A cycle of an exhibition and regional theatrical concerts explores Beethoven’s genius, and also challenges how we perceive sound, silence, and each other
By the time Ludwig van Beethoven composed his Ninth Symphony, he was profoundly deaf. He conducted its premiere in 1824 but could not hear the audience’s applause. A musician had to turn him around to see the crowd rising to its feet. Yet this was the work that gave us the Ode to Joy, a melody so universal it became Europe’s anthem The composer who could no longer hear had created one of music’s most universal expressions.
But what if his deafness was not just a tragedy to overcome, but a lesson in listening differently? What if we are all, in some way, deaf without knowing it?
These are not rhetorical questions. They anchor Ludwig Van: Écouter pour s’entendre (Listening to Understand Each Other), an exhibition at the Micro-Folie départementale in Nice that turns Beethoven’s experience as a deaf artist into an interrogation of how we all perceive sound, silence, and connection. Running through 24 January 2026, the show explores listening in all its dimensions: physiological, mental, social, political. The personal becomes universal.
The journey begins with the mechanics of hearing itself. Deaf musicians describe what it means to perform without ears. You may have experienced for yourself that when pressing a tuning fork to your skull, you feel sound travel through bone. Beethoven’s way was to clamp his teeth on a wooden rod connected to his piano to sense vibrations he could no longer hear. Other tools include ear trumpets, brass funnels Beethoven held to his head to amplify sounds.
The immersive documentary Auris Incognita goes deeper still: what does it actually mean to listen? Sound illusions demonstrate how fragile our perception really is.
Video via Hélène Combal-Weiss on YouTube
From there, the exhibition turns inward. Through film excerpts and literary fragments (from the web series Cher futur moi to Ibsen’s Peer Gynt) it asks whether we can truly hear others if we have not learned to listen to ourselves. Beethoven’s social isolation stops being just biographical detail. It becomes a mirror for our own failures of attention, our own ways of shutting out the world.
The final room pushes further. The Ode to Joy plays, and in order to perform Europe’s anthem themselves, visitors are initiated to chansigne (signed singing). Their hands shape what Beethoven heard only inside his skull. Understanding requires a new vocabulary: you translate or you remain outside.
This philosophy extends into live performance throughout January with Ludwig Van, un autre point d’ouïe (Another Point of Hearing), a theatrical concert that treats music, spoken word, and sign language as equal partners. On January 7, 2026, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice performs this event at the Opéra, followed by Orchestre National de Cannes’ production later in Cannes and Vallauris. In parallel, school performances also introduce younger audiences to what happens when accessibility becomes art.
The piece unfolds in a chaotic interior: cluttered table, old piano, books scattered everywhere. A solitary guardian of language converses with the shadow of Beethoven. Fascinated by the composer’s music, he dissects performances, gets carried away, questions himself. Between two passing boats (a reference that remains deliberately oblique) he plays the piano, speaking little but loudly, in his own peculiar slang. Through his isolation, an echo forms with Ludwig: their shared passion for an unknown woman, their relationship with silence and listening. When hearing is lost, an inner world opens up.
Throughout these concerts, actor Jean-Christophe Quenon and sign language artist Marie Lemot work alongside the orchestras under Alexandra Cravero’s musical direction. What is usually only audible becomes visible. What is usually only visible becomes audible. The production interprets everything in sign language, not as an accommodation but as a creative choice. When silence becomes a force and gesture becomes song, the hierarchy between hearing and deaf audiences simply collapses.
Video via Orchestre national Avignon-Provence on YouTube
For two centuries, we have mythologised Beethoven’s deafness as a handicap heroically transcended. This exhibition and its accompanying performances suggest something more provocative: perhaps his deafness allowed him access to something the hearing world could not reach on its own. Perhaps the truest listening happens not with our ears at all, but with our full attention to what (and who) stands before us.
The question therefore remains not whether we can hear, but whether we are truly listening.
VISITOR INFORMATION
Ludwig Van: Écouter pour s’entendre
Through 24 January 2026 | Free entry (reservations required for groups)
Tuesday to Saturday, 10 am to 6 pm
Special event on 3 December: a family-friendly guided visit of the exhibition conducted in French Sign Language.
Ludwig Van, un autre point d’ouïe
- Nice Opéra: 7 January, 2026 at 7 pm
- Le Minotaure, Vallauris: 10 January, 2026 at 8.30 pm
- Les Sarlucq, Cannes: 17 January, 2026 at 7.30 pm
CONTACT DETAILS
Micro-Folie Départementale des Alpes-Martimes 06
26 rue Saint-François de Paule
06300 Nice
Tel: +33 (0)4 89 04 56 90
Lead image ink drawing based on royalty-free image, anonymous artist; all other images as credited
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