Bordeaux: Where do these collector's wooden crates distributed around the city during the Opera's back-to-school concert come from?

This Friday, September 12, 1,300 cash registers will be installed in the 11 public venues where the Opera's back-to-school concert will be broadcast on a giant screen, to serve as seats. Supplied by Caisserie Bordelaise since 2022, they have become collector's items. This delights this Libourne-based company.

F or the fourth consecutive year, the Bordeaux Opera is broadcasting the opening concert, which is being given at the same time at the Auditorium, to around ten venues in Bordeaux this Friday, September 12. And for the fourth year, the stars are the Bordeaux-Aquitaine National Orchestra and its conductor, Joseph Swensen, as well as the small wooden boxes on which spectators sit to follow the hour and a half of music on a giant screen.

Seats for one evening, these boxes also include a QR code to scan to find the entire Opera program, but they then serve as storage for books or luggage racks. "The day after the concert, we find them placed on bicycles in the streets of Bordeaux," smiles Frédéric Despujol, general manager of the Caisserie bordelaise.

“The day after the concert, we found our crates placed on bicycles in the streets of Bordeaux.”

La Caisserie bordelaise is the Libourne-based company that manufactures these crates, which are massively taken away by the public a few minutes after the end of the concert. This company, which works for the Bernard Magrez group and the Billecart-Salmon and Philipponnat champagnes, is delivering no fewer than 1,300 of them for this musical season. The collector's dimension of the object is also taken into account. Inside, there is a specific print: "Concert in the city, Joseph Swensen conducting, vintage 2025." Last year, it was "Hymn to Joy, Concert in the City, vintage 2024." And at the bottom of the crate, there is an instruction manual that suggests making it into a fruit and vegetable basket. Previously, there had been talk of making it into a birdhouse.

Combining art, economics, and eco-responsibility: the approach developed as these themes became more prominent in public debate. "Originally, we were asked to help finance the broadcast of the ballet 'Don Quixote' at Place de la Comédie in 2014," recalls Frédéric Despujol. "We wanted to go further by associating our name with this project, which presents in the public space the shows that take place in the Auditorium or the Grand-Théâtre: architectural gems, but whose doors the Girondins are sometimes reluctant to enter."

The partnership continued with crates produced for the broadcast of the comic opera "La Vie parisienne" in 2017, those for the season's opening concert since 2022, but also for the first "zero purchase" production at the Grand-Théâtre in 2023: a Mozart "Requiem" staged using modules that served alternately as seats, pedestals, or coffins. "They were made from large planks that we normally cut to make our crates."

The economic value of this sponsorship? "Between 5,000 and 10,000 euros for this back-to-school concert, including manufacturing and shipping," estimates the general manager. In return, the Caisserie Bordelaise benefits from invitations to performances during the season, private tours of the Grand Théâtre, and workshops at the Opera for its employees. "They realize that the woodworking there meets the same aesthetic and rigorous standards as in our company. After these visits, some go to see ballets or operas, even though they had never done so before."