“Nothing as Baudelairean as Phèdre, nothing as worthy of Racine […] as the Fleurs du Mal.” (Proust). This season, after La Recherche —a piece inspired by À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time) by Proust—the demonically seductive blonde angel Yves-Noël Genod is reworking the French language in an “haute couture” diptych inspired by Baudelaire and Racine. Automne (Autumn) is Baudelaire (Les Fleurs du mal). Hiver (Winter) is Racine (Phèdre). Two seasons of a same mirror collection, which we invite you to contemplate in the same evening, or separately.

Hiver (Racine)

He wields paradox so well. With Yves-Noël Genod, one is never quite sure what to expect. But it is often brilliant. In fact, in Greek Phaedra means “the brilliant one”; she is the granddaughter of the sun and yet she embodies—such is her curse—the figure of a night without light, an unknown, autonomous night, reawakening from the dawn of time. It feels like Racine (just like Baudelaire) is confronting the sun and death upfront, with amiability and animality. In the theatre, this is what we call tragedy.