During HGO’s 2026-27 season, Barbe and Doucet make their company debut directing The Magic Flute. After separate beginnings in music, theater, dance, television, and opera, stage director and choreographer Renaud Doucet and set and costume designer André Barbe joined forces in 2000. Since then, they have created more than 50 new opera productions, gaining international recognition for their new production of The Magic Flute at the Glyndebourne Festival; The Daughter of the Regiment (Teatro La Fenice, Teatro Regio di Torino); Cinderella, La Belle Hèlene, and Die Fledermaus (Hamburg Staatsoper); La bohème (Scottish Opera, Opéra National du Capitole de Toulouse, Vancouver, St. Gallen); Don Pasquale (Scottish Opera, Genova, Miami, Canadian Opera Company, Vancouver, Kiel); Pelléas et Mélisande (Teatro Regio di Parma, Opéra Royal de Liege); Il Signor Bruschino (Pesaro Rossini Opera Festival, Teatro Comunale di Bologna); Die Feen (Bayreuth Festival/Leipzig Opera); Turandot, The Sound of Music, The Tales of Hoffmann, and Rusalka (Volksoper Wien), Cinderella (Latvian National Opera, Opéra National du Capitole de Toulouse); Turandot (Philadelphia, Seattle, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Vancouver, Cincinnati); Cendrillon (Opéra national du Rhin, Opéra de Marseille, New York City Opera, Karlsruhe, and Montréal); and Samson & Dalila (Royal Swedish Opera). In 2019, their production of Il Bravo by Mercadante received the Irish Times Theatre Award for Best Opera Production. Barbe received the 2005 Irish Times Irish Theatre Award for best designer for Pénélope at Wexford Festival Opera, as well as the 2011 Rolf-Mares Prize for best sets and costumes for Cinderella at Hamburgische Staatsoper.