In Berlin during the Mozart da Ponte trilogy, September 2021, photo Michael Poehn

2022 : Don Carlos at the Theater Basel, Don Giovanni and the Mozart Da Ponte Trilogy at the Staatsoper unter den Linden, cond. Daniel Barenboim (the 3 shows performed in 4 days during the Berlin Festtage). Revival of Manon at the Opéra Bastille and of the Contes d’Hoffmann at Palma de Mallorca.
2021 : Le nozze di Figaro and Così fan tutte at the Staatsoper unter den Linden, cond. Daniel Barenboim, Les mots d’amour with Angélique Kidjo and Alexandre Tharaud.
2020 :
Manon at the Opéra de Paris, The Human Voice in Lisbon with Marina and Lorenzo Viotti.
2019: Die Frau ohne Schatten at the Wiener Staatsoper, conducted by Christian Thielemann; Les Contes d’Hoffmann in Bordeaux and Dido & Aeneas in Moscow.
2018: Dido & Aeneas in the Aix-en-Provence Festival, Roméo et Juliette in Lucerne and two galas at the Paris Opera.
2017:  Werther conducted by Lorenzo Viotti and La Vie parisienne conducted by Marc Minkowski.
2016: Don Quichotte with Marc Minkowski and Trois femmes with Sébastien Daucé.
2015: world premiere of Contes de la lune vague après la pluie (X. Dayer) at the Opéra de Rouen and the Opéra Comique.
2012: First staging of a production at the Opéra National de Montpellier: Lakmé (L. Delibes).

 

At the Palais Garnier in December 2018, photo Laurent Champoussin

Born in Montpellier, Vincent Huguet’s first love was history, which he studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Fontenay-Saint-Cloud, and then art history, which he taught at the University of Amiens, while beginning some research under the supervision of Laurence Bertrand Dorléac. In 2001, he was invited by Colline Faure-Poirée to create a new art history collection, and went on to become an editor at Gallimard. In 2008, after joining the Collection Lambert in Avignon, he went to the Villa Médicis in Rome to prepare an exhibition, where he met the Academy’s director at the time, Richard Peduzzi, as well as the opera and theatre director Patrice Chéreau, who was rehearsing a show. Several months later, when Chéreau was the Louvre Museum’s “Grand Invité” (special guest), he began a continuous collaboration with him that only came to an end with the director’s death, in October 2013. Firstly, then, at the Louvre, with Les Visages et les corps, in 2010: two exhibitions, a book and several performances, including La Nuit juste avant les forêts (B.-M. Koltès), Rêve d’automne (J. Fosse) and Wesendonck Lieder (R. Wagner). And subsequently, Elektra (R. Strauss), for the opera festival of Aix-en-Provence.

While preparing this production, which he also dramatized, Vincent Huguet continued to develop his interest in art, especially contemporary art, and to talk about it – mostly on the radio, with Arnaud Laporte on France Culture, and in the press – and in opera: in 2011, he took part in the “Opéra en Création” workshops run by the Académie du Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, one under the supervision of the composer Peter Eötvös, the other during which he directed excerpts from an opera composed by Colin Roche. In 2012, he worked on his first staging of a production at the Opéra National de Montpellier: Lakmé (L. Delibes), conducted by Robert Tuohy, with Sabine Devieilhe making her debut in the leading role.

July 2013: Elektra made a deep impression on audiences in Aix, and marked the start of a long tour, without Patrice Chéreau, in tribute to his last work: 2014 in Milan (La Scala), 2016 in New York (Metropolitan Opera), Helsinki (Finnish National Opera), Berlin (Staatsoper) and Barcelona (Gran Teatre del Liceu). Vincent Huguet directed these revivals, sometimes with major changes in the cast (Nina Stemme replaced Evelyn Herlitzius at the Met in the title role), while preparing his own shows and forging new partnerships. In 2014 he worked with Luc Bondy (Molière’s Tartuffe at the Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe, Paris), and from 2015, with Peter Sellars: Iolanta (P. I. Tchaikovsky) and Perséphone (I. Stravinsky) at the Aix opera festival and at the Opéra National de Lyon, Only the Sound Remains (K. Saariaho) in Amsterdam and in Helsinki, Oedipus Rex (I. Stravinsky) at the Aix festival. The same year, he began work with Ivo van Hove on Vu du Pont (A View from the Bridge) (A. Miller) at the Théâtre de l’Odéon.

