For our production of Der Rosenkavalier, and in preparation for the ball that we will host at La Monnaie on this occasion, we invite you to learn a little more about the waltz, from its origins to its variations in the cinema.

However lovely, elegant and, dare we say, rosy Richard Strauss’s most popular opera may be, as an opera house, you can soon find yourself in a thorny situation. Our colleagues reveal the biggest challenges for this production… and how they are trying to overcome them.

Baron Ochs' winged nightmare! For Der Rosenkavalier, our workshops took on the challenge of sculpting a larger-than-life raven. Find out if our creations will take flight, when 'Der Rosenkavalier' premieres on October 28...

"When Philippe Boesmans suddenly fell ill, he asked me to finish composing his opera. When I went to see him in the hospital to talk to him about it, I would never have imagined that just hours later, he would be gone."

As a singer, she could very well sing the title role in The Queen of Spades herself, but in recent years she has added the conductor's card to her game. We asked Nathalie Stutzmann during the piano rehearsals for our new production about the incredible richness of Tchaikovsky's score.

Concerts for the greats of the earth and a decades-long career at the upper echelons of the opera world. Are we talking about Anne Sofie von Otter here or the Countess in The Queen of Spades? It seems as if Tchaikovsky had the Swedish grande dame in mind when he composed his opera, and yet she is only now debuting the role – at La Monnaie.

No luck in love without luck in play. This is the idée fixe that Hermann is pursuing in Pikovaya Dama. He overplays his hand and eventually loses both the game and love, but by then we are already three hours into glowingly intense music...

Read along in the composer's correspondence and find out how The Queen of Spades came into being, an opera that was actually not intended for him...

In January, director Laurent Pelly returns to la Monnaie for a new production of Tchaikovsky's Yevgeny Onegin. It marks his fifth visit to our house, after Don Quichotte (2010), Cendrillon (2011), The Golden Cockerel (2016) and Don Pasquale (2018), who all met with critical and public acclaim. In this small documentary, we sit down with Laurent Pelly to look back on these beloved La Monnaie productions and to discuss the artistic credo that underpins them.

A sense of style, an eye for detail and, above all, many hours of monk's work: that is what it took our Workshops to produce the opulent costumes, hats and accessories of Les Huguenots. Catch a glimpse of these magnificent creations.

An overwhelming mass spectacle that keeps you glued to your seat for five hours with its historical tableaux, ballets, choral scenes, musical inventiveness, and intense drama and romance: Les Huguenots is, without a doubt, one of the greatest blockbusters in the entire history of opera. In 2011, La Monnaie helped its revival with a successful production that you can now rediscover. 

Whoever said 'Rome wasn't built in a day' must have worked in the opera industry. Constructing the set for Les Huguenots is nothing less than a titanic work. Let our Head of Stage Marcel Maus treat you to a look behind the scenes, where his team not only puts up the set, but also makes it move in perfect unison with the music.