Orchestre l'Orphéon at El Jem: Boléro and Shéhérazade under the Roman stars
The French ensemble Orchestre l'Orphéon closes its two-night residency at the 39th El Jem Festival on Saturday 25 July with Ravel's Boléro and Rimski-Korsakov's symphonic suite Shéhérazade, performed at 22:00 in the Roman amphitheatre.
The French ensemble Orchestre l'Orphéon takes the stage at the Amphithéâtre romain d'El Jem on Saturday 25 July at 22:00 for the second of its two consecutive nights at the 39th Festival International de Musique Symphonique d'El Jem — the first back-to-back residency by a French orchestra in the festival's history.
The programme pairs two pillars of the orchestral repertoire. Ravel's Boléro, built on a single repeating theme driven to its conclusion over seventeen minutes of mounting intensity, opens the evening. Rimski-Korsakov's symphonic suite Shéhérazade — four movements drawn from the tales of the Arabian Nights — follows, weaving solo violin against the full orchestra across roughly forty-five minutes.
The amphitheatre, a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the best-preserved Roman colosseums outside Italy, seats the audience under open sky within walls that date to the third century AD. The concert is scheduled to last around two hours.
Tickets are available through Teskerti in two seating categories: Gradins (terraces) at 43 TND and Chaise (chairs) at 53 TND. A separate transport ticket, covering the coach service to the venue but not entry to the concert, is available at 37.5 TND. Book at teskerti.tn.