Opera In The Heart Of The City

The interview took place in Christina’s office, in the attic of the theatre – imbued with a slightly bohemian atmosphere, despite the carefully chosen furniture, sophisticated lighting and paintings by Alechinsky. The discussion was a long and lively one.

THE MISSION OF THE DIRECTORS

Why did you choose to present your season together in this double interview?

Christina Scheppelmann: I would so much love for you to have the time to listen to all of our staff members as they present the hundreds, the thousands, of small and large preparations already under way for the new season. I find it tiring, this way of wanting to take credit for the work, saying, ‘It’s me’, ‘It’s you’ – no, ‘It’s La Monnaie’! There are 420 of us here who keep the show running, so to speak, 420 people responsible for things going smoothly. Me, I carry out my duties as general director. And Alain is here to do the best possible job with regard to the music. He is going to conduct two key opera productions – Wozzeck and Boris Godounov – and is the music director of the orchestra, with which he will also conduct six symphony concerts and the final of the Queen Elisabeth Competition.

Alain Altinoglu: I fully agree. At La Monnaie, a season is something that is built collectively, with everyone contributing their part. Presenting the season together was therefore natural, as it reflects the reality of our work. In my role as music director, I oversee the development of the house’s musical forces and the quality and evolution of the choruses and orchestra. This attention to consistency and shared work is also in line with the experience gained throughout my career, during which, as a guest conductor, I was able to benefit from the work of my colleagues.

FROM REALITY TO POETRY

Christina, you arrived in Brussels with a reputation as a pragmatic, American-style intendant, but you are presenting recent operas with a strong ethical content, sometimes even controversial, such as Alzheimer’s disease, gender issues, and colonialism.

CS: One can be pragmatic and address social issues, it’s not incompatible … I’m thinking of Lucidity by the American composer Laura Kaminsky: the theme she deals with is Alzheimer’s, a particularly interesting subject as the disease doesn’t discriminate, it can affect anyone, across social classes. I’m also thinking of M. Butterfly by Chinese-American composer Huang Ruo, which was inspired by an American play from the 1960s that addresses the topic of how we experience and perform gender identity. Or Burmese Days by Prach Boondiskulchok, based on George Orwell’s novel of the same name, which takes on the issue of colonialism.
But even if these are topical subjects, they do not determine our entire programme. Some of my criteria are more prosaic: I also like to look back and ask myself what is worth staging but hasn’t been in a long time – Roméo et Juliette and Ariadne auf Naxos, for example, haven’t been performed at La Monnaie since 1959 and 1997! I also make sure to diversify the types of repertoires – according to era, country, tradition and school. Most importantly, I also make sure not to wear out the musicians and singers!

AA: Another key criterion concerns the practical implementation of a season: when you consider the technical planning, the availability of artists, services and venues, and add to that the constraints of the calendar, it’s like a huge game of dominoes that has to be mastered, in terms of both space and time.

CS: That is a peculiarity of our profession: the level of risk is always at its highest, and that is precisely what makes it so beautiful. It is perhaps even the condition for beauty. A successful production is one that manages to control as many parameters as possible, including time, without the materiality of the process impeding the poetic quality of what is being presented to the audience. You could even say that a successful production is one that manages to transform all these material conditions into poetry.

THE VAGARIES OF THE REPERTOIRE

Continuing in the field of contemporary opera and its links with current events, it seems your objective is not limited to actively supporting the creation of new productions. More broadly, you seem to want to bring new repertoires to the fore.

CS: Yes, one leads to the other, in fact. But for an opera to enter the repertoire, it is not enough for it to have an initial run; it must be performed and performed again, under new directors. Without this process of repetition and circulation across opera houses, a new work has no chance of surviving. If we look to the past, the premieres of La traviata and Carmen were disasters. If things had stayed that way, these masterpieces wouldn’t have made it past the first hurdle and would have been abandoned … That’s what we’re going to try and do, particularly with M. Butterfly and Lucidity: we want them to enter the repertoire.

AA: I would add that some opera directors tend to seek out premieres, exclusivity and novelty at all costs and are therefore rather reluctant to stage revivals. Showing confidence in a little-known contemporary opera, putting it back on the programme, offering it a new production – this truly is a political decision.

CONDUCTORS (M/F)

If we look at the opera programme as a whole, certain elements stand out. First of all, there has been an increase both in the number of productions – you are putting on nine operas, including two chamber operas – and in the number of performances – from 59 shows in 2025–26 to 72 this season.

CS: Offering the Belgian public regular access to a wealth of opera remains our priority, even in times of budgetary constraints. We can achieve this by staging longer series of the same production, bringing back hits such as Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci, and exploring more intimate and compact formats such as chamber operas. Co-productions with our European partners allow us to enrich our offering while sharing resources. This sustainable approach is beneficial both economically and ecologically. In this way, we can continue to bring ambitious and accessible opera to life for everyone.

Five of the seven other productions will also be performed under the baton of women conductors.

