LA MONNAIE / DE MUNT

He might be the youngest artist to take the stage for Tosca, but Sacha Pirlet is not your average twelve-year-old. With plenty of experience in the field of acting for both film and stage and with his coach Mehdi Mojahid to back him up, Sacha is more than ready to step into the shoes of Pier Paolo Pasolini. 

Alain Altinoglu is back at La Monnaie to conduct his first opera production of the year. We got to follow our Music Director during the orchestral rehearsals of Tosca, after which he kindly took place behind the piano to guide us along the great musical themes that make this opera one of the must-see pieces of the repertoire.

From his personal connection with Rome to the influences of Caravaggio and Pier Paolo Pasolini. From the way he approaches the main characters to the inspiration of the moment in the rehearsal room ... The Spanish stage director Rafael R. Villalobos guides you through the latest La Monnaie production.

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.

For her legendary, often visceral stagings over the last four decades, she has scaled all heights and plumbed all depths of the human soul. This has earned her cult status and recognition as one of the all-time greats of German theatre. Discover Andrea Breth and her productions at La Monnaie.

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.