The unexpected mirror
Dear audience,
Jorge Luis Borges, an Argentine writer who made Geneva his home, was like me in that he traversed multiple worlds and was fascinated by mirrors. He said that mirrors multiply people and prolong the anxiety of existence by reflecting an image that is almost identical, but never quite the same. Mirrors are never neutral: they unsettle us, they open up the infinite, they cast doubt on reality. What if the reflection were not a simple double, but another world? A parallel version, elusive, dizzying. Like theatre, perhaps, that space where appearances waver, where roles become blurred, where we think we recognise something and yet everything eludes us.
The 2025-2026 season at La Cité Bleue is presented to you as a mirror. A mirror that does not merely reflect, but reveals, surprises and questions. A space where images multiply, where influences intersect and transform, where each reflection is an invitation to look differently. To question what we believe to be stable and certain, opening ourselves up to new worlds and unexpected dialogues between eras and cultures.
Because this season is made up of shattered mirrors.
The mirror of resonances, where ancient music meets the breath of today, where harpsichords, bagpipes and synthesizers compose a new sound memory in unison.
The mirror of crossings, where Persian, Andean and African traditions intersect with the Baroque, building bridges between continents and inventing common roots, real or imagined.
There is also the mirror of gestures, of bodies in motion, of ritual or urban dances, of circles that bring people together, that speak without words.
The mirror of metamorphoses, where ancient myths take on contemporary faces, where opera becomes a futuristic fable or a deconstructed legend, between the sacred and the satirical, between electronics and the theorbo.
The mirror of voices, those that rise up to express intimacy, exile, struggle and love. Voices of women, children and poets, resonating once again under the vaults of the stage.
The mirror of childhood, that first gaze that questions and imagines, that link passed down between generations, where young and old discover together stories to sing, dream and understand.
And then there is the mirror of dawn, fragile and suspended, that of rare, unexpected moments, when we come to listen outside the usual hours, on the threshold of sleep or day, in that floating state conducive to all kinds of wonder.
And finally, the mirror of the big screen, where cinema takes centre stage as a theatre of the intimate and the collective. Each shot captures a flash of memory, prolongs a gesture, whispers a world and leaves us, facing the screen, a little more lucid, a little more alive.
At La Cité Bleue, every reflection becomes a passage. Every spectator becomes a traveller.
We look forward to welcoming you to these worlds halfway between the visible and the invisible, memory and invention.
Leonardo García-Alarcón
General and Artistic Director