CS: Oh, that’s quite by chance! (Everyone laughs.)

AA: I’m so happy that attitudes have changed so much compared to twenty years ago, when the presence of a woman on the podium could trigger mocking comments from some musicians …

You, Alain, will be conducting Wozzeck and Boris Godunov.

AA: Two absolute masterpieces for which I have boundless admiration and which I’ve always dreamed of conducting. Alban Berg’s Wozzeck is a real gem – at once intense and moving, and quite beyond words …

CS: I should point out that Wozzeck is a new production, directed by Christophe Coppens, for whom I have immense respect, and whom we recently followed in Bellini’s Norma. Boris Godounov is a co-production with Lyon, directed by Vasily Barkhatov, the same director who opened the last season in Milan with Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Barkhatov’s work is very elaborate, sometimes complex, but everything in it is coherent and incredibly intelligent.

AA: In Boris Godunov, Mussorgsky’s music strikes me as essentially Russian in its wild and radical nature, and in this respect it differs from Rimsky-Korsakov’s, which is closer to the Western harmonic spirit – an influence I will also find when conducting Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4.

This brings us to your symphonic series …

AA: It is a very free programme, but always related to topical events, such as the opening concert, which is honouring the bicentenary since Beethoven’s death with his famous Symphony No. 5, preceded by the Piano Concerto No. 4 performed by the magnificent Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho as soloist. But not everything will be so familiar to listeners! We will have two concerts with Zemlinsky’s Lyric Symphony, a poignant work inspired by the poems of Indian Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore, which I have wanted to conduct for a long time. There will also be our New Year’s concert – a combination of Gershwin’s An American in Paris with Offenbach’s Gaîté Parisienne – and symphonic programmes with Spanish and Venezuelan tones as well as our family concerts with The Magic Flute.
Frequently associated with the operas on the bill at that time, these concerts will also provide more opportunities to engage with audiences of all ages – children, teenagers and adults – through customized and lively formats. I find these encounters fascinating!

Returning to the La Monnaie programme, dance is confirming its comeback on the main stage!

CS: It’s an extremely important field, already reintroduced during the 2025–26 season, with Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. For this new season, I have called on two other wonderful choreographers of international renown who are also well known to Belgian audiences: Sasha Waltz from Germany and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui from Belgium. And we are also continuing our Troika Dance partnership with the KVS and the Théâtre National, presenting, amongst others, the new Rosas creation Gla55.

The recitals on the programme feature only world-renowned singers.

CS: Indeed, that’s what I wanted, and I also wanted to do away with boring, static recitals where many in the audience don’t understand a word of what’s being sung. It is possible to renew the genre, with other formats and other repertoires – for example, Frank Sinatra sung by Lucio Gallo, jazz with Marina Viotti, folk music with Emily d’Angelo, spirituals with Jeanine De Bique and queer songs with Freddie Ballentine. And so much the better if, in passing, we can give Schubert’s Winterreise its rightful place.

AA: Which is still very beautiful music! (Everyone laughs.)

Regarding the crucial importance of the voice, what criteria do you use when choosing performers? And what is La Monnaie’s policy in terms of raising awareness of the practice of singing?

CS: For me, the quality of the voice and of the acting, and the suitability of the type of voice for the role, are the main criteria for choosing performers. There are no real ‘magic’ criteria. As for raising awareness of the practice of singing, I frankly believe that this role falls primarily to schools. After all, there are limits to what we can do.
That said, La Monnaie is involved on several levels, notably through the children’s choirs, the MM Academy, the Choeur Cassandra Koor, the social programme A Bridge Between Two Worlds – in other words, mainly group singing. Singing in a choir is a joy and a moving experience; it is also a way of emphasizing that the art of singing requires tremendous work to reach the main stage.

And then there are the more intimate stages, such as the Concertini.

AA: For me, these weekly chamber-music concerts remain one of the pillars of our musical practice. It is a specific and meticulous artistic undertaking that enables our musicians to make themselves known to the public, to get to know each other better and, indirectly, to further heighten the quality of the orchestra. And I haven’t even mentioned the beauty of the repertoires being performed.

To conclude, one last question, which could have been the first and which encompasses all the others: La Monnaie, a theatre in the heart of the city and society?

CS: It is the reality that inspires all our work! The goal is no longer to demonstrate that La Monnaie is open to the city and the public, but to make this reality better known. Our doors really are open. As we speak, dozens of students are studying in rooms made available to them here. The activities we propose that are aimed at schools, young people and communities touch nearly 40,000 people.

AA: Christina and I, but also all our colleagues at La Monnaie, are intermediaries between the city and the opera, just as I, as a conductor, am an intermediary between the composer and the public …

CS: I had images of the Main Auditorium placed between the columns on the façade which say: ‘Yes, something is happening here, and the public is invited. LA MONNAIE is not just a pediment on columns, it is an opera house. And La traviata is more than the name of a pizzeria …’ There is no shame in not knowing this. It is up to us to give the audience clear and attractive information: everything is there to welcome them.