Mara Dobrescu with the other members of the Face à face quartet, pianist Victoria Harmandjieva, percussionists Hélène Colombotti and Elisa Humanes perform, during July, the chamber opera The Return by Oscar Strasnoy - composer, pianist and conductor born in Buenos Aires and settled in Paris. Based on the homonym novel of Alberto Manguel - the one who signed the libretto, too - this new production, made in collaboration with the European Academy of Music - is a request of the Aix-en-Provence Festival and of the Musicatreize vocal and instrumental ensemble.

Mara Dobrescu: "We are very pleased to do this premiere, because it is a great work; there are six musicians on the stage: a trombone and a trumpet are added to the quartet that I belong to ("Face à face" - which has two percussion instruments and two pianos). In this manner, a stereophonic effect is created, because there is a percussion instrument, a piano and a wind instrument in every part of the stage. The premiere of the opera will be broadcasted live on the 9^th of July by Radio Classique, and on the 12^th of July the performance will be broadcasted on the Arte channel's web-site.

As usual, the organisers of the festival held auditions to choose the performer of this musical work. We, the Face à face group, having known Oscar Strasnoy for a while, had a collaboration project for a musical work and of course we were very delighted when Oscar called on us. The musicians and the singers are from all over the world: Portugal, Romania, Bulgaria, Argentina, Vietnam. We speak in all languages; it is a sort of Babylon here, which is very good, because the opera is written in French, Spanish and Latin."