
Tristan und Isolde 22.9.2024
La clemenza di Tito 27.10.2024
Ihsane 15.11.2024
Fedora 17.12.2024
Salomé 25.1.2025
Dido & Aeneas 25.2.2025
Khovantchina 30.3.2025
Mirage 9.5.2025
La Traviata 24.6.2025
The “En coulisse” tour lasts about 20 minutes, starts 15 minutes after the performance, is free of charge on prior reservation with our box office service by email [email protected].
Activities about the performances and the GTG
The operas of the 2024-2025 season will be the subject of a very comprehensive conference on the work, its libretto, context and music, a few days before the first performance, always at the same time, 6.30 pm, by the Association genevoise des amis de l’opéra et du ballet.
These conferences take place at the Théâtre de l’Espérance.
Tristan und Isolde 10.9.2024
La clemenza di Tito 7.10.2024
Fedora 9.12.2024
Salomé 13.1.2025
Dido & Aeneas 17.2.2025
Khovantchina 17.3.2025
Stabat Mater 7.5.2025
La Traviata 10.6.2025
At 6:30PM
Théâtre de l’Espérance
Association genevoise des amis de l’opéra et du ballet
7D, chemin Pré-Marquis
1241 Puplinge
+41 22 349 83 60
[email protected]
amisdelopera.ch
In partnership with
Or when the opera house becomes a performance and you are the performers. As soon as you step inside, you get swept up like a modern-day Cinderella in a swirl of sounds and sights that carry you from one space to the next, from a highball to a cocktail, from midnight to the wee hours, because at the Grand Théâtre, three times per season, at 3 a.m., we turn the coach into a pumpkin and the glass slippers change into sneakers that won’t damage the beautiful parquet floors they’re dancing on. A far-out party for people with open minds. We know that our reputation as a posh place for stuffy classical music fans precedes us. But for three nights next season, we’ve curated a few line-ups of badass DJs to come and rip up the house. And some of your prejudices against us, while they’re at it.
Three times per season, the Grand Théâtre stays up way past its bedtime. In November, to open the season, in February to drive the winter away and in May, to celebrate summer. It’ll also be a good time to invite some of our neighbours and cronies over and open up to other genres.
Late Night #1 23.11.2024
Late Night #2 1.3.2025
Late Night #3 20.6.2025
At the GTG
For one night, come and live in the Grand Théâtre, we’ll take you from the ceiling to the stage, from maze to maze, along the melodies of yesteryear and sweet polyphonies. Come and dream under the lights of the chandeliers and the stars, we will sing you to sleep until the early morning, and then what a wake-up call! And bring your things:
- sleeping bag or other blanket
- mattress more or less soft
- pillow
- flashlight
- toilet bag
- teddy bear
- …
5.4.25
At the GTG
To celebrate the Fête de la Musique together with the Grand Théâtre, we’re inviting you to sit with us under the stars. Not those that sparkle by the hundreds in Jacek Stryjeński’s gold and silver ceiling in our auditorium, the real ones that await us al fresco, as night starts falling on the parc des Eaux-Vives. Come and experience, free of charge, on a giant screen, our production of Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata.
Screening of La Traviata
Free admission
June 2025
Parc des Eaux-Vivess
Sponsored by
Activities about the GTG
With the kids or just wander in, the doors are wide open.
A quick onceover with the mop and broom and we throw the windows and doors wide open to let the sounds of our busy Saturday morning out onto the street for all to hear. This is your chance to come in and check us out. You can watch the Chorus rehearsing a performance. There will belots of activities specially designed for this opening weekend: stuff for the kids (makeup, drawing, games in the theatre), food and wine tasting and tours for grownups, discovery circuits for the eternally curious, in short, never a dull moment in our company. And this is just the trial run for other festive weekends we are planning this season along the same format!
Free admission
14.9.2024
From 11am to 6pm
At the GTG
B is for Bel canto and Bellini (also a very nice drink), Bizet and Berlioz, Britten and his Billy Budd and, of course, B is for Brunch! Will you be alone or tête-à-tête, will you be a bunch of boisterous brunchers or are you looking to bring your babbling brood? The tables are set for a Grand Brunch in Geneva’s most beautiful ballroom, where the gods and nymphs of legend beam their benign, but blasé, smiles down on you from above. Eight Sundays per season, eight chances for a nice lie-in, eight chances to add some beautiful music to your eggs benedict: we have a Sunday buffet ready to satisfy the hungriest opera and ballet buffs! As space is limited in our Main Foyer, we kindly ask you to reserve your table beforehand.
13.10.2024
10.11.2024
8.12.2024
19.1.2025
16.2.2025
23.3.2025
4.5.2025
1.6.2025
Sundays from 11AM
Tickets CHF 70.– / CHF 20.– (up to 12 years old)
In the foyer of the GTG
What is the connection between the Duke of Brunswick and the Grand Théâtre? Between the Valkyrie and the great fire? Between a Second Empire façade and a 50s-60s theatre?
