The grating tale of a rich and obnoxious peasant who buys a young noble girl, is interspersed with elegant interludes where shepherds exchange gallant words to the splendid music of Lully. Molière tells us here with his devastating humour that marriage is a market in which love plays no part – since Dandin, by marrying Angélique de Sotenville, has exchanged his fortune for a title – and yet the groom is determined to claim his wife’s love and fidelity.

Even if the play remains immoral since evil triumphs, it says above all that one can buy everything except love… that’s where it remains timeless. Using the mise en abyme process to stage this painful, burlesque and obsessive fable, Michel Fau has chosen a baroque and nightmarish aesthetic with the complicity of Gaétan Jarry and the musicians of his Ensemble Marguerite Louise.

Produced by C.I.C.T. – Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord

Coproduction Opéra Royal / Château de Versailles Spectacles, Théâtre de Suresnes – Jean Vilar, Théâtre de Caen, Atelier Théâtre Jean Vilar – Louvain-la-Neuve, Festival de Sablé – L’Entracte, scène conventionnée, Théâtre Impérial – Opéra de Compiègne

Action financed by the Ile-de-France Region

With the artistic participation of the Jeune Théâtre National

Acknowledgements Opéra national de Paris – Direction Alexander Neef, Opéra National de Bordeaux

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