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Bluebeard - Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880)

Where?
Opéra de Lausanne
When
From 21.12.2025 to 31.12.2025

Opéra-bouffe in three acts, with the Sinfonietta de Lausanne and the Opéra de Lausanne Choir. Libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy. First staged in 1866 at the Théâtre des Variétés in Paris, “Bluebeard” was presented to the public the day after the revival of “La Belle Hélène”, whose arias and jibes were on everyone’s lips at the time.

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Address

Opéra de Lausanne
Avenue du Théâtre 12
1005 Lausanne

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Schedules

From 21.12.2025 to 31.12.2025

Sunday, December 21, 2025, 5 pm.
Monday, December 22, 2025, 7 pm.
Friday, December 26, 2025, 7 pm.
Sunday, December 28, 2025, 3 pm.
Tuesday, December 30, 2025, 7 pm.
Wednesday, December 31, 2025, 7 pm.
No performances on December 23, 24, 25, 27 and 29, 2025.

Price: from CHF 30.- to CHF 190.-.

More info

Leaving behind the myths of the Trojan War for European folklore, Offenbach invented an entire burlesque world around Prince Bluebeard, a merry widower of the worst kind.

Everything is a pretext for laughter and mockery in this French comic opera, for the man who made a specialty of musical and social caricature. Despite the overture and first act that pretend to introduce a charming pastoral tale, the counts, king, prince and counsellors clash in frenzied arias on subjects such as life and death, male-female relations, the brutality of the powerful and the spinelessness of the courtiers. Drawn by lot, the mischievous peasant Boulotte is granted the honour (and the misfortune) of marrying the wife-killing prince. However, rest assured, shepherdesses and gypsies, all the dead women are very much alive and - unexpectedly for its time in 1866 - feminism wins the day.

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