Press

A sparkling, funny, vintage, elegant and musically so successful nugget. . . KØUPLES is to the mischievous and unexpected. A very nice work by Stephan Grögler and his whole team. That's excellent! Bravo!

Gerard Lecointe Théâtre Renaissance OULLINS March 2019

Køuples is a thrilling trilogy about the case of the couple "with water - crossed out - in the gas. . ." A show sung to perfection in the spirit of a super energetic opera, Køuples would be a Feydeau under hallucinogen, a pop-art vaudeville, a crazy machinery set up like a Swiss cuckoo clock

Didier Lamare, Demi-Cadratin.fr

These three small operas are brilliantly performed in all their aspects: music, aesthetics, choreographed staging, interpretation. Congratulations to Gaëlle Méchaly and her partner Ronan Debois, to Nicolas Farine real "Fregoli";. . . What fun to see the atmosphere of the 60s and 70s revisited both by the costumes and these commercials from the 60s to the 70s. The mischievous "praise of tobacco"; in "Le secret de Suzanne"; which closes the show with a small note "politically incorrect"; adds an

Yannis Kokkos, stage director and set designer

Brio, intelligence, humour,. . . Dexterity in the staging and sensitivity in the interpretation,. . . . All the ingredients were there to surprise and delight.

Anne Saint-Dreux, direction Maison de la Pub

Profane, we discovered a first approach to opera through this excellent and innovative show full of subtleties and rich in references to the culture of the 70s. A superb vocal and stage performance with the artists. As for the staging, it is full of technical innovations and visual and sound originalities. An opera finally within everyone's reach!

Frédérique et Stéphane E

Kouples immerse us in this past so close with delicacy and inventiveness. Musical vitality, vocal virtuosity, humour, nostalgia and a few sound and visual « follies » » are on the menu of this and should be used by all of them without moderation.

Alexandros Markéas, composer

I wanted to thank you and congratulate you for the delicious show that the Agora High School's group (2d class) attended on Friday evening. I wish KOUPLES all the success that your talent deserves!

Laure Boissier, teacher in the Agora Hight School

The idea of this Opera was original and pleasantly surprised us. The set with its video-screens adapts well to the stories of the 3 operas, the elaborate, colourful costumes that plunge into the 1960s and the advertising of the 1970s, like the commercial of that of Mr. Clean (still used at home) was very clever and beautiful. We also liked the very pretty parts of the piano that illustrated the situations and the actions on stage,

The pupils of the Agora Hight School

Thank you for this beautiful show. It was the first time I had seen a lyrical performance as it is customary in the theatre with the same energy and lightness . I appreciated that we could hear this repertoire in this way with this humour, this proximity and this artistic quality. . . I know that the singing teacher who was present was very happy that his students saw the show. Mahaut Rabattu, Theater teacher in Issy les moulineaux High school of music

Mahaut Rabattu, Theater teacher in Issy les moulineaux High school of music

A surprising, inventive and funny show that my 5 year old son and I listened to with great pleasure. The lively and colourful staging highlights the accessible and playful musical work. A great time!

Alexandra T & Léonard

Congratulations again for this beautiful and beautifully conducted show. The trio works very well, each one playing his role with accuracy and brilliance. Congratulations to Stephan Grögler for the conception and the shaping of the show, very lively, fun and sophisticated in his crazy stuff way.

Marc Desmond, viola solo of the Paris Opera ; conductor

Moments of intense emotion and moving beauty. . . the director chose the sobriety and integrity that were essential in this case and in these places

Le Figaro

Heartbraking, shocking, harsh, the White Rose stirs very hard and very deeply. . . Stephan Grögler's staging confirms the qualities of a seasoned master builder never tempted by the ease.

Le Progrès

The scenic proposal proves admirably, as it plunges the spectator into a feeling of oppression and anguish, a feeling shared infront of our eyes by the two protagonists, doomed to an imminent death by beheading. The unique setting, designed by the director himself, is reduced to a simple clay floor that is blocked by a high concrete wall. The oozing water punctuates the comings and goings of the two characters in this closed universe from which death perspires (. . . )

opera.net

In Stephan Grögler's symbolic staging, the two singers touch and share the fate of young people who died for resisting.

