Opera To Be Sung – Pascal Dusapin, Pharrell Williams

Pascal Dusapin was born in Nancy, France, on 29 May 1955, and, at the age of 18, heard Arcana by Edgar Varèse at the University of Vincennes, a turning point in his life. Before then, he had a musical awakening after hearing a jazz trio while on vacation with his family, returning home with a longing to learn the clarinet. His father, however, insisted on piano lessons. When he was 10, the young Dusapin discovered the organ, an overwhelming passion that would buoy him through his chaotic and unconventional adolescence. Growing up in two environments – a small village in the Lorraine and a Paris suburb –, he embraced all genres with equal fervour, as enthusiastic about Bach as about The Doors, loving free jazz as much as Beethoven, quenching his artistic thirst on the music of the 1970s. But after his Arcana experience, he knew that he would devote all of his time and energy to composition. From 1974 to 1978, he loyally studied with Iannis Xenakis, whom he considered to be the modern descendant of Varèse. He believed that Xenakis was a master of thinking differently, broadening his horizons to include architecture and mathematics. This was his only true formal education, perhaps because Xenakis asked for nothing and gave him everything. Mr Dusapin’s first pieces, Souvenir du silence (1975) and Timée (1978), garnered the appreciation and support of two composers, Franco Donatoni and Hughes Dufourt. André Boucourechliev gave him precious advice and maxims that would stay with him throughout his career: “Never forget the instrument at the back of the orchestra” and “Sincerity is never a virtue in art.” 

In 1977, Mr Dusapin won the Fondation de la Vocation prize and, in 1981, the Villa Médicis award, where he was resident for two years while he wrote Tre Scalini, Fist and his first quartet, Niobé. He returned from Rome more determined than ever to make a living from composing and to compose while living. In the summer of 1986, he wrote Assaï for Dominique Bagouet’s ballet company, a rich collaboration both personally and artistically, and the Assaï tour took him around the world for years.

With the encouragement of Rolf Lieberman, he began composing his first opera in 1986, Roméo & Juliette, a work written in close collaboration with French writer and poet Olivier Cadiot. The opera is unconventional in plot and genre, a musical-literary revolution in which every word is chosen for its sound and rhythm, to then be woven with wholly unconstrained music. The work premiered simultaneously at the Opéra de Montpellier and the Festival d’Avignon in July 1989 before touring abroad. From that moment on, Pascal Dusapin would incorporate his love of literature into his operatic works. Cases in point: Medeamaterial, based on the work by Heiner Müller, first performed in 1991 at the Royal Theatre of La Monnaie in Brussels; To Be Sung, based on Gertrude Stein’s work, a fantastic adventure in which he involved the major mixed-media artist and light designer James Turell, and which premiered at the Théâtre des Amandiers in Nanterre in 1994; and, in 2003, Perelà, Uomo di fumo, based on Aldo Palazzeschi’s Il codice di Perelà (Man of Smoke), opened at the Opéra Bastille in Paris. Mr Dusapin went on to write the librettos for his two next operas, Faustus, The Last Night, which opened at Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden in 2006, and Passion, inspired by the myth of Orpheus, which premiered at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence in 2008. Continuing his mise en abyme of heroes of old, he took on Heinrich von Kleist’s famed work for his opera Penthesilea, which premiered in March 2015 at La Monnaie in Brussels, from which he took a suite for soprano and orchestra, Wenn du dem Wind…, which premiered at the Suntory Hall in Tokyo in August 2014 and was performed again at the Philharmonie de Paris in March 2015.

Throughout the writing of his operas, various other works were born, including seven string quartets (the sixth with orchestra), and various vocal works such as La Melancholia, Granum Sinapis, Dona Eis and Disputatio. He also wrote Sept études pour piano, A Quia concerto for piano and seven solos for orchestra: Go, Extenso, Apex, Clam, Exeo, Reverso (premiered by the Berliner Philharmoniker and Simon Rattle) and Uncut. This cycle of seven orchestral forms, composed between 1991 and 2009, is a long symphonic tale of life and of human emotions and artistry. A new cycle for orchestra was in development, inspired by nature. Morning in Long Island would be the first component, suggested by the shapes of the wind. It premiered in 2010 by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France conducted by Myung-Whun Chung. Amongst his more recent works are a violin concerto, Aufgang, commissioned by violinist Renaud Capuçon, his piece for piano and six instruments, Jetzt genau! and a cello concerto, Outscape, written for Alisa Weilerstein that premiered in May 2015, performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. His double concerto At Swim-two-birds, written for violinist Viktoria Mullova and cellist Matthew Barley, saw its premiere on 30 September 2017, played by the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, followed by Gewandhaus Leipzig, the Orchestre National de France, the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Seattle Symphony Orchestra.

