ARCHIVES 2019 / Love Triumphant

For refusing to obey her father, a young girl in love is locked up in a tower. When released, she discovers a world torn apart by conflict and poverty. To find her prince, our heroine must listen to her desires and face a general who can only sow chaos. Inspired by the Brothers Grimm's Maid Maleen, Love Triumphant is an operetta in which five characters—a strong-willed princess, a disfigured suitor, a diabolical general, an eco-friendly gardener, and a dishwashing girl—lead us on adventures in blank Alexandrines full of love, disguises, and struggles. In this show for children, the author and director smartly combines the pleasures of theatre and operetta with the awareness of a troubled world: ours. To despair he answers with fancy, to war with songs, so that love, with the help of the actors, singers, and musicians, can triumph.


In 2013, Olivier Py became the first artist since Jean Vilar to be named director of the Festival d'Avignon. A director for the theatre, the opera, and cinema, but also an actor and writer, Olivier Py anchors his work in the preoccupations of his contemporaries in order to open a poetic and political dialogue. Theatre is his culture and instrument: with it, the word becomes action, without ever losing sight of the fact that this gesture—a poem—could one day be the basis of new democratic forms.

L'Amour vainqueur by Olivier Py is published by Actes Sud-Papiers.