Ten times a year, we let visitors into the bowels of the huge ship of the Place de Neuve, navigating between opera trivia and heritage curiosities. From the Atrium to the Milky Way, from the marble of the entrance to the gold of the fireplaces, discover this emblematic building, guided by our in-house connoisseurs, who will tell you all its secrets.
16.9.2024
14.10.2024
11.11.2024
16.12.2024
13.1.2025
17.2.2025
17.3.2025
12.5.2025
16.6.2025
Tickets CHF 15.- / CHF 10.- (until 12 years old)
Visits at 12:30PM
Duration: 55 minutes
At the GTG
Because we love putting the Grand Théâtre in afterwork mode, please welcome the Apérovisite: a hybrid between the traditional Guided Tour and the Apéropéra. Marvel at our Murano glass or Léon Gaud’s gaudy frescoes, sure, but have a drink with that. Our marble halls and our gilded chimneypieces are so much more thrilling with a glass of Viognier. Apérovisite will only take place three times this season, so save those dates!
31.10.2024
23.1.2025
27.3.2025
At 6:30PM
Tickets CHF 25.-
First drink included (except cocktails and champagne)
At the GTG
Would you like to discover the Milky Way with your colleagues or have the gilt and chandeliers in the foyer for you and your friends? How about a team-building session like no other or a taste of the world of opera? On the other side, we have all kinds of private guided tours of the Grand Théâtre and/or its set and costume workshops. Or even made-to-measure artistic workshops facilitated by professional singers.
Contact : [email protected]
Out and about with the Grand Théâtre
Partners, partnerships, twinning, collaborations, co-programming, alliances, parallels, concordances, synergies, all these words basically mean one thing: don’t stay in your corner, go out and meet the other person, your neighbour, your friend, your sister, the guy you meet at the bus stop every day. Outside the walls, within our walls, walled in, in ruins, under construction, down and out, everything is good for knocking down over-conceived, over- learned or hand-me-down ideas. Come and see for yourself, come and practice the art of taking a step back to observe the world. Like every season, we offer you a few options for adventurous encounters…
Contact: [email protected]
If you work in a civil society organization or a structure linked to disability or to the integration of asylum seekers and you want to introduce opera and ballet to your participants or beneficiaries, feel free to contact us. We can build a project suited to your purpose that takes into account your needs and our availability.
Our season’s theme will naturally be played out in our productions but will also feature in many joint and special projects and events. With our partners the Orchestre de la Suisse romande and the Orchestre de chambre de Genève of course, but also with Antigel, the Bains des Pâquis, La Bâtie- Festival de Genève, the Cinémas du Grütli, Les Créatives, La Comédie, Electron Festival or even the Théâtre de Vidy. The more the merrier!
Focus
The Grand Théâtre de Genève invites you to continue the season with our partners in Geneva and the French-speaking cultural scene in Switzerland. Here are some performances at Vidy in Lausanne and at the Comédie in Geneva that echo our season.
From Hungary to Germany and all the way to the Middle East, a shattered, divided family stands at odds and clashes over questions of identity. A grandmother, her daughter and her grandson, several years apart, try to find their way in this world, between self-assertion and discretion, unveiling and secrecy, remembering and forgetting. The generational conflict and cultural misunderstandings are compounded by the difficulties each has in overcoming the feeling of otherness that clings to them. In this new production, director and film-maker Kornél Mundruczó tackles questions of identity from two angles and two timeframes: Jewishness, on the one hand, and homosexuality, on the other, confronted with the upheavals of time. A show of nuances that also speaks of the life that passes away and the wounds that remain.
Theater by Kornél Mundruczó / Proton Theatre
September 11 & 12, 2024
in co-realisation with La Bâtie–Festival de Genève
Special rates for GTG season ticket holders
Comédie de Genève
In partnership with
The first part of Milo Rau’s Private life Trilogy, Familie is based on an incident that occurred in Calais in 2007: a couple and their two children commit suicide, without any apparent motive. When they were found hanged in the veranda, they had tidied up the house, obviously dined on seafood and prepared instructions for the dog. And they had left a brief, laconic note: «We messed up too much, sorry». At Milo Rau’s invitation, An Miller and Filip Peeters, a couple of renowned Belgian actors, question and re-enact the final hours of this drama, accompanied by their two teenage daughters and their dog. The stories of the two families merge in the banality of everyday gestures, and fiction ends up disturbing reality.
