What’s on Shows Share Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Print Resize Resize down Resize up Exhibitions Shows Events Patronage Life on the estate Highlights All shows 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. Read more Concert Sunday October 5th 2025 Concert du 8e gala de l'Ador : florilège Rossini One of the highlights of the 8th ADOR’s Gala evening in aid of the musical season will undoubtedly be the concert at the Royal Opera. What better way to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the founding of the ADOR than with a foray into bel canto territory ? Concert Friday October 10th 2025 Haendel: Theodora Refusing to sacrifice herself to Venus, the young Christian Theodora is condemned by the Romans to prostitution before dying a martyr’s death. Far from the flamboyant heroism of Jules Caesar, Handel, in one of his last oratorios, displays an emotion of overwhelming depth. Carried along by fervent, elegiac music, Theodora transcends the intimate drama into a veritable spiritual meditation. Thomas Dunford, at the head of his Ensemble Jupiter, handles this work with rare sensitivity. Staged Operas From Saturday 11th to Saturday October 18th 2025 Rossini: Cinderella (La Cenerentola) Rossini's Cinderella (La Cenerentola) is less a fairy tale than a merry masquerade. Ferretti, the librettist, set aside most of the magical elements from Perrault’s Cinderella, in favour of a moral fable built on a brilliant play of disguises and misunderstandings. Concert Wednesday November 5th 2025 Triomphe et mort des rois Majesty, fervour, and solemnity are at the heart of this programme, in which the music celebrates the spiritual greatness of sovereigns. Three masterpieces of the European Baroque weave a striking fresco of sound, between royal pomp and sacred contemplation. Opera in concert Sunday November 9th 2025 Charpentier: Les arts florissants To close the anniversary season of his 80th birthday, William Christie, William Christie decided on a symbolic choice: to share with the public Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s short opera which gave its name to the ensemble… Les Arts florissants. Presented in a double format with another operatic piece by the same composer, La Descente d’Orphée aux enfers, this new show will also provide an opportunity to discover the voices of the ten new laureates of Le Jardin des Voix, Les Arts Florissants’ international academy for young singers. A spectacular finale ! Concert Friday November 14th 2025 Brahms: symphone n°1 Pygmalion continues its exploration of Romantic Germany with Stéphane Degout, after an unforgettable A German Requiem at the Royal Chapel the previous season. This new programme, centred on Brahms, is built around works in which death is no longer feared, but meditated upon and tamed. Opera in staged version From Saturday November 15th to Sunday 16th 2025 Purcell: Dido and Æneas With Dido and Æneas, Purcell tells of the love and farewell of two mythical lovers: fleeing Troy, Æneas lands in Carthage and falls in love with Queen Dido. But witches and spirits end the idyll, driving Æneas to take to the sea again to found Rome. Abandoned, Dido dies of grief in an unforgettable lament. The majestic Gaëlle Arquez performs this iconic role of seduction and despair in the lively and fantastic staging by Cécile Roussat and Julien Lubek, who blend mime, dance, and acrobatics in a fairy tale-like set design. Ballet From Wednesday 19th to Thursday November 20th 2025 Malandain Ballet Biarritz: Les Saisons This creation by Thierry Malandain brings together in a single programme The Four Seasons by Vivaldi and The Four Seasons composed by Giovanni Antonio Guido. Combining these two scores is a bold challenge, for although they share the same era and a common celebration of nature, they remain profoundly different. Concert Saturday November 22nd 2025 Haendel: Dixit dominus Václav Luks plunges us into the flamboyant world of Baroque music with two geniuses from contrasting backgrounds: Jan Dismas Zelenka, the forgotten master of Dresden, and Georg Friedrich Handel, the cosmopolitan prodigy. This concert highlights the mystical fervour and inventive daring of Zelenka, through his Missa Circumcisionis, and the dramatic power of Handel’s Dixit Dominus, a dazzling fresco of sound inspired by baroque Rome. Concert From Saturday 29th to Sunday November 30th 2025 Mozart: Requiem An unfinished masterpiece, a musical testament, a timeless sacred composition that transcends the liturgical framework, Mozart’s Requiem amasses superlatives. By the time of his death on 5 December 1791, the composer had fully completed the Introit and the Kyrie, and largely defined the content of the next five parts, from the Dies Irae to the Confutatis. Recital Thursday December 4th 2025 Théo Imart: Vivaldi magnifico Théo Imart, a regular on the Versailles stage, gives his first recital at the Château. The young French countertenor explores Vivaldi through a selection of secular cantatas for solo voice, filled with fire and lyricism. Betrayal, tears, hope, or abandonment – each page reveals the dramatic art of the “Red Priest”, blending vocal virtuosity with expressive depth. Conducted by Chloé de Guillebon, the Orchestre de l’Opéra Royal brings the theatrical energy of these cantatas back to life in the setting of the Hercules Room. Opera in staged version From Friday December 5th to thursday 11th 2025 Haendel: Ariodante Considered Handel’s most perfect opera, Ariodante includes some of the most famous arias in the baroque repertoire. Inspired by Ariosto’s Orlando furioso, the libretto takes us to medieval Scotland, where the love between the knight Ariodante and Ginevra is thwarted by the machinations of the sinister Polinesso. But a final twist will save the hero from despair and blindness, in an unexpected happy ending… Recital Wednesday December 10th 2025 The three counter-tenors! In Baroque Europe, castrati held an extraordinary place: they were the first stars in the history of music. Almost all were Italian and trained in the conservatoires of Naples, dedicating themselves to careers in opera or serving in the most prestigious princely chapels, including the Vatican and the Royal Chapel of Versailles – often combining both. Concert Friday December 12th 2025 Bach: magnificat Christmas Day 1723 marks a turning point in the history of music. Johann Sebastian Bach, who had taken up his post as Thomaskantor a few months earlier, led the one o’clock vespers in the Nikolaikirche with what was to become one of the greatest European masterpieces of sacred music: his Magnificat. It celebrated Christmas Day, shared between its three churches – the Thomaskirche, the Paulinerkirche and the Nikolaikirche – where the Magnificat, Sanctus, and Cantata BWV 63, were played in turn, accompanied by spiritual hymns. Concert Sunday December 14th 2025 Christmas Once As I Remember is inspired by John Eliot Gardiner’s recreation of the story of Christmas based on the old Springhead Christmas plays. A Nativity play made up of music, speech, dance and mime took place almost every Christmas in the Millroom at Springhead, home of the Gardiner family in Fontmell Magna, Dorset. Concert Wednesday December 17th 2025 Charpentier: Midnight mass In the religious times of Louis XIV, Easter was the most important time for the piety of society as a whole. But Christmas was becoming increasingly important, to the point where it took second place in the hearts of the faithful. Specific scores were dedicated to the Advent and Nativity seasons, using popular melodies and silencing the organ from the first Sunday in Advent until Christmas, when it re-emerged with a vengeance to play the famous Noëls variés ! Concert From Saturday 20th to Sunday December 21st 2025 Haendel: 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 ! 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. Recurring shows Program of the Equestrian Academy of Versailles Equestrian Show The Great Stables Back to Exhibitions Shows Events Patronage Life on the estate