Le Monde

Far from the grandiloquence of traditional opera, the director chose proximity and maximum purity.

L’événement Lyon

A effective setting as simple as it is and subtle lighting effects allow dreamlike escapes from this suffocating universe, the cell suddenly becoming a forest, a mountain path or a distant horizon, an intelligent visual equivalent to the lyricism of certain passages of the text. Very well directed on stage and musically, the two singers impress with their youth and physical credibility, their unfailing emotional commitment and their technical mastery.

Magazine Opéra

And this spoken and sung text is carried by only two performers. But what interpreters! Soprano Elizabeth Bailey carries Sophie's torments with incandescence. Baritone Armando Noguera gives all the gravity to Hans' fate. Their interpretation, draped by music in perfect symbiosis, conveys an incredible emotion. Didier Henry's work on shadows and lights perfectly enhances Stephan Grögler's scenography

Ouest France

All the intelligence of the program lies in the choice of melodies that appear childish in appearance, but which for some contain an incredible gravity. We must also highlight Stephan Grögler's ingenious staging, which plays on the fine line between ingenuity and malice. . . A show that introduces children to lyrical art and French melody by offering them a beautiful quality of interpretation and an intelligent theatre where we sometimes laugh yellow, like the adults!

LA LETTRE DU MUSICIEN

A talented Fantasy to be applauded urgently. . . TTT Bravo

Télérama

Gaëlle Méchaly has chosen the best way to animate children's minds without doing school animation, just as she knows how to play the child, she has no doubt that children can behave like adults. . .

LE MONDE

A must see in Paris. . . a favorite

Figaroscope

. . . They accurately interpret a classical repertoire and are combining it with disconcerting dexterity with humour and comedy

Pariscope

. . . Gaëlle Méchaly doesn't just offer a warm and expressive soprano, she bends also to the director's wish to maintain tention with numbers that follow one another like in a lucky bag . . . she gives a lot of energy to an intelligent show. Congratulations!

ANACLASE

Gaëlle Mechaly (singing) and EzequielSpucches (piano) have fun like children, running, jumping, dressing up, playing with four hands. . . they can't sit still! The music becomes a pretext for a permanent game between two accomplices.

LAMUSE

The atypical tribute to the Tiger Lilies; Môme Piaf. . . A surprisingly successful bet.

Julie Cadilhac, BSC News

An ambitious programm … The space seems want to tell more than the twilight reveals. Even if one sits as a spectator passively in the dark periphery of the bright island, one is in the middle of it. Instead of names here there are sounds. Upwards instead of gravestones anonymous lamp ball bars. Kind of will-o’ the wisp in the darkness; it is a garden without Eden.

Marianne Mühlemann, Der Bund

Lorenz Hasler and his ensemble with the enchanting soprano Gaëlle Méchaly performed with a high sensitivity . . . a subtly selected and arranged repertoire.

Olivier Meier, Berner Zeitung

Instead of a sudden shock, we are encouraged to think and feel all the intrinsic beauty of this music. This is surely the most beautiful tribute that « us » the post-war generations can give to the victims of the Nazi regime.

François Lilienfelfd, Ensuite, Zeitschrift zu Kultur und Kunst/ April 2015

But how do you represent art in hell on a theatre stage? Stephan Grögler probably did the impossible. We are seized, shaken, sometimes even enthusiastic about his staging. Als Ob. . . suggests terror, but unlike a film like R. Polanski's "The Pianist"; or « The Ghetto » of Sobol violence is never shown, it is only suggested, which leaves much deeper traces.

François Lilienfelfd, Ensuite, Zeitschrift zu Kultur und Kunst/ April 2015

The most astonishing thing about this evening is the total symbiosis that exists between Gaëlle Méchaly, who has a strong personality, and I Salonisti, this ensemble that has been formed for so many years, a communion that they have acquired during rehearsals but also thanks to their artistic maturity that allows this unity on stage.

