La Plage – EN

La Plage is where you look at the sea, La Plage is where you close your eyes. Where it’s warm and you feel a breeze on your skin. And your skin shivers from that unexpected touch. Not that it’s un- pleasant, mind you. Somewhere you can let yourself go and forget about time. La Plage is when you say why not? Why not me? Why not them? Why not us? Why not another way? Maybe just once? And who knows? She loves me, she loves me not. La Plage is like taking a bath, a breath of fresh air, doing something crazy, something that can mean something else. There will be golden times, sunset times, full moon times and little blue or grey times. There will be colder times, times to huddle together. That’s also what happens at La Plage, it’s where you learn to live together, one with another, sometimes more on your own because you need space to think, sometimes noticing what other people are saying, their attitudes, new trends or gossip, keeping up with the times and seizing the day. La Plage is the echo of the city. So take your kit off and plunge into the talk of the town.

Late Nights, or how to go the opera and forget to go home; Apéropéra or everything you always wanted to know about Wagner but were afraid to ask Verdi, a slice of music taken from our productions and served with a hefty portion of casual good humour; Grand Brunch, or how to unwind at the end of the week under the gilt and the chandeliers of the opera; En coulisse, or “In the wings”, for the enquiring minds who want to know, those that watch the “Making of” and spot the continuity editing mistakes – look, before he had a jacket, now he doesn’t – yeah, it’s called an ellipsis and we explain it all in our Intropéras. And please feel free to pay us a visit, literally or figuratively: we’re standing at the ready, with guides to take you through the underground mazes of the Grand Théâtre, or a charming barista serving you a flat white with our Wi-Fi access code. If you won’t come to the beach, then La Plage will come to you.

Is this a pleonasm? Were we not already the out? There is a very beautiful film by Manoel de Oliveira with Michel Piccoli that is being shown right now on arte. It is called Je rentre à la maison. And well yes, even great adventurers go home. Perhaps they are even adventurers because they were lucky enough to have a home. Or maybe they didn’t choose to be adventurers…
 
Home is sometimes more important than discovering the North Pole, especially if you come back from there, because why go on the whole trip, brush shoulders with death and the unknown, if not to share your discoveries ? And then, when you bring your new love home, you want to be able to admire it together and maybe even integrate it into the family.
 
So what about this adventure that La Plage, now almost six years old, is embarking on? Here it goes, setting out to learn about life, travelling the world, with the wind in its sails but without the protection of its flagship. The archipelago of Geneva institutions will become its ports of call. We hope to discover New Populations there and, above all, that they will also discover us and invite us to become part of their family – only we wouldn’t want to be the mother-in-law or, worse, the father-in-law… Rather the uncle from America or the cousine Germaine? We will approach the bigs and the smalls, the exotics from home and the sisters from elsewhere, the theatrical comrades and the literary confines, always on the lookout for new shores and in any case always with you, we hope.
 
P.S. And come and spend some time with us before we leave, to sleep or party in our foyers or simply to see a show and listen to our singers and musicians in situ while sipping a sparkling ginger juice or why not a Pet Nat?

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!

Faustus in Africa!
Quaternary freely inspired by Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 
Faustus in Africa! is a landmark play that introduced the work of South African artist William Kentridge to European audiences in 1995 at the Festival d’Avignon. Premiered in Cape Town four years after the end of apartheid in South Africa, Faustus in Africa! sets out to tell the story of the exploitation and domination of the African continent by the West, using every means of theatre and the arts. Conceived with the Handspring Puppet Company, his adaptation of Goethe’s play intimately blends the art of puppetry with animated film, the visual arts and literature, creating a sensitive and critical journey to the heart of the shared history of Africa and Europe.
 
Puppet theatre by William Kentridge
From 29 October to 1 November 2025
Comédie de Genève
Special rates for GTG season ticket holders
 
In partnership with
 

Club Amour
 
Café Müller – Aatt enen tionon – herses, duo
Three pieces about desire, three ways of writing the coming together and going apart of bodies. Boris Charmatz joins Pina Bausch’s iconic Café Müller (1978) with two pieces from his own repertoire. The bodies that relentlessly embrace and repel each other in Pina Bausch’s piece are echoed by those separated in Aatt enen tionon (1996) and the intertwined duet from herses (une lente introduction) (1997). With this triple programme, Tanztheater Wuppertal and Boris Charmatz offer a turbulent evening of colliding aesthetics, music by PJ Harvey and Purcell, bodies and ways of looking at dance.
With the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch Ensemble and guests.
 
