Lyrique en Tronçais Festival

Lyrical art at the heart of the Tronçais forest

Founded in 2018 by two passionate musicians — a pianist and a singer —, the Lyrique en Tronçais Festival was born from the desire to showcase the richness of the lyrical repertoire in an intimate and warm setting. The Saint-Étienne church in Ainay-le-Château, a Romanesque building listed as a Historic Monument located at the gates of the most beautiful oak forest in Europe, offers an ideal acoustic setting for voice and piano. The festival is the only event entirely dedicated to lyrical art in the Allier department.

An ambitious thematic program

Each edition of the festival is built around a theme related to lyrical art. Past editions have explored various themes: "Journey to Italy" for the 5th edition, "The Orient and Antiquity", "Opéra-Comique" for the 7th edition in 2024, or "Lyrical Landscape". This thematic approach allows for a coherent thread to be offered to the public through four concerts that combine the great titles of the repertoire with discoveries from in-depth musicological research.

An educational mission for the public

The Lyrique en Tronçais Festival is committed to a unique educational mission. Each work is placed in its historical, dramatic, and artistic context before the concerts, allowing seasoned music lovers and novices alike to fully grasp the significance of the pieces performed. The festival is keen to show, in just four concerts, the breadth of the lyrical repertoire's diversity and to introduce forgotten or little-known works from French and European musical heritage.

Artists serving the repertoire

Each year, the festival invites professional artists — sopranos, tenors, basses, countertenors, coloratura sopranos — accompanied on the piano, to perform both great classics and unpublished arias from 19th-century manuscripts. The 7th edition in 2024, dedicated to Opéra-Comique, featured a program ranging from childhood in opéra-comique (linked to the bicentenary of the painter Marcellin Desboutin) to La Fontaine's fables set to music by Offenbach, André Caplet, and Benjamin Godard, as well as major dramatic works of the genre and unpublished arias by composer Ferdinand Hérold.

Ainay-le-Château, a medieval town in the Tronçais forest

The festival is part of the remarkable heritage of Ainay-le-Château, a small fortified medieval town in Bourbonnais. The village retains its ramparts, its fortified gates, and its Romanesque Saint-Étienne church, whose sculpted capitals bear witness to Auvergne Romanesque art. The proximity of the Tronçais national forest, one of the most beautiful oak forests in Europe designated as a "Forest of Exception", offers festival-goers a natural setting of rare beauty to extend their musical stay.