Comedy debuts at Versailles featuring dialogue, music, costumes and scenery created with help of AI tool Le Chat

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Molière is to the French what Shakespeare is to the English: the last word in historical literature, drama, wit and satire.

Now, more than 350 years after his death, the 17th-century dramatist has been revived after scholars at the Sorbonne University in Paris used artificial intelligence to help write an experimental play in his style.

Casting director urges Keir Starmer to intervene in case of Paata Burchuladze, 71, jailed for seven years after singing at anti-regime demonstrations

The Royal Opera House in London has urged Keir Starmer to intervene in the case of Paata Burchuladze, a world-renowned bass singer who has been imprisoned in Georgia since October on a charge of leading a coup against the country’s authoritarian leader.

The 71-year-old has performed at the Royal Opera House and the Metropolitan Opera House in New York and collaborated with the likes of Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and José Carreras. He was arrested after joining a protest outside the presidential palace in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. Last week he was given a seven-year jail sentence which Burchuladze suggested to the court was equivalent to a life sentence given his age.

After years of upheaval, English National Opera is staging its first new opera in its northern base: the Pulitzer-winning Angel’s Bone, about two angels brutally exploited by human traffickers. We talk to its creators

I’m peering into a vast hangar teeming with tech crew wearing hi-vis and hard hats. Enormous lighting rigs hang low to the ground. Somewhere out of sight is the biggest lift in Europe, allowing articulated lorries to drive straight in. This is the Warehouse in Manchester’s Aviva Studios. Since opening in 2023, this arts venue run by Factory International has presented gigs by major pop acts, the largest ever show by cult Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama and a “sprawling four-hour odyssey through often naked rituals” by performance artist Marina Abramović. Now, for the first time, it’s hosting opera.

More precisely, it’s about to host English National Opera’s first production created in and for Manchester: the UK premiere of Angel’s Bone by Chinese-American composer Du Yun and Canadian librettist Royce Vavrek, staged by acclaimed Australian director Kip Williams. The opera won the 2017 Pulitzer prize, commended as a “harrowing allegory for human trafficking in the modern world” following its 2016 world premiere in the US.