An impressive spectrum of emotional registers, coloraturas at breakneck speed and a stratospherically high F. Mozart really did go all out for the Queen of the Night’s entrance in Die Zauberflöte. Her grand aria ‘O zittre nicht, mein lieber Sohn” is a technical challenge unlike any other. In our 2018 production, Soprano Sabine Devieilhe gave everyone goosebumps with this soul-wrenching mother’s lament.
It’s now or never
21 May is the moment: that is when mezzo soprano Lotte Verstaen and soprano Margaux de Valensart will join 53 other young singers from around the world, in the first round of the prestigious Queen Elisabeth competition. Since 2015, Belgium’s hopefuls for this edition have been connected to La Monnaie, as members of the MM Academy.
Henry VIII has little to do with the Renaissance, but everything with the hot topics of Saint-Saëns' time." And these are still relevant today, according to director Olivier Py. In this video, he shines his light on our new production of this grand opéra.
“Without dancing, there would be no eros and thanatos, and without these two, there would be no nineteenth-century opera”. Director Olivier Py has a penchant for dance, and during the interval of his new production of Henry VIII, you can even admire ballet on the Place de la Monnaie! Today, we tend to think of opera and ballet as two different art forms, but a dip into Western music history reveals that they have been sharing the stage for centuries - perhaps even from the very dawn of opera as an art form.
In June 2022 we had the pleasure of announcing the appointment of Belgian violinist and Queen Elisabeth Competition laureate, Sylvia Huang, as the concertmaster of our Symphony Orchestra. After two concerts at the beginning of the year, she is about to perform Henry VIII, her first opera in the pit of La Monnaie. The perfect time to pause and, literally, reflect.