Pascal Dusapin has been the recipient of numerous prizes and awards, including the Cino del Duca prize in 2005, and the Dan David Price in 2007. Also in 2007 he was granted the title of Academician at the Bayerische Académie in Munich and became Artistic Chairman at the Collège de France, only the second composer after Pierre Boulez to hold the position. He has published a book based on his experiences and his conferences entitled Une musique en train de se faire (“Music in the Making”, published by Seuil). In 2010 and 2011, he was Guest Professor at Musikhochschule in Munich.

Mr Dusapin’s interests and passions are many, from morphogenesis to philosophy (with a particular interest in Deleuze), from photography to architecture, from the theatre of Samuel Beckett to the work of Flaubert and others. All of these contribute to his freedom of invention and allow multiple layers of meaning, understanding and emotion in his works. He has collaborated with many different artists, combining his multidisciplinary talents with theirs: Sasha Waltz, James Turell, Peter Mussbach, Laurence Equilbey, The Accroche Note Ensemble, the Berlin Philharmonic, Simon Rattle and the Arditti Quartet. New projects have also brought him into the realm of electronics on a grand scale in such exceptional venues as the Grand Palais for the Monumenta by Richard Serra or the beach at Deauville for the city’s 150th anniversary. In November 2011, he directed his own piano and baritone cycle on poems by Nietzsche, O Mensch!, at the Paris Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord. In October 2014, he imagined a visual and sound installation for the Donaueschingen Festival, “Mille Plateaux” that would then travel to other locations; in 2015, the installation was shown in the Lieu Unique, Nantes, France.

Mr Dusapin, a singular artist, continues his musical journey – formal and yet never dogmatic –, offering his fiercely emotional music through a great diversity of forms.

In 2019, Pascal Dusapin unveiled Lullaby Experience, his first work in collaboration with the IRCAM, a French institute dedicated to the research of music and sound, during its Festival ManiFeste. In the summer of that year, he was the guest of the Salzburg Festival, which devoted Time with Dusapin to him, a unique tribute to the artist internationally synonymous with the vitality of French musical composition. In September, his new opera Macbeth Underworld staged by Thomas Jolly premiered at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels.

On 11 November 2020, French President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron commissioned him to write the musical part of the work created for the Panthéon entombment of Maurice Genevoix. In February 2021, he was honoured at the Radio France Festival Présences.

His music is published by Editions Salabert / Universal Classical Music. 

Recently appointed as a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Arts Education and Entrepreneurship, Pharrell is the founder of YELLOW, a non-profit organization dedicated to creating equal opportunities for youth through education. He also established Black Ambition, a non-profit initiative aimed at empowering Black and Hispanic entrepreneurs.
In addition to his philanthropic work, Pharrell serves as the Creative Director of Louis Vuitton's Menswear and is the founder of Humanrace, a brand committed to helping individuals prioritize well-being.

In residence at the Saint-Merry Church and later at the Théâtre de l’Athénée, the ensemble became a collective, bringing together an orchestra and a troupe of multidisciplinary artists. Since then, Le Balcon has presented works spanning all periods of music history, with a particular focus on 20th- and 21st-century compositions. Le Balcon has presented several operas, such as Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, Eötvös’s Le Balcon, Levinas’s La Métamorphose, as well as the premieres of Lavandier’s Le Premier Meurtre and Eldar’s Like Flesh. 

Since 2018, Le Balcon has commissioned new works, welcoming composers in residence every year with the support of the Fondation Singer-Polignac.

In 2018, Le Balcon began the production of Licht, les Sept jours de la semaine by Stockhausen. Every autumn, one of the seven operas in this grand cycle is revealed to the public. After Jeudi de Lumière (2018), Samedi de Lumière (2019) and Mardi de Lumière (2020), Le Balcon presented Vendredi de Lumière in November 2022 at the Opéra de Lille and the Philharmonie de Paris. 

