La Semeuse and La Providence: A Tour Around the World in One Season

The Niçois landmark has ventured once again where other local cultural institutions do not dare to tread 

Every cultural venue carries the signature of the director who runs it. Nice’s beloved Théâtre de La Semeuse and its associated Centre Culturel La Providence are no exception. Both have long occupied a distinctive place in Nice’s cultural landscape: a neighbourhood-rooted institution with a consistently ambitious artistic programme. But with Frédéric Rey – a man with an expansive international background, fluent in several languages, and passionate about world cultures – at the helm of both institutions, how would anyone expect this not to rub off on his programming? 

The recently unveiled 2026–27 season of some 40 performances and exhibitions is of course built on the backbone of French authors and artists, as well it should. But on the other side of the comfortable setting of La Semeuse’s intimate theatre or the baroque La Providence chapel with its romantic patio, a whole world awaits, brimming with creativity and insights into unfamiliar worlds, and these two venues lift the veil on it.

Even bolder and more varied than ever, this season speaks to locals and an international audience, to the cultural novice and the seasoned connoisseur, to old and young alike through shared artistic languages: music, movement, masks, visual creation, and the enduring pleasures of live performance. 

OUR CURATED SELECTION

Baroque Voices

For lovers of early music, the season offers an unusually rich sequence of vocal and instrumental programmes.

• Dolci sospiri: tendres nuances en duo – A duo programme of 17th-century French and Italian song, pairing intimate early-music repertoire with the expressive possibilities of two voices.
• Fiamme italiane: Expressions à cinq voix – Five voices explore the passion, wit and harmonic daring of Italian Renaissance and early-Baroque madrigals by Monteverdi, Gesualdo, Banchieri and Gastoldi.
• Muovere gli affetti: de Rome à Paris – Charpentier and Carissimi meet in a programme tracing the musical traffic between Rome and Paris at the height of the Baroque.
• The merry pleasant spring – English music by Morley, Dowland, Purcell and Eccles offers a luminous journey through the Elizabethan, Jacobean and Restoration songbook.
• Salve regina: Prière à la Vierge – Sacred works by Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti and Pergolesi create a contemplative Baroque meditation on prayer and devotion.
• Entre ombre et lumière : la viole française – Music by Sainte-Colombe, Marin Marais, Morel and Forqueray forms the basis of a contemporary encounter with the French viol repertoire.

Worlds in Sound

Beyond the Baroque, the programme travels confidently across continents and traditions.

• L’esprit du Cachemire – Santoor master Abhay Rustum Sopori and percussionist Nihar Mehta bring the refined Sufiana Gharana tradition of Kashmir to Nice.
• De Prague aux Balkans – Clarinettist-led klezmer and traditional music journey from Central Europe to the Balkans, with all the dance-floor energy the repertoire implies.
• Palvair Jazz Unit – The ensemble moves through jazz standards and beyond, from Bud Powell, Charlie Parker and Coltrane to Stevie Wonder and Biréli Lagrène.

• Voyage autour du monde – A harp-and-voice duo sets out on a musical journey across cultures and continents.
• L’écho des mandolines: “Les cordes d’Azur” – Mandolins take centre stage in the Chapelle de la Providence, adding a bright Mediterranean note to the season.
• Traversées – Four cellos create a richly textured musical voyage, from intimate resonance to full-bodied ensemble sound.
• La serpente vert – A hurdy-gurdy duo leads audiences into a dreamlike world of traditional songs, folklore and sonic transformation.
• Dull boy & One for Jude – Trip-hop, rock, alternative and post-punk converge in an evening designed for movement as much as listening.
• Un jour, un chœur – A participatory choral experience where Nigerian singer Bassey Ebong and attendees build a collective soundtrack from the songs that have shaped their lives.

Visual and Physical Theatre

The season also includes several productions where image, gesture, and stagecraft carry much of the storytelling.

