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The 2025-2026 musical season
The Palace of Versailles is hosting numerous operas, concerts, gala evenings and ballets in some of its exceptional spaces, including the Royal Opera and the Royal Chapel. Check out the programme for the 2025–2026 music season at Versailles.
Visit-Show
The King's tour
From the Salon of Hercules to the Queen’s Chamber via the Hall of Mirrors illuminated with royal fireworks, musicians, dancers, singers, fencers and actors are preparing to welcome you under the gold of the Grand Apartments for a visit -an extraordinary show leading you to the Galerie des Batailles, where you will meet a very special guest… baroque Santa Claus!
From November 2025 to June 2026
The musical Thursdays of the Baroque Music Centre of Versailles
Organised from November to June, by the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles, the public institution of the Palace of Versailles, the Royal Opera of the Palace of Versailles / Château de Versailles Spectacles and the CNSMD in Paris, the Musical Thursdays are performances by the choir of Pages and Chantres at the Royal Chapel of the Palace of Versailles.
Concert
From Saturday 20th to Sunday December 21st 2025
Handel: Le Messie
Messiah is Handel’s most renowned work. Premièred in Dublin in 1742, this oratorio was an immediate triumph: demand for tickets was so great that gentlemen were asked to “leave their swords at home” and ladies to attend “without hoops in their skirts” to make room for more attendees and thus increase the proceeds “going to charitable causes”. During the great alto aria “He was despised”, Reverend Delany, overcome with emotion, stood up in the audience and cried out to the singer: “Woman, for this be all thy sins forgiven thee !”».
Opera in staged version
From Saturday December 27th 2025 to Sunday January 4th 2026
Offenbach: La vie parisienne
Unearthed thanks to the archives of the Théâtre du Palais-Royal, this version of La Vie parisienne is as it was originally conceived by Offenbach and his librettists, before the vocal limitations of the artists responsible for creating the work forced them to rework it. Acclaimed on stage for four years, this production, directed by Christian Lacroix, is coming to Versailles.
Concert
Monday December 29th 2025
New Year's Concert: Johann Strauss bicentenary
Two hundred years of brilliant and enchanting music: 2025 marks the bicentenary of Johann Strauss’s birth, and to celebrate properly, the Orchestre de l’Opéra Royal of the Palace de Versailles is performing an exceptional New Year’s concert – Kaiser-Walzer, airs and overtures from the masterpieces Die Fledermaus, Pariser-Polka, and of course The Blue Danube !
Opera in staged version
Wednesday December 31st 2025
Offenbach: La vie parisienne
Unearthed thanks to the archives of the Théâtre du Palais-Royal, this version of La Vie parisienne is as it was originally conceived by Offenbach and his librettists, before the vocal limitations of the artists responsible for creating the work forced them to rework it. Acclaimed on stage for four years, this production, directed by Christian Lacroix, is coming to Versailles.
Concert
Saturday January 10th 2026
Charpentier: les victoires de Louis XIV
Hervé Niquet is passionate about the music of Charpentier, to whom he has devoted some ten recordings with Le Concert Spirituel over the last forty years. Following the immense success of Médée (Diapason d’or 2024), he has decided to revive his sacred works. No fewer than eight soloists, two choirs, and two orchestras are required for this corpus of pieces that rank among the most gigantic works of the 17th and 18th centuries in France.
Concert
Saturday January 17th 2026
Vivaldi: gloria
In 1703, having just been ordained a priest, Don Antonio Vivaldi became violin master to the girls at the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice. This hospice took in orphans and illegitimate daughters of the Venetian aristocracy, offering them a thorough musical education. These young girls formed a choir of some of the world’s greatest virtuosos, as well as a concerto of instrumentalists, usually comprising thirty to forty musicians, or even seventy on special occasions.
Recital
Monday January 19th 2026
Alex Rosen: Monsters and Heroes, from Lully to Purcell
American bass Alex Rosen, a familiar presence at the Royal Opera, will give his first solo recital in Versailles. With a voice both deep and refined, he promises a performance of rare intensity, shedding light on the richness of the baroque repertoire for bass at times monstrous, at others heroic…
Opera in staged version
From Saturday 24th to Wednesday January 28th 2026
Lully: Atys
The two myths of Attis converge in this new production: this masterpiece by Lully and Quinault, which was called the “King’s Opera” upon its creation in 1676 before the court, also became, three centuries later, a significant moment in the rediscovery of the great French Baroque operas, thanks to the productions by William Christie and Jean-Marie Villégier presented twice at the Royal Opera of Versailles.
