From the scene with the seductive flower girls in the garden of the sorcerer Klingsor to the heavenly voices in the mighty finale: Parsifal offers the ladies of our Chorus music that is as beautiful as it is difficult to sing. We followed soprano Annelies Kerstens and guest chorus master Johannes Knecht during the preparations.
"In my career, this is one of the projects that I have learned the most from." Meet The Woman! Mezzo-soprano Albane Carrère is almost ready to transform into the enigmatic leading lady in Is this the End?#2.
These days he is a two-time winner of Opernwelt’s award for ‘Opera Director of the Year’, but for the longest time, it didn’t look like Romeo Castellucci would tackle the art form at all. Until 2011, when La Monnaie invited him to work on Richard Wagner’s Parsifal. What followed is operatic history. In this video portrait, the director reveals his artistic credo and returns to his previous stagings at La Monnaie.
This April, La Monnaie will present the world premiere of Here's the Woman!, the second part of the opera trilogy Is this the End?. In order to explore this new creation in depth, we invited its three creators to the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. Discover here what they have in store for you with this new production!
In the run-up to the world premiere of Is this the End?#2, director Ingrid von Wantoch Rekowski and videographer Jose Huedo also produced 5 interludes: intriguing teaser trailers that immerse you in the poetic universe of this new creation.
La Monnaie would like to dedicate this series of performances of the Requiem to Ukrainian citizens and children, victims of a ruthless aggressor intent on reducing a nation, a people, a tradition, a culture, a language and so much more to ‘nothingness’.
The set and costume designer Rainer Sellmaier gave each of the three operas in Il trittico its own aesthetic universe. In this video, he explains from the stage his specific approach to the neo-noir vibe in the first piece, Il tabarro.
The characters in 'il trittico' also have a life when they're not on stage
In Il trittico, the poetic black-and-white imagery of video designer Manuel Braun offers the audience a unique glimpse behind the walls of the convent in Suor Angelica. As we follow him during the shoot at the La Cambre Abbey, he explains how he intends to enrich Puccini's opera with his video designs.
In between rehearsals for Il trittico, we asked director Tobias Kratzer for his take on each of the three Puccini operas, and how, in all their diversity, he still manages to link them to each other. "I'm not going to give away all the surprises, but..."
The brief contents of the three operas, summarised by stage director Tobias Kratzer.
Heard in movies as diverse as The Iron Lady, 2046 and Avengers: Age of Ultron, "Casta Diva" is one of the most famous arias (more precisely, a cavatina) in operatic history. But there is much more to Norma than this piece alone. The Italian conductor Sesto Quatrini explores five other unforgettable extracts.
One week to go, and with the arrival of the orchestra, the team behind Lulu shifts into top gear. What does the full orchestra pit change for our leading soprano? And how does she prepare for the final sprint after a marathon of five intense weeks of rehearsals?
