An important aim of the Hungarian National Philharmonic’s opera subscription series is that, alongside the genre’s popular hits, valuable works from among the rarities worth discovering are brought before the audience from time to time. In the 2025/2026 season, Jean de Nivelle, the historical opera written in 1880 by Léo Delibes – composer of Coppélia and Lakmé – will be performed for the Müpa audience in concert, conducted by Vashegyi György, with an international cast made up exclusively of outstanding singers from abroad. The title role will be sung by the French tenor Cyrille Dubois, and the performance is a co-production of the Hungarian National Philharmonic and the Palazzetto Bru Zane. The performance will take place at Müpa on 14 January.
Léo Delibes, the French Romantic contemporary of the German Romantic Brahms, was born in 1836 and died in 1891. A graduate of the Paris Conservatoire and a pupil of Adolphe Adam, he felt most in his element as a composer of musical stage works. Prolific in both ballet and opera, he wrote three works in the former and five in the latter, creating in each field an audience favourite that has proved immortal: Coppélia (1870) and Lakmé (1883).
His three-act opera Jean de Nivelle – successful at its premiere but today awaiting rediscovery – a work based on the life of a 15th-century French historical figure, was written between the two, in 1880. The piece now comes to life in a concert performance in French, conducted by Vashegyi György, the Kossuth Prize-winning general music director of the Hungarian National Philharmonic, with an international cast featuring the excellent French tenor Cyrille Dubois in the title role. Like several earlier ventures filling gaps in the repertoire, this production is the result of the collaboration between the Hungarian National Philharmonic and the Palazzetto Bru Zane.
LÉO DELIBES: JEAN DE NIVELLE
Opera in concert in three acts, with one interval, in French
Jean de Nivelle: Cyrille Dubois
Arlette: Mélissa Petit
Simone: Marie-Andrée Bouchard-Lesieur
Diane: Judith van Wanroij
Le Comte de Charolais: Tassis Christoyannis
Malicorne: François Rougier
Beautreillis: Jean-Philippe Mc Clish
Le Page Isolin: Juliette Mey
Saladin / Un Héraut / Un Vieillard: Adrien Fournaison
Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra
Hungarian National Choir (chorus master: Somos Csaba)
Conductor: Vashegyi György