Since the 2022-2023 season, Le Balcon has had an artistic partnership with the Opéra de Lille. 

In 2023, Le Balcon presented new productions: The Threepenny Opera by Weill and Brecht at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, with the Comédie-Française troupe, directed by Thomas Ostermeier; Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise at the Enescu Festival in Bucharest, in a concert version with video by Nieto; and Stockhausen’s Sonntag aus Licht at the Philharmonie de Paris, in a staging by Ted Huffman. 

Le Balcon is supported by the French Ministry of Culture, the Société Générale Foundation C’est Vous l’Avenir, the City of Paris and the Fondation Singer-Polignac.

As a sound engineer at Le Balcon, he specialises in the sound reinforcement of acoustic, electronic and mixed music. Coming from a generation that naturally embraced loudspeakers as a musical and aesthetic tool, Mr Derex focuses on questions of sound projection. This concept, primarily derived from the written tradition of the second half of the 20th century, reflects the importance of the spatial aspect of composition, a concept that Le Balcon has consistently embraced. Throughout his concerts and performances, Mr Derex designs all kinds of immersive sound systems.

With Le Balcon, Mr Derex produces performances from a repertoire spanning all periods of musical history, with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century works and the operatic repertoire. In 2018, Le Balcon began production of Licht, a colossal cycle—seven operas, 29 hours of music—by the German composer Stockhausen. An opera is performed each season at the Philharmonie de Paris as part of the Festival d’Automne. Various entities are associated with each day-of-the-week performance: Opéra-Comique, Opéra de Lille, London’s Southbank Centre, Opéra de Bordeaux and Deutsche Oper Berlin.

More recently, Mr Derex worked on The Threepenny Opera at the Aix-en-Provence Festival and a revival at the Comédie-Française, and the musical The Little Shop of Horrors at the Opéra-Comique. At the opera house, he has collaborated as a sound engineer with directors Silvia Costa, Thomas Ostermeir, Susanne Kennedy, Valérie Lesort, Ted Huffman, Christian Hecq, Benjamin Lazar and others.

In 2015, he founded the B Records label, dedicated exclusively to live recordings, with Rémy Gassiat and Baptiste Chouquet. This label was distributed by Naïve and then Outhere. Since 2014, Mr Derex has produced Musical Mondays at the Théâtre de l’Athénée in Paris with Le Balcon, a monthly recital cycle presenting a broad panorama of the international opera scene. Mr Derex is currently in residence at the Fondation Singer-Polignac and the Opéra de Lille.

In 2025/26, Ms Daviet is presenting a series of exciting contemporary music programmes. She will appear on several occasions with the Ensemble Intercontemporain: in November, she performed Berio’s Sequenza III and Héctor Parra’s Orgia in Paris. In the spring, she returns with Kurtág’s Kafka Fragments, marking the 100th anniversary of the composer’s birth. She will make her debut at the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin with the Boulez Ensemble, conducted by François-Xavier Roth, in Rebecca Saunders’s Skin. Other highlights of the season include concerts with the Le Balcon Chamber Orchestra and Maxime Pascal, as well as the world premiere of a new work by Christian Rivet at Radio France, which she will perform together with organist Sarah Kim, encompassed by works from Olivier Messiaen. 

Last season, Ms Daviet appeared not only in contemporary opera productions such as George Benjamin’s Into the Little Hill at the Festival Ravel and Giorgio Battistelli’s 7 Minuti at the Opéra de Lyon, but also excelled in Mozart: she sang Despina alongside Thomas Hampson in Così Fan Tutte with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, as well as the Mass in C Minor in Fribourg. She was also invited to the Messiaen Festival, where her performance of Poèmes pour Mi with pianist Jean-François Heisser was given an enthusiastic reception. 

