Bordeaux's national opera, deprived once again of a live audience due to coronavirus restrictions, has turned to recording behind closed doors.
It had been due to perform Claude Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande opera, but the country's lockdown has changed all that.
Now the opera has been recorded so it can be put on a CD and offered to opera lovers to enjoy from the comfort of their own sofas.
"It's frustrating not to have access to [a] live [performance] with the public," said Stanislas de Barbeyrac, the tenor who plays Pelléas. "We work for that, we artists, for this exchange, it's our reward.
"But it's a good compromise to be able to rehearse and still create things, even without an audience, to be able to compensate for this lack of living art and interaction, by offering a record. It's important that people know that the cultural community wants to work."
