Though our doors remain closed, silver linings can still be found even in these clouded times. It is with great joy that we can announce that our production of Macbeth Underworld won ‘Best World Premiere’ at this year’s Oper! Awards.
This La Monnaie commissioned world creation, which opened our 2019-20 season, grew from French composer Pascal Dusapin, and his librettist Frédéric Boyer’s idiosyncratic approach to the iconic Shakespeare play Macbeth.
The Oper! Awards are an initiative of the renowned German music magazine by the same name. An eight headed jury composed of music critics hands out no less than twenty awards to the best and brightest in the world of opera. This year, the jury named Macbeth Underworld as ‘Best World Premiere’: “In Brussels, Pascal Dusapin presented us with a surprise: his Shakespeare adaptation Macbeth Underworld at the Théâtre de la Monnaie. It was a short, intense night that director Thomas Jolly doused in darkness, set in a thicket of branches peppered with harsh white disco lights. It had chic, and a dash of musical irony by Jolly as much as Dusapin added zest to these Fearless Vampire Killers in the Scottish Highlands. Mr. and Mrs. Macbeth – the two wonderful full-blooded tragico-comedians Georg Nigl and Magdalena Kožená – shambled through the scene like murderous phantoms, as funnily grotesque as they were tragically burlesque. Just like Dusapin’s seemingly eclectic score, tenderly painted by Alain Altinoglu’s baton.”
It is the second time this year that a collaboration between Pascal Dusapin and La Monnaie takes the crown. Just a few weeks ago our recording of Penthesilea was named ‘Best contemporary album of the year 2020’ at the International Classical Music Awards. These accolades only serve to strengthen our core belief that opera is an art strongly rooted in the present, and that our role as opera house is to actively shape the canon through new creations and innovating projects.
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.
