FEDORA AUDIENCE PRIZE 2025 for "Hotel Moctezuma"
At the FEDORA Biennale 2025 awards ceremony, held on Saturday 26 April at the Vienna State Opera, Hotel Moctezuma, a new production by Opéra Orchestre National Montpellier Occitanie, won the “Audience Prize” with over 660 votes in its favor.
Composer Diana Syrse and stage director Ewa Rucinska attended the ceremony and were awarded this €10,000 prize, co-funded by the European Union, Cecilia Erös, and Yannick Willemin.
Ultimately, the much-coveted “Opera Prize” was awarded to The Curing Line, a project by the Irish company Stray Maker, for which Hôtel Moctezuma had also been nominated.
Opéra Orchestre is proud to welcome and support this young and promising artistic team for their innovative production, which promises to be a major moment in contemporary creation in Montpellier.
Valérie Chevalier general director Roderick Cox music director
An innovative and committed opera offering an ex-centric and non- Western view of the world
Inspired by Vivaldi’s 1733 opera Montezuma, Hotel Moctezuma is a new creation by a multidisciplinary and multicultural team of four young artists: composer Diana Syrse and librettist Carlos José Pérez Sámano, both Mexican, Polish stage director Ewa Rucinska, and French choreographer Jean Hostache.
Hotel Moctezuma is a contemporary opera addressing current issues such as decolonization, immigration, climate change, and the under-representation of women in historical narratives, literary works, and operatic repertoires.
The artists have chosen to draw on the poetics of Latin American magical realism and the aesthetics of Venetian carnival to tackle these urgent themes through the lenses of absurdity, magic, and paradox.
In Hotel Moctezuma, the music blends classical orchestral instruments with traditional Latin American instruments and electronics.
The multilingual libretto includes, alongside French and Spanish, Indigenous Mesoamerican languages—unprecedented in opera history.
At the heart of the narrative are female and/or diverse characters, allowing for a fresh and bold perspective on feminist, migratory, and colonial issues.
HOTEL MOCTEZUMA
a three act opera by
Diana Syrse music
Carlos Jose Perez Samano libretto Ewa Rucinska director
Jean Hostache choreography
World premiere in 2026-27
Coproduction Opéra Orchestre national Montpellier Occitanie and Teatr Wielki Opera Narodowa