Recital
Monday January 26th 2026
Juliette Mey: Vivaldi Lirico
After several appearances on the stage of the Royal Opera, with Les Arts Florissants, Les Épopées, and the Orchestre de l’Opéra Royal, young mezzo-soprano Juliette Mey gives her first recital of Vivaldi at Versailles! Recently crowned “Révélation Artiste lyrique” at the Victoires de la musique awards and winner of the prestigious Queen Elisabeth competition, she is sure to thrill audiences alongside Théotime Langlois de Swarte at the helm of the Orchestre de l’Opéra Royal !
Recital
Friday January 30th 2026
Max Emanuel Cenčić: Haendel, Vivaldi and Porpora
Max Emanuel Cenčić, accompanied by the ensemble {oh!} Orkiestra under the direction of Martyna Pastuszka, explores the splendours of Baroque opera. Between dazzling virtuosity and refined expressiveness, Handel, Vivaldi, and Porpora engage in a dialogue through a selection of heroic and sensitive arias. A journey to the heart of Baroque passions, carried by the art of the countertenor and the orchestral richness of a flamboyant repertoire.
Opera in concert
Saturday January 31st 2026
Salomon: Medea and Jason
The myth of Medea and Jason has inspired many composers and librettists, the best-known French version of the opera being Médée by Marc-Antoine Charpentier. Reinoud Van Mechelen and his ensemble a nocte temporis chose to revive Joseph-François Salomon’s version, which was published twenty years before Charpentier’s. Médée et Jason from 1713 has been forgotten, but nevertheless enjoyed considerable popularity in the 18th century, as the opera was revived several times at La Monnaie in Brussels in 1726.
Ballet
From Tuesday 3rd to Saturday February 7th 2026
Ballet Preljocaj: Le lac des cygnes
Following Snow White and Romeo and Juliet, Angelin Preljocaj returns to narrative ballet and his love for magnificent stories that make timeless tales. Elevating Tchaikovsky’s musical masterpiece, he takes hold of the swan-princess myth and transposes the story into a powerful world shaped by the ecological disasters of our time. Power, beauty, love, and death are at the heart of this masterpiece by Angelin Preljocaj, which moved audiences so deeply that the Royal Opera of the Palace of Versailles is presenting it again: a major event for all ages, a choreographic miracle that transcends styles.
Theater
From Thursday 12th to Sunday February 22nd 2026
Molière: the bourgeois gentleman
Here is a masterpiece that celebrated its 350th anniversary in 2020, and whose power remains undiminished. Thanks to Molière’s masterful writing, we are still, even today, hanging on every word of this bourgeois gentleman. Denis Podalydès takes on this classic and offers a production full of humour and lightness, perfectly aligned with the text and Molière’s devastating wit.
Opera in concert
Saturday February 14th 2026
Rameau: Pigmalion
This programme is above all a personal and artistic reflection on the myth of Pygmalion. By exploring two versions of this story (Rameau and Bailleux), I sought to reveal not only the different facets of this legend but also to question the role of art in our lives as artists. The myth of Pygmalion, beyond its first reading that might reduce the woman to a creation, serves as a pretext to explore what it means to create, what it means to give life to the inanimate – a reflection that, as artists, resonates deeply within us.
Opera in concert
Monday March 9th 2026
Lully: Roland
A mature work from both Lully and Quinault, Roland is part of a “trilogy” of epic-inspired operas, standing apart from mythological lyric tragedies. It lies between Amadis, based on the Spanish chivalric novel Amadis de Gaule by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo (parodied by Cervantes in Don Quichotte), and Armide, inspired by Gerusalemme Liberata, Tasso’s sublime epic, romantic before its time. Roland focuses on a famous episode from Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, in which a knight literally goes mad with love for the woman who betrayed him.
Theater
From Wednesday 11th to Thursday March 12th 2026
Fabrice Luchini reads victor hugo
I gave a first reading of texts and poems by Victor Hugo in front of an audience in June 2021, in the gardens of the Chateaubriand house. Contrary to the phrase by André Gide, a fine analyst, “Who is the greatest French poet? Victor Hugo, alas,” for me there are dazzling moments in Victor Hugo’s writings that go beyond a gifted craftsman, and the joys of writing that arise from his highly fertile creative output.
