LA MONNAIE

Every Friday from October to May, the atmospheric Grand Foyer at La Monnaie is the setting for the lunchtime Concertini, forty-five minutes of chamber music ...

Carmen, a sizzling opera composed by Georges Bizet, is a timeless tale of love, jealousy, and fiery passion. Debuting at the Opéra-Comique in Paris in ...

Hugo Wolf, Richard Strauss, Rudi Stephan, Franz Schubert...

The mystery of time resonates throughout Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s highly spiritual and nostalgia-filled libretto, for which Richard Strauss – known until then as the avant-garde ...

Despite the lovely repertoire that exists for the bass, you will not often hear that voice type at work in a recital. For this reason ...

A superb moment of musical me-time, and a smooth, gentle run-up to the weekend: come enjoy the La Monnaie Chamber music concerts, every Friday at ...

"EITHER I AM HORRIBLY MISTAKEN, MODYA, OR THIS OPERA IS A MASTERPIECE." When Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky wrote those words to his brother Modest in 1890, ...

One of the great opera singers of the day, Michael Spyres mainly made a name for himself with his impressive vocal versatility and his very ...

Having been recorded more than 350 times and having featured in many films, Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto has had no trouble establishing itself as a key ...

The ‘mad day’ of the wedding of Susanna and Figaro, employees of, respectively, the Countess and Count Almaviva. The latter will do anything to seduce ...

The La Monnaie Symphony Orchestra, the Belgian National Orchestra, and BOZAR join forces for this Carl Orff classic – one of the most instantly recognisable ...

Not only immortalised on the silver screen, Joan of Arc has also inspired many composers, such as Verdi and Honegger. In 1935, the latter created ...

Starting with his first sublimely disturbing theatre works, the Belgian Nobel laureate Maurice Maeterlinck single-handedly introduced the great change that would open the way to ...

Just four years after the premiere of his Penthesilea, Pascal Dusapin has come up with a new opera, commissioned by La Monnaie. Together with his ...

Always war and never peace.’ Do we hear a (recognisable) call to war and resistance, or is this opera primarily about the love that drives ...

People often say to me : to let go of that melancholy – at your age and with your talent it’s a shame ! But ...

Babel (words) starts with a supposition... What if Humanity had managed to reach Heaven from the famous ‘Tower of Babel’ ? Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and ...

Every Friday from October to May, the atmospheric Grand Foyer at La Monnaie is the setting for the lunchtime Concertini, forty-five minutes of chamber music ...

È scherzo od è follia ?’ A joke or pure madness, or is one really looking into the future in Un Ballo in maschera ? ...

The Russian soprano Ekaterina Siurina first met the American tenor, Charles Castronovo in 2004 during a production of L’Elisir d’amore, an elixir they gladly drank ...

An exciting performer of all the great roles in Mozart and the bel canto repertoire which he has performed in theatres all over the world ...

What would it mean for choreography to perform as an exhibition ? This question is the point of departure for Work/Travail/Arbeid. In response, Anne Teresa ...

‘The laws of morals are also that of art’. Schumann believed the artist had a moral duty : ‘To send light deep into the human ...

Penthesilea, the proud queen of the Amazons ! After the accidental death of her sister Hippolyta, she took part in the Trojan War to prove ...

At several moments in the course of his life Gustav Mahler drew on Das Knaben Wunderhorn, an early 19th-century compilation of poems by Achim von ...

Sirs, would it please you to listen to a beautiful story of love and death ? It!tells of Tristan and Isolde, the queen. Listen to ...

‘I want to move and be moved. Everything about music is moving,’ these are the words in which Wolfgang Rihm once stated his musical credo. ...

As in the work of the same name by Rossini, Paisiello’s opera, written for the court of Catherine II in St. Petersburg, was based on ...

An immense and gentle relief seems to come down from the sky like an iridescent star, it is the perfect moment !’ (Verlaine). After a ...

Bo Skovhus is acclaimed in opera houses for his theatrical and vocal skills in the great baritone roles (Don Giovanni, Eugene Onegin, Billy Budd...) whilst ...

From the first lied of Winterreise, Gute Nacht, we are in the minor key. His heart broken by unrequited love, a traveller walks in the ...

‘What happened before we got involved in problematic things like civilization, religion and nationhood ?’ In her conceptual album Medúlla, Icelandic artist Björk returns to ...

Tamerlano, inspired by the historical confrontation of 1402 between Sultan Bayezid I and Timur Lenk, tells the story of the clash of two strong personalities ...

