Want to watch an opera from your living room? Now you can, thanks to VRT MAX! La Monnaie and Opera Ballet Vlaanderen are each offering three operas to watch for free for six months, with classics by Mozart and Verdi, and Kris Defoort’s The Time of Our Singing.
This offer is not only for seasoned opera lovers, but for anyone who wants to discover this art form in an accessible way. Each recording is preceded by an introduction to help viewers familiarise with the music and the context of the production. Tineke Van Ingelgem, Thomas Blondelle and Kris Defoort, who all collaborated on these productions, discuss the works, the stagings, costumes, props, and much more.
Christina Scheppelmann, La Monnaie’s new General and artistic director, is delighted with this innovative collaboration: ‘One of my main goals is to make the opera accessible to as many people as possible. Thanks to VRT MAX, we are offering hundreds of thousands of people easy and free digital access to three prestigious productions. We hope this will encourage them to discover an art form like few others, and, who knows, to come back for more...’
Chantal Pattyn, director of the classical music radio station KLARA, is also delighted: ‘Opera is an art form that continues to impact people in a very direct way and that also attracts many young people! Tickets for the opera productions of Opera Ballet Vlaanderen and La Monnaie usually sell out very quickly, and the most popular operas are even sold out in a matter of hours. That's why I'm very happy to be able to offer some wonderful productions on VRT MAX, accompanied by commentary from our experts. A big thank you to both institutions for making this possible!’
Alain Altinoglu nominated as Best Conductor at the 2025 International Opera Awards
La Monnaie has received two nominations at the prestigious 2025 International Opera Awards, honoring the most impressive artistic performances and most innovative projects of the past opera season. Music Director Alain Altinoglu is in the running in the category ‘Best Conductor’, Eugene Onegin may be crowned ‘Best Recording’.
A bus ticket and… an aria, please! Thanks to a collaboration between La Monnaie and the Brussels public transport company (STIB/MIVB), some Brussels bus stops will be announced in song during the weekend of 21–22 September by singers from the MM Academy.