Cupid’s Violin

With Luc Ferry

These talks by philosopher Luc Ferry reflect a French musical repertoire inspired by the myths of love found in literature. “To die for ideas, fine,” sang Georges Brassens before ironically adding: “That’s all very good but for which ones?” For God, for country, for the revolution? Today nobody would die for these old outdated images of the sacred, only for close or loved ones would one sacrifice oneself. It signals a revolution, that of love guillotining the marriage of convenience and giving birth to secularity and the sanctification of the human. A sanctification of the human that Ferry has reinvented in the humanist rather than the religious sense. Could the revolution of love make man a new sacred figure?


Programme

Chausson

Poème, based on The Song of Triumphant Love by Turgenev


Massenet

Méditation from Thaïs, based on the novel by Anatole France


Shchedrin / Bizet

Carmen Suite, based on the novella by Mérimée


Saint-Saëns (only in the 2013 production)

The Muse and the Poet


Starring