Dance by Pina Bausch and Boris Charmatz
From 12 to 14 February 2026
Comédie de Genève
Special rates for GTG season ticket holders
 
In partnership with
 

Bovary Madame
From the novel by Gustave Flaubert
 
Christophe Honoré directs Bovary Madame, working with the same troupe as Les Idoles and Ciel de Nantes. He imagines her as the Lola Montes of Max Ophuls’ film, a woman whose life is on show in a circus. Surrounded by men in Flaubert’s novel, elevated to the status of an icon of world literature, read over and over again, she is presented as a figure on whom decades of desires and criticisms are reflected. But she will also make her woman’s voice and her intimate life heard, recalling the secret interior of the novel’s famous carriage ride.
More about the production
 
Theater by Christophe Honoré
September 2025
Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne
 
Free shuttle bus from the Grand Théâtre
Book the shuttle bus
 
In partnership with
 

Il Cimento dell’Armonia e dell’Inventione
 
Vivaldi’s Four Seasons is as much a classical music ‘hit’ as it is music from a Mediterranean culture and a celebration of the continuous variations of nature. Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Radouan Mriziga, lifted by violinist Amandine Beyer’s lively, limpid performance, explore the infinite, generous layers of Vivaldi’s composition by choreographing a male quartet: rhythmic structures, mythological figures and symbolic arrangements write our understanding of nature in time and space – and question the alarming relationship we have with it today. With Boštjan Antončič, Nassim Baddag, Lav Crnčević, José Paulo dos Santos.
More about the production
 
Dance by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Radouan Mriziga
From 13th to 15th January 2026
Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne
 
Free shuttle bus from the Grand Théâtre
Book the shuttle bus
 
 
In partnership with
 

La Bâtie, the Geneva festival, will once again be our host and our guest: amphytryonne with the ADC – Association pour la danse contemporaine – for the production conceived by Yasmine Hugonnet with some of the dancers from our Ballet (1000&1 BPM _ Odyssée, pp. 68-69), while we will be welcoming La Bâtie for François Chaignaud’s performance Dumy Moyi in the setting of our Grand Foyer. This solo performance, which has already been performed at some of the world’s leading festivals, offers a cross-section of his new work with Nina Laisné and Nadia Larcher, also presented during La Bâtie.
 
8 September 2025 – 7PM and 9PM
At the GTG
 
In partnership with
 

The Grand Théâtre’s traditional season opener at the Bains des Pâquis will focus on the post-Wagnerian repertoire (yes, we’re starting once again with Richard Wagner and his Tannhäuser, if you ever start reading at the end). In search of a new language, new proses, harmonies and modes of expression, the programme will follow a number of paths from Arnold Schoenberg to Viktor Ullmann. We look forward to meeting you at the dawn of the 20th century, and perhaps also at its twilight, on this August morning that we hope will be mild despite the fires that seem to be rekindling everywhere.
 
Augsust 17, 2025 at 6AM
Bains des Pâquis
 
In partnership with
 

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 three opera and ballet greats who will be on stage with us this season choose their favorite film to view and discuss. Three 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…
 
Damien Jalet
25 October 2025 – 6PM
About Pelléas & Mélisande
 
Wayne Marshall
6 December 2025 – 6PM
About An American in Paris
 
Diana Markosian
28 March 2026 – 6PM
About Madama Butterfly
 
Les Cinémas du Grütli
 
In partnership with
 

A not-to-be-missed summer rendezvous in Geneva, CinéTransat reinvents open-air cinema. More than just a screening, it’s a cultural and human event that embodies the essential values of meeting and sharing. As a long-standing partner, the Grand Théâtre is delighted to be taking part in this unique event offering a rich and diverse panorama of cinema. Among the more than 50 films and short films on offer free of charge, the Grand Théâtre adds its own artistic touch each year by presenting a film that resonates with its new season’s programme. It’s a unique event in the Parc de la Perle du Lac, to be enjoyed with family or friends, with a full picnic or a delicious sandwich, after a splash or right on time! Sit back and enjoy the film under the stars.
 
8 August 2025 – 9PM
Free entrance
Parc de la Perle du Lac
 
In partnership with
 

We’ve had few opportunities to collaborate with the Musée d’ethnographie de Genève – a trial run last year around the play The Ghosts are returning with La Bâtie and Forum Meyrin and the questioning around the issues surrounding human remains and their restitution. Hosting three apéropéras in this new season will enable us to highlight the links between objects and cultural products, between genres and the context in which they are produced.
 
15 January 2026 – 6:30PM
Apéropéra about L’italiana in Algeri
 
2 April 2026 – 6:30PM
Apéropéra about Madama Butterfly
 
7 May 2026 – 6:30PM
Apéropéra about de Svatbata
 
Musée d’ethnographie de Genève
 
In partnership with
 

Fortunately, we’re not the only ones to celebrate Thursdays with an elaborate after-work party. That’s why the MAH (Musée d’Art et d’Histoire) is inviting us to join forces!
Following on from the dance tour of the Ugo Rondinone exhibition a few seasons ago, this is our chance to cook up two apéropéras (and who knows, maybe some surprise visits too?) together on Castor & Pollux (look out for Groove’n’Move too).
 
5 March 2026 – 6:30PM
Apéropéra about Castor & Pollux
 
Musée d’Art et d’Histoire
 
In partnership with