• Spirit – A 1920s London-inspired evening of magic, mentalism and hypnosis promises theatrical mystery and audience participation.
• Petite Plume – Object theatre and puppetry create a poetic, visually led world for younger and younger-at-heart spectators.

• Le retour d’Ulysse – The Homeric hero’s return becomes a theatrical journey through objects, puppets and visual narrative.
• Les sept dernières balades de mémé Jeanine – In seven slow-motion “road-movie” walks, a grandson and his grandmother let a whole life unfold in Stéphan Ramirez’s object-theatre and puppetry tribute to memory, family and the Baie des Anges.

Exhibitions and Experiences

Sometimes, the visual and performing arts cannot be reduced to one neat category – and isn’t cross-pollination the entire point?

• Noriko Onda: Hana Hanabi – The multidisciplinary exhibition centres on the Japanese art of flower arranging, based on classic techniques and simple natural material.
• Françoise Maunoury: Peintures et photographies – Paintings and photography meet in a meditation on sacred architecture, bringing together windows and doors from France, Ethiopia, Turkey, Armenia, Byzantine Greece, Portugal and Spain.
• Valérie Van Haelen: échos et métamorphoses – Ink, clay and painting conjure a world of hybrid figures, vegetal dresses and mutating bodies, where dream, myth and nature converge.
• Louis Dollé & Nathalie Broyelle: À corps et des accords – The two Niçois artists make their friendship the starting point for a shared exploration of the body as language, encounter, and dialogue.

THE UNMISSABLE HIGHLIGHTS

Nice Remembers

^{Video via France 3 Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur on YouTube}

Among the season’s French-language productions, Prom_14 stands apart for its direct connection to the city itself. The piece, which premiered here in June, just days before the ten-year anniversary of the 14 July 2016 truck attack, belongs to a broader civic need to remember, mourn, and make sense of an event that changed the city.

The story, written by the father of a 12-year-old girl who died in the attack, is particularly poignant in its emotional but measured tone. Its inclusion in La Semeuse’s programme reflects the institution’s local anchoring and its willingness to place difficult, contemporary subjects on stage.

Viva la Commedia!

La Semeuse’s identity is inseparable from the Festival International de Commedia dell’Arte de Nice, which Frédéric Rey created in 2014 and which has since become one of the city’s most beloved cultural events.

^{Frédéric Rey – courtesy self}

Each June, the festival transforms La Providence and sites across Nice into a celebration of masked comedy, physical theatre and improvisation, welcoming companies from France, Italy and further afield. Its open-air performances in the chapel’s courtyard, played beneath neighbouring balconies and church towers, have helped make La Providence a reference point for commedia dell’arte in France and beyond.

For Rey, the form is not a seasonal programming exercise but a lifelong artistic commitment: a living bridge between Nice’s Italian heritage, its popular theatre traditions and the enduring language of the mask.

A SEASON FOR THE CITY

The programme, multi-faceted as it is, has a clear personality: rooted in Vieux Nice and attentive to the city’s Italian cultural inheritance, it does not demand choosing between “French” and “non-French” culture. Rather, it is a melting pot that welcomes all to listen, watch, laugh, learn, and travel without ever leaving the city. And its warm reception over the years has proven that this is the way forward in a city that, despite its international makeup, had for too long traded on its ‘French’ label.

Click here for full programme details, show times, and ticketing information.

^{Courtesy Ville de Nice}

VENUE DETAILS

Théâtre de la Semeuse
2 Mnt Auguste Kerl
06300 Nice

Tel: +33 (0)4 93 80 34 12
Website: https://www.lasemeuse.asso.fr/

Centre Culturel La Providence
8 Rue Saint-Augustin
06300 Nice

Tel: +33 (0)4 93 80 34 12
Website: https://www.lasemeuse.asso.fr/lieux-d-accueil/centre-culturel-la-providence

PHOTO CREDITS

• All photos courtesy La Semeuse / Centre Culturel La Providence and as credited

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