Lyric Arts France and Festival Opéra Bastide 2026
Villefranche-de-Rouergue
June 22–July 26, 2026
Lyric Arts France is a professional training and performance-centered Young Artists Program for emerging professional singers, some younger singers, and a limited number of stage directors, stage managers, pianist-coaches and administrators. Lyric Arts France partners with Opéra Bastide; together, we mount full-scale productions with chamber orchestra of opera, some musical theater, concerts of a variety of vocal music including French Art Song, and public masterclasses. It is an international program and offers international opera repertoire along with a focus on some French repertoire. It offers a wide variety of solo and ensemble performance opportunities for all participants alongside a comprehensive training program. It takes place in the lovely mediaeval town of Villefranche-de-Rouergue in the Aveyron region of southwestern France, not too far from Rodez, Albi and Toulouse.
The 2026 season will be the third iteration of the festival and program; the second, last summer, was a huge public success, with sold-out performances of Carmen, a French/English production of The Fantasticks, and masterclasses, concerts and cabarets, for a total of 33 public events.
Young Artists work in collaboration with world-class singers, directors, conductors, coaches, and choreographers, both in production rehearsals and in training sessions. These include individual and group vocal and repertoire coaching, masterclasses, auditioning classes, and career seminars addressing opportunities in Europe and the United States. There is also a focus on singing in French: French arias, art songs and popular songs. Daily French language classes (at a beginner or intermediate level) are available for non-French participants.
Most activities take place in the ‘Bastide Royale,’ the historic mediaeval center of the old town, including in its charming 350 seat theater, a spectacular baroque chapel, the ancient cloister, a 19th century grand market hall, and the main town square. After many of the mainstage performances our artists relax singing cabaret music until late in the evening in our festival bar. In addition to an abundance of public performances, the program offers a marvelous opportunity for participants to enrich their understanding of French music, culture, and language, to live and work in the heart of France for five weeks, and to broaden their knowledge of French and European opera and vocal literature.
Repertoire for 2026
Le nozze di Figaro - Mozart
Sung in Italian
Performed with orchestra in the Théâtre de la Bastide
The high point of Western civilization, says our director. The first cannon shot of the French revolution, said Napoleon. Mozart's classic comic masterpiece doesn’t miss a beat—musically or emotionally. A sparkling overture, the greatest ensembles ever written and glorious arias tell a witty tale of the tensions between love and lust, servant and master, wife and lover. The Count has his eye on his valet's fiancée, who happens to be his wife's chambermaid. The Countess is pursued by the boy Cherubino disguised as a girl!
Orphée et Euridice – Gluck
Sung in French
Performed with orchestra in the magnificent Chappelle des Pénitents Noirs
Gluck reinvented opera with this great work based on the classic legend of Orpheus, who attempts to sing his deceased wife Euridice back to life—and such is the beauty of his music that the powers of death relent and release her, until, as he escorts her up from Hades, he looks back once too often and appears to lose her forever—then Love intervenes, and returns her to life once again. Performed in a bold new version in which Orpheus and Euridice are both professional singers, and over the course of the opera look back on multiple incarnations of themselves singing great works from their past lives.
Come to the Cabaret!
Sung in English, French and German
Performed in the grand Halle, the classical covered market hall, this semi-staged version centers around the great Kander and Ebb musical incorporating additional numbers from popular songs and musicals of the thirties and later.
Concerts with piano include:
Festival Gala—great operatic favorites in a great space, the chapel of the Pénitents Noirs
Chansons et Cançons—songs of the Auvergne and of Occitanie in the grand Halle
L’Invitation au voyage—a concert showcasing our younger singers
Our Educational Mission – the Young Artist Program
Our goal is to work with the best young artists from anywhere in the world to help them round out their interpretative and performing skills so that they become viable professionals in a highly competitive world. We do this by combining training and extensive performance experience onstage with top professional colleagues. We want to help each participant to become the best performer that they can be.
Our Artistic Mission – the Festival
Our goal is to reach out across traditional lines of demarcation in the arts, presenting works which engage diverse, new and younger audiences, bringing in supporters of music, theater, dance and the visual arts, by producing works from across the full range of operatic repertoire, including French works, old works done in new ways, and new works. Our festival features a company of performers including top national and regional French singers, and rising stars from around the world in its international Young Artists Program.