DRESS REHERSAL: For Maison Lesage artistic director Hubert Barrère, the June 21 premiere of “Zémire et Azor,” the opéra-comique — a genre of French opera with dialogue in addition to sung segments — might be culmination of a childhood dream.

“It’s something I all the time desired to do,” he told WWD ahead of June 21 premiere of this performance for which he designed the costumes and décor on the invitation of Opéra Comique director Louis Langrée.

Written by 18th-century composer André Grétry, the story loosely follows the plot of the Beauty and the Beast and was adapted to Queen Marie-Antoinette’s tastes, with Zémire because the daughter of a merchant from Ormuz, Iran, who picks a rose from the garden of cursed prince Azor, setting the story in motion.

It appealed to Barrère because he recalled hearing a Sixties rendition featuring French opera singer Mady Mesplé over the radio as a baby, already sketching dresses and for the constant transformation of ugliness into beauty.

“In embroidery, we’re illusionists, we make you think things through sleights-of-hand using materials and designs,” said Barrère, who served as scenographer and costume designer for the performance.

For the backdrop, Barrère imagined a surrealist maze in a French garden, which he described as being organized somewhat just like the structure of a palace, because the home of the cursed prince, while Zémire’s family home is ready in an interpretation of the Iranian city.

One more reason why Barrère accepted Langrée’s proposition is that it got here as a carte blanche. Even for the Lesage head, “it’s not day by day you get offered that,” he said. As such, there was no have to go into period-drama territory.

Beyond powdered wigs worn for the performance and Zémire’s Lesage-embroidered dress that nods to the sack-back look of its original era, the play’s other characters are clad in additional contemporary fare. Take her sisters, clad in corseted outfits rooted within the ’50s fuller-skirted look.

For Barrère, such projects are vital to the Chanel-owned embroidery specialty atelier as a representative of a craft “plural in its quality and richness” that he considers “a cultural crossroad that dates back 400 years and stems from intercultural exchanges.”

“It doesn’t matter if you ought to work on medieval designs, hyper contemporary and even within the far-flung future. Nothing is unattainable in embroidery,” he continued. “We follow what creators ask but as embroiderers, we’re free to adapt our know-how to the tools and techniques of the times. Only take into accout that you may have to be doing ‘today’ in all its multifaceted reality.”

“Zémire et Azor” might be performed on the Opéra Comique, also often known as the National Theater of the Opera Comique, in Paris’ ninth arrondissement, from June 23 to July 1.