Recital
Saturday March 14th 2026
Sandrine Piau: Handel concerti grossi and opera airs
William Christie reunites with French soprano Sandrine Piau around the Handelian repertoire, for a musical anthology combining bravura arias and Concerti grossi. One of the highlights of the Les Arts Florissants season !
Opera in staged version
From Sunday 22nd to Monday March 30th 2026
Gounod: Faust
Since its première in 1859, Gounod’s Faust has been at the pinnacle of French opera. Goethe’s text deeply influenced the Romantics – Liszt, Berlioz, Gounod, and later Boito all set it to music. Gounod was twenty years old when he discovered this work during his Prix de Rome stay in 1839 and fell under its spell. And for good reason: the hero, in the twilight of his life, wants to poison himself, convinced that all science and belief are futile. Doctor Faust calls upon the Devil and sells his soul in exchange for youth, through the diabolical figure of Mephistopheles.
Recital
Monday March 23rd 2026
Franco Fagioli: Arias for Velluti, the last castrato
Giovanni Battista Velluti, born in 1780, was the last heir of the great Italian castrati. His exceptional voice, both powerful and agile, and his impressive vocal mastery opened the doors to the most prestigious opera houses in Europe. His talent for highly complex vocal ornamentation had a lasting influence on 19th -century vocal performance style. Franco Fagioli immerses himself in Velluti’s theatricality to fully convey the extent of his genius, performing his most famous roles superbly, accompanied by the Orchestre de l’Opéra Royal of the Palace of Versailles.
Opera in concert
Friday March 27th 2026
Lully: Armide
Among the significant works in the history of opera, Lully’s Armideholds a special place. It was the last lyric tragedy by Lully and Quinault: arguably the librettist’s greatest dramatic success and the culmination of the tragédie en musique project of the composer, who died the year following its première. Never did language seem so beautiful and tragic in Lully’s music, and the drama of this Christian knight falling in love with the Muslim sorceress who spares his life was so powerfully felt that it remained on stage for a century !
Theater
Sunday March 29th 2026
Karol Beffa and Mathieu Laine: The Adventures of the King Who Didn't Like Music
This is the story of a grumpy, authoritarian, and jealous king who ruled over a very small people of musicians. But… he hated music! And since he was the king, he decided to forbid his subjects from playing a single note. But how can one live without music? Like Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, this musical tale allows young children to discover and become familiar with different musical instruments.
Concert
Tuesday March 31st 2026
Couperin: Lessons of darkness
The Leçons de Ténèbres became increasingly popular musical compositions in the mid-17th century. Michel Lambert was the first in France to compose a full cycle in 1662, soon followed by Charpentier and Lalande. But the most famous – and the first to be rediscovered by the recording industry and the wider public – are those of François Couperin, dating from 1714.
Concert
Wednesday April 1st 2026
Bach: St Matthew Passion
St Matthew Passion, Bach’s crowning achievement, was probably premièred on Good Friday. The year 1727 at St. Thomas’s in Leipzig has haunted music history for almost three centuries. Played several times during Bach’s lifetime, it spearheaded the rediscovery of Bach in the 19th century. Almost one hundred years after its premiere, Felix Mendelssohn performed a version in Berlin, placing Bach back at the forefront of German musical heritage, where it has remained ever since.
Concert
From Friday 3rd to Saturday April 4th 2026
Bach: St John Passion
Of the two surviving Passions by Bach, the St John Passion was the first to be composed, and the Cantor reworked it several times for different performances between 1724 and 1747.
Concert
Thursday April 2nd 2026
Pergolesi: stabat mater for two castrati
Two countertenors for an iconic work: Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater. This is the resurrection of the history of the French premiere of this work, originally performed by two castrati from Louis XV’s Royal Chapel !
Concert
Sunday April 5th 2026
Bach: Oratio de pâques
John Eliot Gardiner, at the head of his new ensemble, brings together religious fervour and jubilant theatricality in this landmark Bach work of striking intensity. Composed in 1725, the Easter Oratorio unfolds a sonic fresco of the joy of the Resurrection, conveyed through virtuoso arias, resplendent choruses, and colourful instrumentation – notably with soaring flutes and oboes d’amore.
Opera in concert
Wednesday April 8th 2026
Peri: Euridice
A village in Arcadia prepares for the wedding of Orpheus and Euridice. But suddenly the nymph Daphne comes to tell us that Euridice has died, bitten by a snake. Orpheus then descends into the Underworld to rescue her from death. Despite the strict prohibition against releasing a soul from the Underworld, Pluto is moved by Orpheus’ song and allows him to return to earth with her. After some concern among the shepherds awaiting Orpheus’ return, the couple finally reappears. Together we celebrate the triumph of poetry and love over death.
