In turn devoted to ancient music and the modern repertoire, the Happy Day events at the Opéra are ‘open days’ when thousands of curious spectators are invited to explore this venerable institution. The days end with a concert in the evening.

The April 2015 Happy Day highlights strange or adapted instruments, sound objects and different ways of playing: when a new music is born of a new instrument and new gestures.

ZEBRIDES

The Zébrides: a title that could come from a collection of stories by Henri Michaux, depicting a remote tribe with strange customs. In fact it is a word created for the occasion, designed to evoke:
- distant islands (exoticism: art is always a foreign language, said Proust);
- oddballs (or odd ‘sounds’: with Christopher Trapani, a rather disordered country music in the spirit of Harry Partch or certain attempts by Berio; or the playful music of Mauro Lanza; or the astounding Capricios for an amplified acoustic guitar – but is this still a guitar? – by Sanchez Verdù);
- Unbridled Reality (instruments adapted by technology, with the keyboards of Michael Levinas; parallel and mimetic worlds projected onto a giant screen during the musical performance, with Robert Philips).

HAPPY DAY

open doors, 14:00>17:00

François Deppe, who stimulates like nobody else the students at the Lille Conservatory, and whose previous admirable creations include The Origin of the Species by Georges Aperghis at the Natural Science Museum, or video variations on the Kafka Fragments by György Kurtág, leads the young professionals in ambitious productions: _Frisking_ by Thierry De Mey for piano frame, paper tambourines and metal rods; a meditative work for thousands of grains of rice by Michael Pisaro; the imaginary gamelan by Claude Vivier, _Pulau Dewata_, presented here by dozens of simultaneous performers.