LA MONNAIE / DE MUNT

Director Andrea Breth, an icon of the European theatre scene, gives her vision on Britten's chamber opera and clarifies from what angle she approached the piece in her staging.

In this introductory video conductor Ben Glassberg explains how Britten translates the titular "screw" in his music, General and Artistic Director Peter de Caluwe lays out how this project came to be, and scenographer Raimund Orfeo Voigt offers insight into the concept behind his ingenious set design. 

While rehearsing for our double concert dedicated to the best moments of Rossini’s Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra and Donizetti’s La favorita, Italian primo tenore Enea Scala took a moment to give us his vision of bel canto.

In between rehearsals for our belcanto double bill The Queen and her Favourite and The King and his Favourite, conductor Francesco Lanzillotta took the time to discuss at length, with passion and a touch of humor the music of Rossini and Donizetti, two composers close to his heart. A conversation about the importance of the connection between text and music, about high notes, about dying on stage…

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.”

Performing Die tote Stadt in a coronaproof way, is that even possible? For our newest production, Korngold’s most luscious score was re-orchestrated and ever so slightly cut by composer Leonard Eröd. In this video interview, conductor Lothar Koenigs explains why that doesn’t diminish the overwhelming Korngold sound at all.

The idea for Harold Nobens chamber opera À l'extrême bord du monde sprouted during his residency at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel. Curious to see how things fanned out, we followed the Belgian composer and his mentor Benoît Mernier during their sessions with the singers- and musicians-in-residence at the Chapel.

Strolling through a strangely quiet theatre, Ingrid von Wantoch Rekowski - Is this the end?'s director - talks us through her plan to breathe life into our institution again. For this unique virtual production La Monnaie shakes up its traditional publications and offers you a "virtual programme" true to the spirit of this unprecedented and ambitious project.

Oh how we looked forward to her role debut as Countess in our production of Pikovaya Dama! A couple of months after she was forced to cease rehearsals in Brussels, Anne Sofie von Otter found a way to sing for the La Monnaie audience after all. Enjoy this performance of the folk tune “Vindarna sucka uti skogarna” from her own backyard, and let the Swedish opera royalty drift you into the summer holidays.

The Covid pandemic was a major blow to our current cultural year, with many of our productions having to be postponed to a later season. The artists who were meant to perform at La Monnaie did not forget our audience, though. Canadian mezzo Michèle Losier, who was set to perform the role of Octavian, here performs the very first sung words from Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss, as well as the Prière by Charles Gounod.

A fantasy-thriller about the psychological toll of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. A hypnotic mix of electronic and Middle-Eastern sonorities. The enchanting lyricism of sung Hebrew. The Sleeping Thousand is Israeli composer Adam Maor’s remarkable debut on the international opera scene.

“Each time I finish working on a Wagner opera, my first question is: ‘when can I start again?’” Our Music Director Alain Altinoglu has been entranced by the Meister von Bayreuth for several years. This time, he is getting ready to work on the composer’s final and most enigmatic opera. The musical mystery play Parsifal was the opera debut for Romeo Castellucci. Ten years later he is confronting his own electrifying production.