Each morning at dawn, the bodies of three young men are found in the Seine, downstream from the Tour de Nesle. Dumas drew on fourteenth-century historical events to create this melodrama in 1832, which became one of the greatest successes of the nineteenth century, with no fewer than eight hundred performances. Its popular appeal lay in the spectacular form of the piece, which combines freedom, sexuality, power and excess through characters of monstrous force.

"I have a taste for impossible theatre," declares Thomas Jolly — theatre and opera director, and artistic director of the opening and closing ceremonies of the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games. Following Shakespeare (Henry VI and Richard III), Seneca (Thyestes) and Schwartz (The Dragon), Alexandre Dumas once again gives him the opportunity to deploy a heightened theatricality. His attentiveness to the political dimension serves a story of relentless twists and turns — a vast playground traversed by desire, manipulation and bloody murder.

The Tour de Nesle, now long gone, once marked the point where the city walls built by Philippe Auguste met the Seine. It is close to this historic site that the production will be created — in the open air, in the Jardin des Tuileries, as part of the Festival Paris l'été and the Étés du Louvre — before transferring to the Salle Richelieu during the 2027–2028 season.
 

In partnership with the Festival Paris l'été and the Louvre Museum