Orchestral concert: An American in Bordeaux

opéra / bordeaux / spectacle / incontournable

Thursday 8 January 2026, 20:00

Discover the Bordeaux National Opera's event show for the 2025-2026 season.

A concert by Joseph Swensen

• When Ravel and Gershwin met in 1926, the younger asked his elder for compositional advice, to which the elder is said to have replied, “Why write bad Ravel when you write such good Gershwin?” Most of the works in this concert date from this period, when the paths of the two composers crossed in Paris and New York: for 1924's Rhapsodie in Blue, Gershwin didn't yet feel up to orchestration, but four years later, when he composed Un Américain à Paris, an evocation of the Paris of the Roaring Twenties, he was considerably more seasoned. Ravel's Concerto in G major, written shortly afterwards, incorporates elements of jazz and assumes its entertainment character, which inflects into a slow movement of rare emotion.

Program

• Maurice Ravel, Ma Mère l'Oye (ballet) - Concerto in G major, for piano and orchestra
• George Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue, for piano and orchestra - Un Américain à Paris

Around the show

• Concert on tour in Périgueux on January 9
• Wednesday, January 7 5 pm : Rencontre-conférence with Lucas Debargue hosted by Marie Expert-Théas, Grand-Théâtre
• Saturday, January 10 3 pm: Lecture “Un Américain à Bayreuth : Mark Twain en 1891” by Michel Casse Grand-Théâtre - Salon Lalande