West Side Story

...that Bernstein and Sondheim transpose to the working-class and multiethnic New York of the 1950s, West Side Story is a musical that blends jazz, classical music and Latin American influences. With feverish intensity, the love story of Maria and Tony, from two rival gangs (the Sharks and the Jets), collides with gang wars.

Mathieu Herzog and Orchestre Appassionato draw inspiration from this score steeped in lyricism and traversed by rhythmic explosions ! Its hit melodies intensely express the tensions, hopes and dramas of the characters. Finger snapping, syncopated and restless rhythms recalling mambo and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, operatic lyricism and jazzy melodrama... Bernstein's score is a concentrate of music and America with communicative energy. A masterpiece that Anthony Despras revisits in an electric choreography worthy of Broadway. The dancers powerfully embody the conflicts between the clans, through gestures both raw and precise, blending urban energy with contemporary writing.

Carried by rare vocal intensity, singer Neïma Naouri takes the stage and breathes an extra dimension into this musical fresco, where raw emotion meets a deeply spellbinding power of performance.

A modern version of the myth, a true ode to America born of cross-breeding that shatters musical boundaries for our greatest delight !