Born in the United States to a Romanian Jewish mother and an American university professor, Sonia Wieder-Atherton grew up in Paris, where she studied cello at the Conservatory before completing her training at the Moscow Conservatory. From Lisbon to Lausanne via Paris, she has been acclaimed worldwide as a soloist, before branching out into new creative ventures, notably reinterpreting the works of Nina Simone and Marguerite Duras alongside Fanny Ardent.

By taking on François Couperin’s *Leçons de Ténèbres* (composed between 1713 and 1717), Sonia Wieder-Atherton brings to light one of the most fascinating pieces of 18th-century religious music. Based on the Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah, the Leçons de Ténèbres were a service held three days before Easter celebrations, during which fifteen candles were extinguished one by one to gradually give way to daylight.

Against this twilight atmosphere, Sonia Wieder-Atherton sets the phantasmagoria of her cello (as soloist for the Lessons of Darkness) and enlists the talents of Nicolas Worms and his synthesizers, as well as Dominique Mahut (Barbara, Jacques Higelin) and his percussion. Together, they explore Vivaldi’s “dramatic power,” which “confronts us with our present” with its terrible reality but also with its hopes.