Laurent Petitgirard
GURU

National Theatre of Nice and the Nice Côte d'Azur Opera co-production State commission of 2007-2009 with the support of the Musical Creation Fund (Fonds pour la Création Musicale).

Opera in three acts. Libretto by Xavier Maurel after an original idea by the composer. Premièred at the Szczecin Castle Opera in Poland on 28 September 2018. 

Inspired by a news story that hit the headlines in Jonestown [USA] in 1978, Guru tells the story of a sect living in seclusion on an island. Marie, a new follower recently arrived on the island, incites the disciples to resist the guru. Seeing her arrival as an ultimate challenge to overcome, the Guru decides that the "big journey" he has spoken of so often will finally take place.

Precisely describing the mechanisms at play within groups, conflicts of power, money and sex, through Guru, Laurent Petitgirard and her librettist Xavier Maurel offers us an allegory for our modern societies in which mental manipulation is much more present in our daily lives than we like to think.

"To stage Guru is, above all, to offer the première of a great French opera and weave powerful links with the Nice Opera and its team. To stage the monster who, through his aura, drags all his cult disciples down with him. To hunt down that which seduces us while destroying us! A promised dream which becomes a nightmare, resisted by Marie alone. For me, it allows me to offer a warning and denounce lies – the chance to organise conferences around the show on this subject. A threat for our societies and, unfortunately, a possibility that remains active today." 
Muriel Mayette-Holtz

For this French première, Guru will benefit from a top-rate cast (with the voices of Armando Noguera and Anaïs Constans, to name but a few, alongside Sonia Petrovnain in the role of Marie), along with the presence of one of the major figures of French theatre and the director of the National Theatre of Nice, Muriel Mayette-Holtz, as well as the composer himself conducting the piece !

Show in French with surtitles in French and English