Foreword

Beyond

Sometimes music can make time stand still: a few bars are enough to suspend the present, to open up an unexpected space, a “beyond”. Baroque music is well familiar with this fragile moment. It inhabits transitional spaces, looks beyond the visible, and questions what is beyond our understanding — time, death, faith, the metamorphosis of beings and forms. This “beyond” runs through the entire 2026 edition of the Beaune Festival.

Beyond : it is a succession of passages, between life and death, between pain and joy. From Bach’s Actus Tragicus to Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, and from the musical visions of the Last Judgement to the imaginary Requiem for Emperor Charles V, this summer’s works seek to make the idea of hereafter tangible, expressible in human terms. Music thus becomes a source of healing, consolation and elevation: a mission it shares with the venues — the Basilique, the Hôtel-Dieu and the chapels — that welcome us.

Thinking about beyond is also about seeing how some works keep on getting new life, even long after their creators are gone. Take Molière, whose play L’Avare got a surprising follow-up fifty years later in Venice — that’s what we’re rediscovering this summer with Vincent Dumestre, and our first staged production at the Théâtre de Beaune. There is also the lyrical testament of an 80-year-old Jean-Philippe Rameau, Les Boréades, which was never performed in his lifetime – it was only 200 years later that the audacity of this avant-garde work was fully appreciated. Finally, it is John Dowland who, 400 years after his death, seems to speak to us as if he had just left the room: we will celebrate him with three concerts that will show how much his music speaks to us beyond time.

Finally, the “beyond” of baroque music is now taking shape. We want to inspire passion with the second edition of the Festival Choir or with Peau d’âne, our first show designed for the whole family. We also want to encourage vocations with the ensemble in residence, La Palatine, and the best baroque singers, whom we support at every stage of their careers: Reinoud Van Mechelen, Ève-Maud Hubeaux, Zachary Wilder, Julia Lezhneva, Marie Lys, Carlotta Colombo, Rémy Brès-Feuillet, Carlo Vistoli, Silvia Frigato, Éléonore Pancrazi, Blandine de Sansal, Eva Zaïcik, Michèle Bréant…

This music from afar not only tells us about another world that has been lost, it also invites us to look at the world we live in differently. It is at the heart of listening that the true beyond begins. Enjoy the festival!

Maximilien Hondermarck
Executive Director