 

Rehearsals of Don Giovanni with Michael Volle and Slávka Zámečníková, Berlin, March 2022, photo Michael Poehn

In 2015, Vincent Huguet also staged Rosemary Standley’s new recital Love I Obey, at the Scène National 61 in Alençon and the Philharmonie in Paris, and on tour. The same year, he staged Contes de la lune vague après la pluie (X. Dayer), a world premiere based on a libretto by Alain Perroux and conducted by Jean-Philippe Wurtz, at the Opéra de Rouen-Haute Normandie and the Opéra Comique in Paris. For the Académie du Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, and as a tribute to Françoise Fabian, he conceived and directed a show based on the correspondence between Marcel Proust and Reynaldo Hahn, Encor sur le pavé sonne mon pas nocturne, staged in Paris and then in Aix at the Festival de la Correspondance de Grignan, and performed again in 2016 at the Carrières de Lumières in Baux-de-Provence.

In 2016, on the invitation of Vincent Dumestre, he directed To Be Or Not To Be (H. Purcell and W. Shakespeare) at the Opéra de Rouen, then joined Marc Minkowski to develop and direct the opening show of Minkowski’s first season at the Opéra National de Bordeaux Aquitaine: Les Voyages de Don Quichotte (R. Strauss, J. Massenet, M. Ravel, M. de Falla), a festive show featuring three conductors (Marc Minkowski, Paul Daniel and Pierre Dumoussaud) as well as a procession with horses.

Sébastien Daucé asked Vincent Huguet to stage the first theatrical performance of his ensemble Correspondances, based on Charpentier’s Histoires sacrées. Premiered at the church of Notre-Dame de la Gloriette in Caen, it combines and interweaves the stories of three women, Trois femmes, Judith, Mary Magdalene and Cecilia, and was shown in Bruges and Lyon, and in the Royal Chapel at Versailles.
In 2017, Vincent Huguet takes part to a very special show, Vaille que vivre, a tribute to the french singer Barbara, with Alexandre Tharaud and Juliette Binoche, created in the Avignon Festival, then he directs La Vie parisienne (J.Offenbach) in Bordeaux, with Marc Minkowski conducting. In the Fall,  he makes his  first collaboration with Lorenzo Viotti in Klagenfurt (Austria) for a new production of Werther. Since then, they collaborate together, mainly at the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon (Ode Marítima in 2018, Roméo et Juliette in 2019).

In 2018, the Paris Opera commissions to Vincent Huguet two special shows, to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the institution created by Louis XIV : one event in January 2018 and the inaugural Gala on the 30th and 31st of December, both in the Palais Garnier. In July, he directs Dido&Aeneas (Purcell) in the Aix-en-Provence Festival, with a new prolog performed by Rokia Traoré and in the Fall, he directs Roméo et Juliette(Gounod) at the Luzerner Theater (Switzerland; conductor : Clemens Heil). In 2019, the Wiener Staatsoper invites him to direct Die Frau ohne Schatten (Strauss), conducted by Christian Thielemann, for the 100th anniversary of the creation of the piece. He comes back to Bordeaux to direct a new production of The Hoffmann’s Tales, conducted by Marc Minkowski and brings at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow his production of Dido & Aeneas (Purcell), conducted by Chris Moulds, nominated for 3 Golden Masks.
In 2020, Manon, staged in the world of Joséphine Baker, is performed a few times at the Opéra Bastille and filmed, then broadcasted during the first days of the french lockdown. In december, the collaboration with Lorenzo Viotti goes further with his sister, Marina, and the three together give a very special version of The Human Voice at the Gulbenkian Fondation in Lisbon.
In 2021-2022, Vincent Huguet keeps working on a great challenge : a new production of the Da Ponte Mozart trilogy at the Staatsoper in Berlin, conducted by Daniel Barenboim, which will be fully performed during the Berlin Festtage in April 2022, in an unusual order : first Così fan tutte, then Le nozze di Figaro and finally Don Giovanni. Getting free of the traditional chronology, this option proposes a long familial saga, starting right after may 68 and the “sexual revolution” and ending nowadays at the #Metoo time. He also created a new show with Alexandre Tharaud and the queen Angélique Kidjo, Les mots d’amour, and met the italian conductor Michele Spotti with whom he made Don Carlos, in the French version in 5 acts, in Theater Basel.

Lorenzo Viotti and Vincent Huguet rehearsing in Lisbon, photo Marcia Lessa.