Festival de Tragédies

They rise, these cries, from the ancient steps, from the dry splinter of dust, from the thousand-year-old voices that the wind has never completely silenced. After the first edition, which moved us all, The Arena of Hearts returns, driven by the same need: to make tragedy heard, not as a nostalgic detour, but as a path to truth.

More than ever, we need tragedy. In a world that trembles, that hides its fears behind screens, tragedy offers us a breath of fresh air. A distance. It reminds us—without complacency but with beauty—what it means to be human. Fragile, mortal, free too.

Man is a prodigy, and we want to contemplate him, together... just like theater, this celebration of the living. On stage, heroes falter, fall, and sometimes rise again. They don't run away from their destiny. They embrace it, as one embraces a storm.

"One must still carry chaos within oneself to give birth to a dancing star," wrote Nietzsche. That is tragedy. Chaos, yes... but traversed. Sublimated.

In the Arena of Cimiez, the stone preserves memory. And it is precisely there that our voices find their true echo. The Arena of Hearts is not a sanctuary: it is a theater of flesh, of breath, of gaze. It is a rendezvous with beauty, lucidity, and perhaps, a form of appeasement.

Welcome to the arena. Welcome to this ancient, yet so close, beat.

Muriel Mayette-Holtz.