Pascal Dusapin's To Be Sung, designed by Pharrell Williams

Acclaimed composer Pascal Dusapin teams up with visionary artist, songwriter, and producer Pharrell Williams at Paris’s Fondation Louis Vuitton for the haunting and evocative To Be Sung, “a lyrical moment of pure sensuality that engrosses the listener’s imagination and demands their complete surrender” (Antoine Gindt). With set design, lighting, and costumes by Williams, Dusapin’s instrumental textures — realized by Le Balcon under Maxime Pascal — provide the ground on which sopranos Elise Chauvin, Jenny Daviet, and Norma Nahoun vocalize a “prose of pure imagination” inspired by Gertrude Stein’s A Lyrical Opera Made By Two. Created as an opera with neither characters nor action, the work invites the spectator not to seek meaning but to admire its abstract beauty and embrace a moment of emotional introspection.

Photos © Philippe Gontier / All rights reserved