Concert
Friday April 10th 2026
Vivaldi: magnificat
At the helm of Les Arts Florissants, William Christie offers a new reading of two masterpieces of Italian sacred music: Scarlatti’s Messa di Santa Cecilia and Vivaldi’s Magnificat.
Opera in concert
Sunday April 12th 2026
Rameau: Castor and Pollux
Castor et Pollux explores the theme of the power of sacrifice and brotherly bonds in the face of divine laws. Pollux, the immortal son of Jupiter, renounces his immortality to descend to the Underworld and bring his brother Castor back to life. Rameau explores the intertwining of brotherly love against a backdrop of heroism and echoes of war.
Opera in staged version
From Monday 13th to Sunday April 19th 2026
Rameau: Platée
1745 : Louis XV marries his son, the Dauphin Louis, to the Spanish Infanta Maria Teresa. For the royal wedding celebrations, a new work is performed in the Great Stables of Versailles – converted into a temporary theatre – commissioned from Rameau: the comic opera Platée. This grand opéra-bouffon, in which the gods trick a frog into believing that Jupiter is in love with her, is without doubt the most extraordinary musical comedy of the 18th century in France – even if the audience at the première thought they recognised the ugly little Spanish princess in the croaking heroine !
Opera in concert
Sunday May 10th 2026
wagner: Twilight of the Gods
For any opera house, Wagner’s Ring – Der Ring des Nibelungen – is one of the pinnacles of lyrical art. Composed between 1853 and 1874, this mythical cycle is conceived as a “scenic festival” consisting of a prologue: Das Rheingold, and three days: Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung. This legendary tetralogy was premièred in its entirety for the opening of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus in 1876.
Opera in staged version
Monday May 11th 2026
Morin: la chasse du cerf
Jean-Baptiste Morin, a musician in the service of the music-loving Duc d’Orléans, performed a perfectly seasonal entertainment for His Majesty Louis XIV in August 1708 at the Château de Fontainebleau: La chasse du cerf, which means “Stag hunting”.
Concert
Monday May 18th 2026
Lully: Fragments amoureux
A celebrated dancer and passionate music lover, Louis XIV met Jean-Baptiste Lully in the early years of his reign. This intelligent, perceptive, and talented violinist quickly became the devoted architect of the Royal Grand Divertissement, alongside Molière. Lully was one of the most imaginative opera composers of his time, not to mention his court ballets, comédie-ballets, and hybrid stage works combining theatre and music.
Concert
Thursday May 21st 2026
Handel: Music for the Royal Fireworks
The famous Music for the Royal Fireworks was composed in 1749 by George Frideric Handel for the festivities honouring the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. To mark the occasion, King George II commissioned Handel to write festive music to accompany a grand fireworks display over the River Thames. Handel was then a living legend in England, and the magnificent music he composed made a great impression on the public.
Theater
From Tuesday 26th to Sunday May 31st 2026
Molière: Dom Juan
By a semantic shift around the figure of the libertine, my Dom Juan will be very sadistic, very 18th-century French, with the scent of an unmade bed, an atmosphere of Dangerous Liaisons, and an elegant transgressive and pleasure-seeking cynicism. Sadistic because, like this other “great lord and wicked man”, there is pleasure in doing Evil; there is the desire to display impiety and all kinds of excesses.
Concert
Saturday May 30th 2026
Christine de suède
The life of Christina of Sweden seems straight out of a novel – or better yet, an opera. Born on 18 December 1626 in Stockholm, she ended her days in Rome in 1689 after an exile that led her to encounter more and more protagonists throughout the different acts of her life. A great lover and patron of the arts, her life was marked by the omnipresence of music, of which she was a major supporter. This concert musically retraces her life in three acts – and a prologue – through works she might have heard or even commissioned.
Opera in concert
Tuesday June 2nd 2026
Rameau: Les boréades
To mark the ensemble’s tenth anniversary, a nocte temporis continues its exploration of French Baroque opera. A masterpiece of the genre and the last work by the undisputed master of French baroque opera, Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Les Boréades tells the story of the thwarted love between Alcidiane, a young princess, and one of the sons of Boreas, the god of the north wind. Avant-garde, critical, and irreverent towards the powers that be, the work was neither performed nor published during the composer’s lifetime, when he died a few months after the première was cancelled.
