LA MONNAIE / DE MUNT

On the occasion of his upcoming recital, we asked tenor Julian Prégardien to answer the following questionnaire honestly and succinctly.

Despite the second wave of coronavirus infections and the corresponding tightening of sanitary measures, our teams have kept up the hard work behind the scenes in recent weeks to ensure a return to the Theatre in optimal conditions. General director - Intendant Peter de Caluwe guides you through our renewed programming for the second half of the season.

Even during a pseudo-lockdown and in the wake of a whole series of cancellations, the upholsterers, carpenters, sculptors, painters, and other artists in our Workshops remain undaunted. And that tenacity is really needed – for, paradoxical as it might seem, there have never been so many productions on the stocks at the same time. Right now, work is going ahead – COVID-securely – on scenery for no fewer than seven operas.

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.

Twelve dancers, backlit in an orange hue reminiscent of a glowing cinders, succumb to one of the monuments of American minimal music. Drumming is without a doubt a key work in the Rosas repertoire. In this interview, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker herself explains how she tackled the choreography.

An impressive spectrum of emotional registers, coloraturas at breakneck speed and a stratospherically high F. Mozart really did go all out for the Queen of the Night’s entrance in Die Zauberflöte. Her grand aria ‘O zittre nicht, mein lieber Sohn” is a technical challenge unlike any other. In our 2018 production, Soprano Sabine Devieilhe gave everyone goosebumps with this soul-wrenching mother’s lament.

The coronavirus may have prematurely ended our symphonic season, but that couldn’t stop Alain Altinoglu from serving you musical bliss one final time. Our Music Director brought together 54 musicians from 13 opera houses around the world for a digital closing concert with the renowned “Coro a bocca chiusa” from Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. An international collaboration in which musicians that were forced to remain quiet, can have their voices heard after all.

Oh how we looked forward to her role debut as Countess in our production of Pikovaya Dama! A couple of months after she was forced to cease rehearsals in Brussels, Anne Sofie von Otter found a way to sing for the La Monnaie audience after all. Enjoy this performance of the folk tune “Vindarna sucka uti skogarna” from her own backyard, and let the Swedish opera royalty drift you into the summer holidays.

The Covid pandemic was a major blow to our current cultural year, with many of our productions having to be postponed to a later season. The artists who were meant to perform at La Monnaie did not forget our audience, though. Canadian mezzo Michèle Losier, who was set to perform the role of Octavian, here performs the very first sung words from Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss, as well as the Prière by Charles Gounod.

For weeks our musicians have had to practice from the safety of their own home, but now they are finally able to return to La Monnaie. For the first Concert-E-no, Saténik Khourdoïan (violin), Noémi Tiercet (violin), Yves Cortvrint (viola), Dominique Lardin (viola), Sébastien Walnier (cello) and Corinna Lardin (cello) perform Tchaikovsky’s string sextet Souvenir de Florence. In this video you can get a sneak preview into how they rehearsed the piece remotely. The result can be heard this friday at 12:30.