In 2010, the Lulli square, located just behind the Opera, was rehabilitated. In order to participate to the improvement of this public space and to bring a symbolic and poetic dimension to this square in search of identity and use, the Association Marseille Centre, a federation of downtown businesses, asked artists Berdaguer & Péjus to imagine a work of art in relation with the Opera.

Their proposal, both architectural and acoustic, is formulated with a logic of distorsion. Inspired by the bandstand situated on the upper side of the Canebière - Marseilles's famous downtown avenue - the artists have created a micro-architecture with fluid and dance like features, which broadcast, filtered and remixed, voices, machines noises, musical fragments... coming from the inside of the Opera.

Through this surprising ventriloquy, the artists create  another "space" within the space. Opéra noir, both a mirage and an echo of two city landmarks, presents itself as an open and porous interface between public space and fantasy. 

 Christophe Berdaguer & Marie Péjus

Christophe Berdaguer & Marie Péjus, were born in 1968 and 1969. They live and work in  Paris and Marseilles. Since 1994, this duo of artists questions the architectural and social utopias of the twentieth century, in order to reactivate them and to propose a critical reinterpretation. Their polymorphous work puts forward an inconscious and imaginary world.
Berdaguer & Péjus were residents of the Villa Medicis out-door program in the USA in 2001, and of the Villa Medicis in Rome in 2007. Their work was rewarded with the Fonbdation Ricard Prize in 2007 and shown in numerous  exhibitions in France and abroad. 

http://www.eternalnetwork.fr/projets/article/l-opera-noir