Orchestre Victor Hugo

A regular partner of the Opéra de Dijon, the Orchestre Victor Hugo performs here some of the most beautiful symphonic pages of Wagner: Preludes, Interludes and Overtures testify to the sorcery of "the Enchanter".

A small jewel offered as a Christmas present to his wife Cosima in 1870, Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll symbolises the perfection of the composer’s orchestral art. While hailed as the grand renovator of lyric drama, Wagner was also admired by great symphonists, notably Mahler and Bruckner. His art ranges from the unbridled orchestra of his Preludes and Overtures to that, famously, of Tannhäuser, where the solemn "Pilgrim’s Chorus" offsets the languorous chromaticism of the Venusberg. The inexorable rise of the orchestra in slow and steady stages, reaching the peak of erotic Romanticism in the "Prelude and Liebestod" from Tristan und Isolde, deploys its unparalleled charms. Nature itself becomes sublimated in "Forest murmurs" from Siegfried, an indescribable sonic experience, with its enchanting textures, ethereal melodies, amazing effects; we shouldn’t be surprised when Luchino Visconti responded, when asked who was the greatest composer of film music: "Richard Wagner, of course!".

Musical director Jean-François Verdier
Orchestre Victor Hugo

^{Photo © Mylene Haas}

Richard Wagner
Der fliegende Holländer, overture
Siegfried, "Forest murmurs"
Tannhäuser, overture
Siegfried Idyll
Tristan und Isolde, Prelude and Liebestod