 In 2023, Ms Daviet gave her Asian debut as Pamina in Mozart’s Magic Flute, which was performed at the National Taichung Theater in a production by William Kentridge. That same year, she was also scheduled to debut as Nadja in Haas’ Bluthaus at the Opéra de Lyon. Other important operatic moments in her career include Héro in Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénédict at the Cologne Opera under François-Xavier Roth, George Benjamin’s Into the Little Hill at the Teatro del Canal in Madrid in collaboration with the Teatro Real, Léna in Saint-Saëns’s La princesse jaune and Mélisande in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande with the Les Siècles orchestra. She also appeared as Angélique in Hervé’s Les Chevaliers de la table ronde at the Opéra Grand Avignon, Clorinda in La Cenerentola by Rossini at the Staatsoper in Hamburg and Countess de la Roche in Zimmerman’s Die Soldaten at the Cologne Opera.

 While pursuing her career in opera, Ms Daviet continued to nurture a stellar concert repertoire. Recent performances include Ligeti’s Requiem with the Orquesta y Coro Nacionales de España under David Afkham, performances with Thomas Hengelbrock and his Balthasar Neumann Choir and Ensemble with Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem and with Claire Gibault and the Paris Mozart Orchestra with Mozart’s Mass in C Minor. She also sang Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire at the Opéra de Rouen, Vivier’s Bouchara at the Cologne Philharmonie, and Fauré’s Requiem at the International Rostropovich Festival in Moscow under Kazuki Hamada.

Further, she gave a recital devoted to Messiaen alongside pianist and conductor Alphonse Cemin at the Théâtre de l’Athénée, marking a new stage in her exploration of the contemporary repertoire and French melody.

She has maintained long-standing relationships with the Le Balcon ensemble and Maxime Pascal, with whom a close collaboration has developed. Among their distinguished projects is her critically acclaimed performance of Eva in Stockhausen’s Freitag from the Licht cycle, presented at the Philharmonie de Paris and the Opéra de Lille. She also collaborates with the Les Siècles orchestra and François-Xavier Roth. She regularly performs with the Ensemble les Lunaisiens conducted by Arnaud Marzoratti, as well as in numerous recitals with pianist Alphonse Cemin, specialising in a repertoire from the late 19th to the early 20th century in France and Germany.

She would successively perform the roles of Noémie in Massenet’s Cendrillon at the Opéra de Massy, Pauline in La Vie Parisienne d’Offenbach with the Collectif Lyrique, Despina in Così Fan Tutte and Susanna in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro with the Orchestre de Massy.

But Ms Chauvin’s unique quality lies in her eclecticism and openness to different musical horizons, which have allowed her to interpret a wide variety of roles.

As a member of the Le Balcon ensemble, she has performed the roles of Jury in Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Examen, Femme I in Marco Suarez’s L’Enfer Musicale d’Alejandra Pizarnik, Echo in Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, Femme/Fille/Voleuse in Peter Eötvös’s Le Balcon, Rita Garcia in Fernando Fiszbein’s Avenida de los Incas 3618 and La Soeur de Grego in Michael Levinas’s La Métamorphose.

In 2011, she joined the Nouveau Studio of the Opéra de Lyon, led by Jean-Paul Fouchecourt. This gave her the opportunities to sing the roles of Sophie in Massenet’s Werther at the Opéra de Lyon (understudying Anne Catherine Gillet), Sacha in Vous qui savez…ou ce qu’est l’amour… (a piece based on Mozart’s work) at the Théâtre de la Renaissance, and the Chouette and the Pastourelle in Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortilèges (Opéra de Lyon).

Ms Chauvin’s enthusiasm for the contemporary repertoire has led her to take part in numerous acclaimed concerts, including the world premiere of Philippe Hurel’s Espèces d’Espaces at the Théâtre de la Renaissance, Salvatore Sciarrino’s Il giardino di Sara with the 2E2M ensemble at the Villa Medicis, Diana Soh’s world premiere of Arboretum: of myths and trees (the IRCAM Festival ManiFeste), Philippe Hurel’s Cantus with the Court-Circuit ensemble (Festival Novelum), Philippe Manoury’s En écho, Luc Ferrari’s Chansons pour le corps with the l’Itinéraire ensemble (Festival Extension de la Muse en Circuit), Juan Pablo Carreño’s Garras de Oro, Franz Liszt/Michael Levinas’s Lenore (Festival Paris Quartier d’Été), Geoffroy Jourdain’s L’Ailleurs de l’Autre (Péniche Opéra and Festival Métis de Saint Denis), and Le livre de Job by Michel Tabachnik with the Brussels Philharmonic (Cité de la Musique, Paris).

