Orchestre Dijon Bourgogne et Chœur de l'Opéra de Dijon

To celebrate music, and its power on body and soul, what better way than with the galvanizing Carmina Burana by Carl Orff? Between sacred and profane, between the altar for prayer and the table for feasting, this larger-than-life score is a true hymn to the art of sound.

It was in 1935 and 1936 that Carl Orff discovered the medieval poems from the monastery of Benediktbeuern, and decided to select 24 of them to put together a libretto for a profane cantata. In the manuscripts, Latin rubs shoulders with High German in a joyous mix, even if the ostensibly sacred texts often make reference to rather earthly subjects: fortune, the return of spring, luxuriousness, the pleasures of alcohol and gaming... Powerful and charismatic, the musical style of Carl Orff is surprisingly accessible: far from the modernism of his contemporaries like Bartók, Stravinsky or Schoenberg, he takes inspiration from the art of the Renaissance and the early Baroque to deploy structures that are simultaneously simple yet grandiose, and always intensely euphonic. With its famous opening chorus, O Fortuna, fixed in the minds of moviegoers as the theme for the nocturnal horse charges in the film Excalibur, Carl Orff’s score is as anachronistic as it is a popular phenomenon of our times: a hymn to the "carmen", those conjugated powers of magic and song.

Musical director Joseph Bastian
Orchestre Dijon Bourgogne 
Chœur de l’Opéra de Dijon

With the Maîtrise de Dijon
and the participation of the Chœurs Éphémères d’adultes et d’enfants
and the amateur musicians of the Académie de l’Orchestre Dijon Bourgogne

Soprano Alexandra Flood 
Baritone Yoann Dubruque 
Tenor Kévin Amiel

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Carl Orff
Carmina Burana