LA MONNAIE / DE MUNT

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.

In the current geopolitical climate, we can imagine that our 2022-23 season programme may surprise or even raise questions given that it includes three Russian operas. In this statement, we will explain why we have decided to continue with the planned programming. Or rather: what, due to the corona pandemic, all ended up in one and the same season.

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.

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

In En Atendant, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker worked for the first time in her career with early music. The Ars Subtilior, a delicate polyphony developed on the ruins of the plague and the Church, offered her the starting point for a performance that puts the question of our physicality, of our mortality, back at the centre. In this interview, read all about the principles behind this thrilling choreography.

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...

Yvan Beuvard has been familiar with operatic and Lied repertoire for more than fifty years. Last July, he found himself lucky enough to attend the latest lied recital of Stéphane Degout and Marielou Jacquard, a performance of Brahms lied cycle Romanzen aus Ludwig Tiecks Magelone. Sit down with him, and follow the performance through his eyes and ears.

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...

Biting Russian satire and glowing romance. Surprising new productions and long-awaited projects that can finally be premiered. The continuation of the symphonic jubilee concerts, but also of our Troika Dance programme. Behold the imaginative and polychrome 2022-23 season of La Monnaie, presented by its General and Artistic Director Peter de Caluwe.

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. 

In Mystery Sonatas / for Rosa, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker plunges into the mysterious Rosary Sonatas by Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber. A brave choice — as the cycle is rarely, if ever, performed in full.