La Monnaie has loaned several items from its archive collection to the Opéra Monde exhibition, which opened at the Centre Pompidou in Metz on June 21st.
Mounted as part of the Opéra de Paris’ 350th birthday celebrations, the Opéra Monde exhibition – or to give it its full English title: Opera as the World, The quest for a total work of art -, takes an in-depth look at the cross-fertilization between the world of the visual arts and opera in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. La Monnaie’s contributions include Berlinde De Bruyckere’s imposing set model from the world creation of Pascal Dusapin’s Penthesilea (2015), a video excerpt from Romeo Castellucci’s Parsifal (Wagner) and a wealth of photographic material relating to recent productions. This is the first time that these valuable, three-dimensional pieces of theatre documentation have been loaned for an exhibition and we have been able to do this thanks to the staunch efforts of our archivists, who have developed and implemented a preservation project for set models over the last ten years.
Opéra Monde, in a set by Małgorzata Szczęśniak (at La Monnaie next season for Les Contes d’Hoffmann) is on in Metz until January 27th 2020.
After a lecture on the stage of La Monnaie where renowned author J. M. Coetzee was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Christina Scheppelmann announced that the 2003 Nobel Prize winner in Literature will write an opera inspired by his own works for our 2027–2028 season.
Christina Scheppelmann, who became the first female General and Artistic Director of La Monnaie this season, has been nominated for the ELLE Woman of the Year 2025 award.
On 29 September 2025, the façade of La Monnaie will turn red for World Heart Day. With this symbolic gesture, our opera house joins a global movement raising awareness about cardiovascular diseases.