François Lilienfelfd, Ensuite, Zeitschrift zu Kultur und Kunst/ April 2015

Gaëlle Méchaly plays the role inimitably. The depth and diversity of the emotional expressions she depicts is indescribable. An incredible voice capable of modulation, from outcry to the most breathy pianissimo in the concluding lullaby, from folk song to art song. The artist has

François Lilienfelfd, Ensuite, Zeitschrift zu Kultur und Kunst/ April 2015

A 90-minute program that gets under your skin. It's incredibly deep, this particulary atmosphere. . . says a spectator And a woman adds It was beautiful. I was very agitated, I almost had tears"

Matthias Haymoz, SRF Regionaljournal

Stephan Grögler's very effective staging in a beautiful setting with dimmed lights, allowed the excellent soprano Gaëlle Méchaly to address each spectator almost individually as if she was telling him a story, her pure, expressive voice led us to the heart of an unusual journey towards the countries of the biblical ancestors. . . There are a thousand treasures in this show, poetic, intimate, full of colors of emotions and beautiful images. We will remember it for a long time.

Le Télégramme, Bretagne

Whether multicolored or telluric, ethereal or opulent the music of Thierry Pécou (a gold panner of the world music) is encouraging man to remember his roots and the Nature around him.

Diapason

Sefarad’s won over the many listeners gathered at the Théâtre de Cornouailles. . All these melodies of undeniable charm inspired the composer Thierry Pérou. . . Everything made us enter a warm world where Aramaic and Arabic were spoken, and this melodious language with sometimes rocky accents, made of a mixture of cultures.

Le Télégramme, Bretagne

The singer uses the whole range of feelings from crossing a familiar repertoire and takes the spectator towards a mythical orient. By mixing this contemporary staging set with songs from an ancestral tradition, Stephan Grögler wanted to avoid locking the audience into codes, shapes that were too definable, in order to allow them to feel the pleasure of sharing, the richness of the mixing of cultures . . A moving experience, between joy and melancholy.

MAGOPERA, Reims

Thierry Pécou is a composer of contemporary music. Travelling around the world, not closed in in his ivory tower. . .

JAZZMAN

The audacious challenge of marrying the Schoenberg of 1912 to the Berlin nights of the 1930s imposes the feeling not of kinship, but of proximity, the two sides of the same night. . . It is from the side that one enters the Grand Theatre in the hall to the staircase where the spectators are waiting. . . Top hat, black suit. . . Julia Migenes comes along and performs some of the most popular songs in the Berlin's cabarets of the 1930s, including the revue Alles Schwindel

Jean-Marc Proust, OPERA MAGAZINE JANVIER 2015

The audience is then invited to enter into the auditorium, where some spectators find themselves on stage, facing each other, to better restore the proximity and intimacy of the cabaret. At the front of the stage, strongly raised to mark a slope, the setting is a complex moving light installation ; spread out stakes, arranged like a small path. On these stakes, light balls vibrate, turn on and off interactively by reacting to the voice.

Jean-Marc Proust, OPERA MAGAZINE JANVIER 2015

These lights evoke stars, of course, but also, when the blockis made, by their suspended roundness, fish, eggs floating between two waters, which accentuates the strangeness of the device. . . Some notes call the incandescent memories of the mythical Blue Angel (Der Blaue Engel). . . the light is then warm, with almost aggressive reds, the soloist perfectly ensuring the high verb of the review leader

Jean-Marc Proust, OPERA MAGAZINE JANVIER 2015

The success of this "Pierrot lunaire" is in Julia Migenes performance, in her radiant weight of presence, in Schonberg's music and in the cabaret song. . . in the performances of the Swiss Global Chamber Ensemble and in Stephan Grögler's staging and scenographic fabulous « madness ».

Denise de Œuninck, Le Quotidien Jurassien, Neuchâtel