Theater by Milo Rau / NT Gent
November 13 to 16, 2024
Special rates for GTG season ticket holders
Comédie de Genève
In partnership with
Thom Luz, the great melancholy artificer of musical theatre, sets a tourist trap on stage. It looks like one of those unusual and rare attractions, one that has become as much natural as artificial. It appears at regular intervals on a site that is deserted the rest of the time. A group manages the site, restoring and embellishing it, trying out new music and optical effects. Then, as by surprise, mass tourism creates a paradoxical and musical dialogue with the – so precious – capacity to marvel. Journeys through the musical repertoire, experiences with the unexpected possibilities of the performing arts. The collective of musicians and singers around Thom Luz knows how to make waiting speak like no other. It tells how human beings, far from “decisive moments”, tinker together possible lives
Theater by Thom Luz
November 12 to 16, 2024
Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne
Free shuttle bus from the Grand Théâtre
In partnership with
Every year, before the summit, countless questions have to be answered: Who is to meet whom (and when) and about what? And in what language? Caution is in order! A moment’s inattention and you could find yourself on a icy patch… Preparing the summit is an art on its own, a balancing act, a climb without a rope. But these people have often been to the summit. Without any special equipment. And no one knows the secret that enables them to succeed every time. At least not officially. Six Franco-Swiss-Italian actors-singers- musicians brought together by Christoph Marthaler take the steep paths of musical theatre to get there and assess the situation. Like a Europe in search of itself, there’s no doubt that the summit will take place, even if the paths to get there are going to be tricky.
Theater by Christoph Marthaler
May 16 to 28 2025
Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne
Free shuttle bus from the Grand Théâtre
In partnership with
Collaborations
In “The Ghosts Are Returning”, GROUP50:50 tells the story of seven “pygmy skeletons” that a Swiss doctor brought from the Congo to Geneva in the 1950s. The artists from Congo, Switzerland and Germany travel to the equatorial forest to meet the nomadic Mbuti people who are threatened by illegal logging and driven out of their territories. Singing and dancing with them, they develop a ritual to allow the seven spirits to find rest. The result is a multimedia musical theatre piece about (neo)colonial crimes, death and mourning.
September 1 and 2, 2024
Co-produced by la Bâtie – Festival de Genève and Service de la culture de Meyrin
Théâtre Forum-Meyrin
In partnership with
Here comes another fine summer, where the Grand Théâtre is invited to the Bains des Pâquis! And what better way to celebrate on the altar of sacrifice than to get up in the early hours of the morning and sing a song as the countryside turns white, in the company of Richard Wagner and one of his greatest admirers on this side of the Rhine, Ernest Chausson. Here is a promising morning dialogue between the Wesendonck Lieder and the aptly named Poème de l’amour et de la mer, in a chamber music version with a view…
Kristina Stanek mezzo-soprano
Clara Chartré & Rada Hadjikostova violin
Marie-Barbara Berlaud alto
Beatriz Raimundo cello
Jean-Paul Pruna piano
Augsust 14, 2024 at 6AM
Bains des Pâquis
In partnership with
Poetry and music often go hand in hand… As autumn falls, the Foyer of the Grand Théâtre welcomes the 2024 edition of the Festival. A unique evening for two poetic events: Priscille Oehninger (alto) & Aline Chappuis (voice-piano) will present their concert-reading «Sœurs», before handing the stage over to Audrey Vigoureux (text and piano) & POL (electronic music) for a concert in “Apnée surveillée”.
September 23, 2024
« Sœurs » at 7:30PM
« Apnée surveillée » at 9PM
At the GTG
The truth is we aren’t too fond of seeing opera at the movies. We’d rather have it live on stage in all its vibrating emotional loudness. But at the opera, we do like a good movie. In fact, we’re just as keen to watch one as our neighbours at the Cinémas du Grütli, Geneva’s art house cinema. So we developed this new format, Cinéopéra, as both a tribute to and a discovery of the silver screen, where four opera and ballet greats who will be on stage with us this season choose their favorite film to view and discuss. Four very different artists, all exceptional, using film to zoom in (or out) on the productions they designed for us, in an amusing play of intertextuality and inter-referentiality. And perhaps one day, it’ll be hard to tell whether you’re at the opera or at the movies…
Milo Rau
September 28, 2024 at 6PM
The Deer Hunter , Michael Cimino, 183 min, 1978
Roberto Alagna
December 7, 2024
Emmanuelle Haïm
Febuary 15, 2025
Babettes Gæstebud , Gabriel Axel, 103 min, 1987
Romeo Castellucci
April 12, 2025
Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life, The Quay Brothers, 105 min, 1995
Les Cinémas du Grütli
Get a Season Ticket
Treat yourself to the emotion of a season and get guaranteed the best seats, at the best price, in all categories!
Find out about our 2024-2025 season tickets offers.
#WeArtGTG
Stay connected with the GTG
Crédits photos
Illustration © GTG / Joëlle Flumet