LA MONNAIE / DE MUNT

The La Monnaie Symphony Orchestra was established 250 years ago. Who better to highlight in celebration of this anniversary than the artists in the orchestra pit? We invited cellist Sébastien Walnier to discuss life as it is in the orchestra, his love for Puccini and why the cello stole his heart.

Marking two hundred years since his birth, this article celebrates Belgian composer César Franck by recounting the highlights of his life and work.

At opera performances, he comes to greet the audience only at the beginning and the end, but during our concerts, Alain Altinoglu is the man front and centre. What exactly does a chief conductor do? What is he looking for in his musicians? And where does he want to take the orchestra? In this video he explains it himself.

Thirty-four years after he took care of the world premiere of Philippe Boesmans' Trakl-Lieder as music director of La Monnaie, Sylvain Cambreling puts this impressive song cycle back on our bill. Time to dig up these delightful archive images, with our Symphony Orchestra during the rehearsals in 1988. 

A Brueghelian Brabantine or a cosmopolitan who personally knew Rimsky-Korsakov and James Ensor? A 'provincial musician' or an international composer who indulged in jazz and Poulenc, and whose operas were performed several times at La Monnaie? Learn all about the exceptional composer of the Nocturne.

You will immediately recognise this musical fragment, with one of the most recognisable and quoted melodies in the entire history of music. Peer Gynt fantasises about a visit to a troll, the mountain king, who, seated on his throne, rules over a people of gnomes and goblins. According to Grieg himself, it is the most idiosyncratic Norwegian work ever written.

In 1981, a young French conductor got appointed as Music Director of La Monnaie and in the decade that followed, became the face of a younger, more dynamic and more accomplished La Monnaie orchestra. Now, more than forty years later, Sylvain Cambreling is finally returning. We sat down with the maestro to look back on his tenure with some glorious archive footage.

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.

The coronavirus may have prematurely ended our symphonic season, but that couldn’t stop Alain Altinoglu from serving you musical bliss one final time. Our Music Director brought together 54 musicians from 13 opera houses around the world for a digital closing concert with the renowned “Coro a bocca chiusa” from Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. An international collaboration in which musicians that were forced to remain quiet, can have their voices heard after all.

For weeks our musicians have had to practice from the safety of their own home, but now they are finally able to return to La Monnaie. For the first Concert-E-no, Saténik Khourdoïan (violin), Noémi Tiercet (violin), Yves Cortvrint (viola), Dominique Lardin (viola), Sébastien Walnier (cello) and Corinna Lardin (cello) perform Tchaikovsky’s string sextet Souvenir de Florence. In this video you can get a sneak preview into how they rehearsed the piece remotely. The result can be heard this friday at 12:30.
 

For the Chorus of La Monnaie, each opera production takes weeks or even months of meticulous preparation. Martino Faggiani has for years been safeguarding its artistic quality. In this video, chorus manager Pieter Hulst lifts the veil on our illustrious and colourful maestro, and explains his unique work ethic that you’ll get to admire at our choral concert Via crucis.

In his composition Don Quixot, Strauss assigns the roles of the dreamy knight and his cranky but faithful servant Sancho Panza tot the cello and the viola. Wondering how that works? We sat down with Georgi Anichenko and Yves Cortvrint, the two soloists who take on the roles during our concert on the 20^th of November.