Le Grand Ballet

Founded in 2023 under the direction of Matthieu Franchin, Le Grand Ballet is an early music ensemble, bringing together singers and instrumentalists mainly from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse of Lyon. Depending on the projects, it is joined by actors and dancers who practise their art in the same historically informed way.

Le Grand Ballet bases its identity on the exploration of the repertoires of the 17th and 18th centuries, and more particularly French music, played with enthusiasm and expressiveness. Referring back to the 17th-century ballet de cour, a spectacular form combining dance, music, song and theatre, the ensemble’s identity is based on forging links with other disciplines linked to the performing arts.

 

In 2023-2024, the ensemble was a prize-winner in the “Baroque (À)venir” network launched by Harmonia Sacra, and was welcomed in residence in Valenciennes, where it performed in the Embar(o)quement Immédiat festival, an original concert programme rediscovering the original figure of Jean-Claude Gillier, musician and composer for the theatres of Paris and London in the 17th and 18th centuries.