Opera in staged version
From Friday 5th to Sunday June 7th 2026
Gasparini: L'avare
The reform of Italian opera in the 18th century was largely inspired by French theatre, and Molière resounded on opera stages. Consisting of three singing characters and a fourth mute one, accompanied by a light orchestral ensemble, Il Vecchio Avaro is an intermezzo (the most famous example of which remains Pergolesi’s La serva padrona, protagonist of the famous Querelle des Bouffons in 1752).
Concert
Monday June 8th 2026
Boismortier: the seasons
Although it is not known to what mysterious figures they were dedicated, the cantatas of Joseph de Boismortier’s Quatre Saisons, published in 1724, resonate with the splendour of courtly festivities and the eloquence of the salons de conversation. The libretto, written by an anonymous but certainly romantic hand, unfolds its poetry through the seasons, and the composer seems to have enjoyed recreating all its subtleties in his music.
Concert
Friday June 12th 2026
Bach: Cantates II 'Actus tragicus'
The Leipzig Bachfest invited its audiences to choose the works for two Bach cantata programmes filled with masterpieces: John Eliot Gardiner responded to the public’s preferences by composing two programmes based on these suggestions.
Concert
Thursday June 11th 2026
Bach: Cantates I 'The Road to Emmaus'
The Leipzig Bachfest invited its audiences to choose the works for two Bach cantata programmes filled with masterpieces: John Eliot Gardiner responded to the public’s preferences by composing two programmes based on these suggestions.
Concert
Wednesday June 17th 2026
Henry Du Mont: Grands Motets pour la Chapelle de Louis XIV
A major figure in France’s musical heritage, Henry Du Mont is at the heart of the work carried out for thirty years by the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles, which is about to complete a full edition of his works. To mark this achievement, the Pages and the Singers of the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles are joining forces with the ensemble Les Folies françoises to perform a series of previously unheard grand motets.
Opera in staged version
From Thursday 18th to Tuesday June 23rd 2026
Mozart: The Abduction from the Seraglio
In 1781, the young Mozart left the city of Salzburg and his position with Archbishop Colloredo, with whom he no longer got along. He then settled in Vienna, the musical capital, which he set out to conquer. To make a name for himself in the opera world, the young composer took advantage of a commission from Emperor Joseph II for the Burgtheater. He then composed an opera that moved away from the highly codified opera seria to develop a more national genre: the singspiel, a musical comedy that would be his first opera in the German language.
Opera in staged version
From Saturday 27th to Sunday June 28th 2026
Gluck: The Cinesi
A rare and lively work, Gluck’s Le cinesi takes us to a fantasy orient, typical of the rococo taste for the exotic. Composed in 1754, this little gem of a comic opera features three young Chinese women and a young man, brought together for a musical joust in which each tries to seduce through song. Gluck has fun parodying the operatic styles of his time, from the tragic to the heroic, in a score that is lively, elegant, and full of humour.
Concert
Monday July 6th 2025
Bach: Keyboard concertos
After a highly successful programme combining Mozart and Jadin last season, young keyboardist Justin Taylor returns to the Versailles stage, swapping the pianoforte for an immersion into the abundant world of Baroque harpsichord writing.
Ballet
From Thursday 9th to Sunday July 12th 2026
Malandain Ballet Biarritz: Marie-Antoinette
The last Queen of France, with her exceptional, tragic, and glamorous destiny, deserved a ballet: Thierry Malandain has tailored a made-to-measure costume for her in a colourful production deeply devoted to Versailles and its Royal Opera.
Concert
Monday July 13th 2026
Vivaldi: The four seasons
Vivaldi’s famous The Four Seasons, published in Amsterdam in 1725, were so successful that they almost overshadow his other concertos (of which there are more than five hundred!). Although they owe their success to a particularly expressive and virtuosic “programme music”, Vivaldi was already a master in demand throughout Europe, and his success in opera put him at the forefront of Italian composers, to the point of being particularly admired and performed in France, and of being asked by the French ambassador in Venice to write works in honour of Louis XV.
Concert
Tuesday July 14th 2026
vivaldi: the four seasons
Vivaldi’s famous The Four Seasons, published in Amsterdam in 1725, were so successful that they almost overshadow his other concertos (of which there are more than five hundred!). Although they owe their success to a particularly expressive and virtuosic “programme music”, Vivaldi was already a master in demand throughout Europe, and his success in opera put him at the forefront of Italian composers, to the point of being particularly admired and performed in France, and of being asked by the French ambassador in Venice to write works in honour of Louis XV.
