In Paris, Chloé Sévère lets the harpsichord run wild

A harpsichord treated like an animal to be tamed, a harpsichordist turned actress and a recital that gradually becomes a one-woman show: in Le Clavecin à l’état sauvage (The Harpsichord in the Wild), Chloé Sévère looks back with humour on discovering the instrument at the age of 11 — and sets out to challenge the image attached to it. After Atlanta last spring, the show returns to Paris from 15 September to 1 November.

Neither quite a recital nor quite theatre, the show combines instrumental performance, autobiographical storytelling and arrangements of popular tunes. Chloé Sévère is both its writer and performer, in a production directed by Laurent Cussinet. The harpsichord becomes almost a stage partner in its own right: an instrument she initially found “bewildering”, weighed down by preconceptions, and which she gradually learnt to tame. A way of showing in a new light an instrument more commonly confined to continuo playing or the recital platform.

Following a US tour, Le Clavecin à l’état sauvage now takes up residence at Les Rendez-Vous d’Ailleurs, in Paris’s 20th arrondissement, for a run of performances from 15 September to 1 November 2026. Of particular note, Chloé Sévère plays a harpsichord built by Martin Skowroneck, one of the twentieth-century pioneers of the return to historically informed instrument-making.

Artist’s website: https://chloesevere.com/
Theatre website: https://www.lesrdvdailleurs.fr/