In October 1733, the audience at the Académie Royale de Musique witnessed the birth of a revolutionary work: Hippolyte et Aricie. With its inventiveness and musical richness, Rameau’s opera marks a break in the history of French music. A similarly revolutionary duo – Jeanne Candel and Raphaël Pichon – get to grips with this work for the Opéra Comique.

Based on fourteen poems by Max Jacob put to music by Henri Sauguet and Robert Caby, Carte de visite is a particularly vibrant and faithful tribute to the overlooked great poet. Michel Zumpf makes good use of cinema and directs his film just like Max Jacob changed poetry and risked his life – in a unique and unsettling harmony between the most studied seriousness and the wildest imagination.