Mariusz Treliński’s staging for Die tote Stadt was ready. That is, until a pandemic and strict security protocols forced him to radically rethink his entire production. The result, which will be the first staged opera at La Monnaie in months, is a sublimated but ever so powerful production about loss, schizophrenic images of womanhood and… isolation. “We feel the same pressure and the same claustrophobia as Paul.”