Alain Altinoglu’s contract as Musical Director of La Monnaie has just been extended until 2025, a commitment he will combine with his new position as new Music Director of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony starting from the 2021-2022 season. Peter de Caluwe and the teams of La Monnaie are proud to be able to continue this collaboration for the next six years.
"The collaboration with Alain is essential for my third term at La Monnaie”, announces La Monnaie’s General Director in an official statement. “His intention to stay was one of the main reasons why I decided to continue working in Brussels. It’s with Alain that we realize most of our operas and he also conducts a major share of our symphonic concerts. This allows us to guarantee the artistic excellence of the house as well as to continue to develop and rejuvenate our orchestra and choir under the best human and organizational conditions possible."
Since his appointment in January 2016, Alain Altinoglu has directed "his" orchestra in several productions – The Golden Cockerel and The Tale of Tsar Saltan (Rimsky-Korsakov), Aida (Verdi), Dialogues of the Carmelites (Poulenc), Bluebeard’s Castle & The Miraculous Mandarin (Bartók), Don Pasquale (Donizetti), the world creation of Macbeth Underworld (Dusapin), Lohengrin and Tristan und Isolde (Wagner) – as well as in a vast symphonic repertoire ranging from Beethoven to contemporary music through Brahms, Berlioz, Fauré, Janáček, Bartók , Ravel and Stravinsky; this season’s program is mainly dedicated to Richard Strauss’ and Tchaikovsky’s works.
"I’m glad to be able to continue my collaboration with La Monnaie until 2025,” says Alain Altinoglu himself. “It is a great privilege to be part of this prestigious house, full of all its traditions, and always a pleasure to lead an orchestra and a chorus this talented and committed. After all the successes of our past productions, I look forward to new artistic adventures and to seeing where our musical journey will lead us."
This past summer, Alain Altinoglu gave two prestigious outdoor concerts: on July 14 for the French National Day where he was at the head of the Orchestre National de France on the Champ-de-Mars in Paris; and on 22 August, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony on the banks of the Main, as part of the Europa Open Air event, which was also attended by La Monnaie Chorus. It is this renowned orchestra that has asked Alain to become its new Principal Conductor, as of the 2021-22 season.
For the full biography of our Music Director: click here.
As part of the worldwide Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the façade of La Monnaie was lit up in pink on Sunday, 19 October. Through this symbolic gesture, our house aims to highlight what is still insufficiently known about the disease.
During a literary encounter with J. M. Coetzee on the stage of La Monnaie, Christina Scheppelmann announced that the 2003 Nobel Prize winner in Literature is writing a libretto for a new La Monnaie opera, to be premiered in the 2027–2028 season: Elizabeth Costello in limbo.
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.
