“The Seasons’ Canon” poses a similar problem of reworking a masterpiece, this time through music. Max Richter’s 2012 “Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons” has inspired a number of choreographers to respond: just to name a few, Wayne McGregor in “Kairos” for Ballett Zürich in 2014, Ilya Zhivoi in “The Four Seasons,” created for the Mariinsky Theatre in 2017, and, more recently, Robert Bondara in “4 Seasons” for the Czech National Ballet in 2026. Crystal Pite’s creative genius did not resist the temptation: in 2016, she created “The Seasons’ Canon,” her first work for the Paris Opera Ballet, turning Richter’s theatrical score into a living choreographic form.

In this sense, the title proves apt: the whole chain of heritage becomes a canon of transmission. Vivaldi’s music is built on modular patterns and recurring structures; Richter recuperates and amplifies that logic, and Pite responds to it with sequences that are themselves modular, almost fractal. The problem is that the choreography is so strong that it exposes the music’s weaknesses. Richter’s recomposition, for all its effectiveness, often seems to turn Vivaldi’s already overfamiliar score into something even more immediately accessible: blatantly emotional, predictable, and at times almost demagogic. Pite’s work accommodates itself to this structure, yet does so with such artistry, craft, and commitment that the result remains undeniably stunning, as the prolonged standing ovation confirmed. This is why one cannot help feeling that, with a score of deeper substance, perhaps even Vivaldi’s original music played live by the Opéra orchestra, her artistic imagination might have reached unexplored peaks.

Pite has spoken of emotion and the relationship with nature as central to her attraction to Richter’s version. The piece pays homage to nature’s force, in the feral intensity of the dancers’ bodies and against Jay Gower Taylor’s reflected-light backdrop, conceived in collaboration with lighting designer Tom Visser, which creates a glowing presence that feels almost alive. Dancers in wide trousers, with a sharp blue mark drawn around their necks, produced intense choral images. The beauty of the piece lies in its impressive composition of lines and forces: Pite’s command of group architecture is overwhelming, her duets and solos remarkably rich, and the way she modulates female and male groups in their differences conveys a rare vitality. The corps de ballet offered a magnificent demonstration of its phenomenal strength, moving like distinct limbs of a single organism, carried along by the same current of power, and the effect was magical. Yet the real revelation came from Roxane Stojanov: in the Autumn section, she gave a truly outstanding performance, transformed almost beyond recognition, revealing with striking force the full extent of her gifts as one of the company’s brightest étoiles and as an artist one now hopes to see more often in contemporary roles.

And so the 2026 season comes to an end with a programme that gathers together the heritage and possible futures of an institution whose choices are not always easy to read. Yet perhaps part of the Opéra’s fascination lies precisely there: in its anachronisms, its enigmas, and its attempts to inhabit a present that has itself become difficult to decipher on every level.