Versailles 400

Versailles 400 was built specifically to mark the 400th anniversary of the Château de Versailles.

On 25 December 2023 — the first electronic concert ever held inside the palace — Jarre turned the Hall of Mirrors into a contemporary arena, with light tracking across the historic walls, mirrors and ceilings for an audience of 800.

Wearing a LYNX mixed-reality headset, he played the show twice over at once: to the room, and as an avatar inside a futuristic version of the same gallery, where a virtual audience joined via VR headsets, tablets and phones. The metaverse side ran on the French platform VRROOM; the broadcast went out on W9 and RTL and worldwide through EBU/Eurovision Services.

The hour-long set paired new productions of material from Oxymore and the Grammy-nominated Electronica with pieces from across the back catalogue. The point, sited in a building that once symbolised artistic and technological excellence in the 17th century, was to make the same claim for French digital craft in the 21st.