Louis Langrée, Brian Zeger, Mohamed Bouabdallah (Directeur de l'Opéra-Comique, Conseiller Culturel de l'Ambassade de France aux Etats-Unis et Directeur de la Villa Albertine) © Roland Le Breton
Over the next two years, singers from the Opéra-Comique Academy and Juilliard’s Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts will take part in masterclasses, coaching sessions and joint concerts in New York and Paris.
The partnership was launched with a masterclass held at the Villa Albertine, at the Payne Whitney Mansion in New York, on March 23, 2026. Louis Langrée, General Manager of the Opéra-Comique, worked with Juilliard students on the French repertoire.
In May 2026, a two-week exchange programme will bring together two singers and a pianist from each institution for recitals of French and American music. Concerts will take place at the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 5 May, followed by a performance at The Juilliard School in New York on 14 May. In March 2027, a further two-week exchange is planned in Paris and New York.
This partnership marks Campus Favart’s first international exchange programme. It is supported by the Fondation AXA for Human Progress, the season’s major sponsor.
A three-hundred-year-old institution and one of the oldest in France, the Opéra-Comique has seen the premiere of over 3,000 works throughout its history, including Bizet’s Carmen, Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Massenet’s Manon, Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust, Ravel’s L’Heure espagnole de Ravel et and Poulenc’s La Voix humaine.
In 2021, after 21 years as Music Director of the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center and 11 years at the helm of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Louis Langrée was appointed Director of the Théâtre National de l’Opéra-Comique. In New York, he conducted over 250 performances and concerts at Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic. In 2025, he conducted singers and the Juilliard Orchestra in Ravel’s L’Enfant et les sortilèges, and will return to Juilliard in 2027 to conduct L’Heure espagnole by the same composer’s L’Heure espagnole.
In 2023, Louis Langrée founded the Académie de l’Opéra-Comique, a programme for young artists aimed at singers, conductors and vocal coaches. The Academy focuses on the specific demands of opéra-comique, a genre characterised by the alternation of spoken and sung text. It offers artists the opportunity to perform at the Opéra-Comique and throughout France, whilst benefiting from high-level educational support.
Founded in 1905, The Juilliard School is a world leader in performing arts education. Its mission is to foster excellence by providing top-level training in music, dance and theatre to talented students from around the world, enabling them to realise their full potential and enhance the impact of the arts.
The institution is led by Damian Woetzel, its seventh president, who has made accessibility and artistic excellence key priorities. Located at Lincoln Centre in New York, Juilliard offers undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in dance, theatre and music. More than 800 artists from 42 states and 50 countries are enrolled there and take part in over 800 performances each year. Nearly 400 pupils, from primary school to sixth form, are enrolled in the preparatory programme.
More than 1,200 students are enrolled in Juilliard Extension courses. In addition to its New York campus, Juilliard also runs educational programmes internationally, notably at the Tianjin Juilliard School in China.
An initiative of the French Embassy in the United States, supported by the French government and the Albertine Foundation, Villa Albertine’s mission is to strengthen ties between the United States, France and the French-speaking world through culture and education.
In the arts and culture sector, it encourages collaboration between French and American institutions and offers artists and professionals bespoke residencies, immersive experiences, financial support and opportunities for showcasing their work.
In the field of education, it develops programmes aimed at making the French language and culture accessible to young people in the United States, encouraging student mobility to France, and supporting partnerships between higher education and research institutions.
Villa Albertine has a presence in ten major American cities: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, New Orleans, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., and publishes the annual magazine States. Its headquarters are located in New York, at the Payne Whitney Mansion, which also houses the Albertine bookshop, a key venue for Franco-American intellectual exchange.
