INFO LE FIGARO – According to our information, Louis Langrée’s current number two at the Opéra-Comique will take the helm of the Strasbourg institution after the departure of Alain Perroux, for the Grand Théâtre de Genève.
The announcement last November of the appointment of Alain Perroux as head of the Grand Théâtre de Genève, from the summer of 2026, plunged the French opera world into uncertainty. Arriving in 2019 to replace his tragically deceased director Eva Kleinitz, the Swiss critic and playwright, former artistic administrator of the Aix-en-Provence Festival, can indeed pride himself on a most positive assessment in the house, which operates in three cities: Strasbourg, Mulhouse and Colmar. Particularly in terms of expanding the repertoire, with a bold commitment to rediscoveries (even the recent Guercoeur by Albéric Magnard) and creations which have found their audience.
His scheduled departure therefore did not sound like good news for all lyric lovers in the Grand Est. What’s more, the Opéra national du Rhin must face reductions in subsidies and the prospect of major works, scheduled from 2027 and until 2030, which, according to the Municipality, will require the closure of the current Strasbourg building housing the opera, and will force the institution to imagine several seasons outside the walls. Launched last spring, the call for tenders for his replacement did not avoid the question, which he even made one of the strong points of his search for the right candidate, specifying: « Scheduled from 2027, the work will lead to several off-site seasons, which will enable the deployment of an unprecedented lyrical and choreographic programme on a regional scale (…) It should be noted that the 2026-2027 season will still take place within the usual walls of the Théâtre municipal de Strasbourg, and that for the following off-site seasons, recommendations will be made. »
Read alsoIn Strasbourg, the National Opera of the Rhine is going to have a facelift
After the selection of a first restricted circle of candidates, and interviews that took place over the last week, it is finally the profile of Chrysoline Dupont that was chosen. Good news for the place of women at the head of cultural institutions – she will thus join the still too restricted circle of opera directors in France, currently composed of Valérie Chevalier in Montpellier, Caroline Sonrier in Lille, Eva Cocquart in Clermont-Auvergne, and Claire Roserot de Melin, general director of the Capitole in Toulouse (whose artistic direction is provided by Christophe Ghristi).
Good news, above all, for the Opéra national du Rhin itself. The institution with 248 permanent employees (to which up to 500 temporary workers can be added depending on the season and the show) will indeed be able to count on her solid experience in the opera world, acquired first as a project manager for Gérard Mortier at the Opéra national de Paris, and especially as production director at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, where she spent seven years under the mandate of Bernard Foccroulle, before joining the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris. There she worked alongside Alain Perroux, the festival’s artistic advisor during the same period. Their complicity will be an asset in ensuring the smoothest possible transition, and in developing in consultation the leap into the unknown that the 2026-2027 seasons will represent, and especially those outside the walls. A task that she will therefore have to tackle before taking up her final position in September 2026. Above all, it was with her that the conductor Louis Langrée formed the winning ticket to take over the management of the Opéra-Comique, which the duo took over at the end of 2021. He as general director, she as head of the artistic department.
Finally, her time in programming for the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, where she developed numerous cultural activities and artistic programs – including creations – with social and educational resonances, focused on anchoring in the territory and in the city (open stages, multidisciplinary and participatory projects, creations in prisons or around the stories and music of stateless refugees as with Baby Dollconcerts in nursing homes, etc.) should be a significant asset in meeting the requirements and injunctions of the supervisory authorities, who had placed the future or the future director of the establishment at the top of the list of priorities. « invested in cultural action and convinced of the need to seek out and develop new audiences (…) in a proactive manner »of « propose innovative mediation actions, for young audiences but also more widely »and to invest « in the research and proposal of new formats and methods of distribution and reception of works, placing the public, whether initiated or to be conquered, at the heart of its concerns. »