Having gained notice from Alexis Forestier in 2010 for her exceptional stage presence in Philippe Hurel’s Opus Opéra, Ms Chauvin simultaneously began an acting career that led her to perform in various stage plays, including Alexis Forestier’s Mystère des mystères at Les Subsistances in Lyon and the Nouveau Théâtre CDN in Montreuil, Martine Venturelli’s Celui qui ne connaît pas l’oiseau le mange at the Centre National de Création in Albi, and Stéphane Olry’s Tu oublieras aussi Henriette at the Théâtre de l’Échangeur, the Centre Culturel in Sarlat, the CDN in Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy, and La Cartoucherie.

She made her debut at the Paris Opera in May 2015 singing Papagena from Die Zauberflöte (and took over this role in Montpellier). At the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées she debuted the role of Adina in an adaptation of L'Elisir d'Amore (also in Bordeaux and Reims). She sang La Jeune Fille for the world premiere of L'Inondation by Filidei/Pommerat at the Opéra-Comique in Paris (with revivals in Rennes, Nantes and Luxembourg). In Le Nozze di Figaro, she sang Susanna (Saint-Etienne, Avignon and in a touring production in France) and Barbarina (Mostly Mozart Festival in New York, Edinburgh Festival). She sang Zerlina from Don Giovanni (Saint-Etienne), Pamina from Die Zauberflöte (Angers, Nantes, Rennes), Minerva and La Fama from La Finta Pazza by Sacrati (Versailles, Dijon, Geneva, Krakow, Amsterdam), Aldimira from Erismena by Cavalli (concert version in Luxemburg), L'Amour from Orphée et Eurydice (Nancy), Nannetta from Falstaff and Baucis from Philémon et Baucis by Gounod (Tours), Laoula from L’Etoile by Chabrier (Nancy), Lisette / Ivette from La Rondine (Nancy, Toulouse), Solveig from Peer Gynt (Compiègne, Limoges, Montpellier), Colette from Le Devin du Village by Rousseau (Geneva), Jacqueline from Fortunio by Messager (Saint-Etienne), Frasquita from Carmen (Opéra Comique, Dijon, Edinburgh Festival), Nina from Chérubin by Massenet (Montpellier), Gretel from Hänsel und Gretel (Angers and Nantes), Mi from Das Land des Lächelns (Tours, Avignon), Lucy from The Telephone and Amelia from Amelia al Ballo both by Menotti (Metz), Juliette from Die Tote Stadt (Toulouse) and Echo from Ariadne auf Naxos (Montpellier). She sang the role of Gabrielle from La Vie Parisienne for the revival of the Christian Lacroix staging in Limoges. 

In the concert field, she sang with the Kammerorchester in Stuttgart (Goethe-Lieder by Fazil Say), the Bayerische Rundfunk Orchester (Cinq-Mars by Gounod in Munich, Vienna and Versailles, conducted by Ulf Schirmer), the Budapest Festival Orchestra (Le Nozze di Figaro and Die Zauberflöte in a concert-version, and Mozart Requiem, all conducted by Ivan Fischer), the Mahler Chamber Orchestre (Fauré Requiem), the Paris Chamber Orchestra (Lovaby by Betsy Jolas), the Orchestre symphonique de Tours (in a Dvořak-Mozart program conducted by Jean-Yves Ossonce), the Orchestre national de Lyon (A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Mendelssohn conducted by Leonard Slatkin), the Saint-Etienne Orchestra (Mahler's 4th Symphony, Haendel's Messiah), the Accentus Choir (La Petite Messe Solennelle by Rossini), the Ensemble Café Zimmermann (Bach and Graupner cantatas, Stabat Mater by Pergolesi), Le Balcon (Jacob Lenz in Salzburg). She toured a program "Les Fleurs du Mâle - sassy songs from café-concert" with the Palazzetto Bru-Zane (Venezia, Berlin and Paris).

During season 2025-2026, she sings her first Pamina from Die Zauberflöte at the Saint-Etienne opera and takes part in To Be Sung by Pascal Dusapin at the Louis Vuitton Foundation with the Ensemble Le Balcon conducted by Maxime Pascal.