CULTURE Outings of the week: Puccini in Avignon, A’Nîmes ta guitar and exhibitions

Non-prescription therapy

Culture is a natural anti-depressant without any side effects except perhaps happiness and ataraxia, a certain tranquility of the soul. From Vigan to Arles, find shows every week not to be missed at reasonable prices, while waiting for them to be reimbursed by social security.

Pamper the right hemisphere of your brain every week, the side effects will be felt quickly.

The Jean Ferrat Cultural Center in Sauveterre hosts the opening of the exhibition In Reality by photographer Damien Fontaine Tuesday May 12.

Nearly 500 photos will be presented. Images taken on the spot, built around moments of life captured directly in the field.

The fourth edition of the A’Nîmes ta guitar festival will be held from May 13 to 16, 2026 in Clarensac and Nîmes. The event is supported by the Nîmes Guitares & Co association, founded in 2017 with the aim of promoting classical guitar in the Nîmes region and more widely in Occitanie.

Over four days, the festival will offer concerts by international and local artists, workshops, meetings with amateur orchestras and a national classical guitar competition open to all ages bringing together around a hundred competitors. The event is a moment of musical sharing, but also a space of emulation dedicated to young guitarists who will be able to confront themselves in the eyes of a jury of specialists. Beautiful people. The Decacorda duo, composed of guitarist Nicolas Pardo and cellist Alice Poussin, the young Chinese guitarist Qianzheng Wang, winner of the 2025 Paris International Guitar Festival, Guitares and Co, Antoine Boyer, Jérémy Jouve, Yeore Kim, Frédérick Maggio…

Practical information
A’Nîmes your guitar festival From May 13 to 16, 2026 Clarensac and Nîmes www.animestaguitare.com

 

Friday May 15, the Christian-Liger theater will host a jazz evening at 7:30 p.m. The duo Antoine Boyer РYeore Kim, guitar and harmonica, will share the bill with the Guitares & Co orchestra conducted by Fr̩d̩rick Maggio.

In an empire frozen by fear, a princess imposes her enigmas and condemns those who fail. A Persian tale set in China, nothing to do with his flagship dramatic work, Tosca, which takes place in Rome. Turandot is thus, sumptuous cruelty and brilliance. Giacomo Puccini’s final opera, left unfinished, whose writing stops on the scene of the death of the character of Liù (Claire Antoine), the work is presented without ending, in the state where the composer interrupted it. The music is striking with its power, its choral masses, its contrasts. It brings out the intimate at the heart of the spectacular. Sung in Italian and surtitled in French, this production, the result of a co-production with the Macerata Opera Festival, favors visual shock and the force of the myth. Before each performance, a prologue sheds light on the work. Choir and Master of the Opéra Grand Avignon, Avignon-Provence National Orchestra, musical direction Federico Santi, choir director Alan Woodbridge.