Like Handel’s Orlando (1732) and Ariodante (1734), Alcina derives from the narrative material in Ariosto’s Orlando furioso. The story of the sorceress Alcina, an initially ...

The Passage of Time...,’ the opening line of Brian Eno’s song Golden Hours on the album Another Green World, released in 1975, can be regarded ...

For Schubert, the year 1823 was marked by illness and financial difficulties. Since a handful of new songs and the Wanderer Fantasie yielded only a ...

The Austrian baritone Georg Nigl enthralled the audience of La Monnaie with his talent as a singer and actor in the two contemporary scores of ...

The three composers in this programme gave the best of themselves in their instrumental and symphonic music. For his Schicksalslied, Brahms took inspiration from the ...

‘As the hero of the opera, Don Giovanni is the denominator of the piece, he gives it its name as the hero usually does, but ...

‘The main characteristics of my music are passionate expression, intense ardour, rhythmical animation and unexpected turns’ was how Hector Berlioz described his musical style in ...

Two dancers’ bodies and a violinist enclosed in a space designed by the visual artist Michel François. Amandine Beyer plays Bach’s Partita no. 2 for ...

Queen of the lyric repertoire, whether it is baroque, classical or romantic, the Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter is as at ease and as ...

You have to collect up the stones thrown at you and start to build a pedestal with them.’ The words of Hector Berlioz, and history ...

The opening motif of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony makes it one of the most emblematic works in the history of Western music. Beethoven developed the first ...

‘Lascia la spina, cogli la rosa’ declares Pleasure to Beauty in the oratorio composed by the young Handel during his stay in Italy. 1707 to ...

Whether you call it shell shock or post-traumatic stress disorder, war creates serious psychological wounds. A hundred years after the outbreak of the Great War, ...

Ravel composed Daphnis et Chloé, the love story of two young people who grow up together, on request by Diaghilev. This superb ballet found its ...

Schwanengesang D744 : joined by a singer and an actress, Romeo Castellucci takes Schubert’s lied and builds a scenic recital. He invites the audience to ...

The metamorphosis of Daphne is set in a total union with the music, whereby the words become superfluous and Daphne becomes just a voice that ...

After a long and very successful year of touring with the "Different Pulses Tour", Asaf Avidan has announced that this year he is going BACK ...

Ride, ride, ride... From a Weise von Liebe und Tod to a Hexen- und Teufelsfahrt : Goethe and Rilke take us off into very different ...

Nothing is as ugly as revenge. To be human, to be benevolent, on the other hand, is the preserve of a great mind !’— that ...

‘To me art, and especially music, elevates us as far as possible over what is,’ declared Gabriel Fauré, whom last songs cycles L’Horizon chimérique could ...

In its annual libretto readings, the Walpurgis travelling musical theatre company headed by the soprano Judith Vindevogel always succeeds in making the classical lyrical repertoire ...

After the success of his Parsifal, Romeo Castellucci is returning to Brussels with an ambitious project, initiated by La Monnaie, which he will be staging ...

Hector Berlioz was undoubtedly one of the pioneers among the great reformers of music of the 19th century. He was better able than anyone to ...

The soprano Véronique Gens is a specialist in the Baroque period and Mozart, whose performance in Iphige?nie en Aulide and as Vitellia in La Clemenza ...

In the various standard ensembles and in a variety of other groupings, our musicians play well-known chamber music gems. You do not have to be ...

Love inspires my endeavours, true love fears nothing.’ Leonora dresses up as a man and under the name of Fidelio, finds work in the prison ...

For her new recital at La Monnaie, Anna Caterina Antonacci is performing a programme of baroque music chosen to suit and show off her tragic ...

A substantial part of Messiaen’s oeuvre took shape under the influence of his faith. The Trois Petites Liturgies de la Pre?sence Divine were composed shortly ...

For this world premier the composer Philippe Boesmans, a prominent figure in the opera history of the last thirty years with Reigen, Wintermärchen, Julie and ...

It was at the age of 22, at the start of his stay in Italy, that Handel composed his second oratorio, La Resurrezione, whose subject ...

How far are we prepared to go in accepting the vices of someone close to us? For the hunchback Rigoletto, court jester to the Duke ...

To mix cinema and music in a novel and impressive way is the challenge for this very special evening, which will take place in the ...

King Arthur, the famous semi-opera in five acts by Henry Purcell, brings together theatre, dance and opera to give pride of place to love and ...

In Guillaume Tell, his thirty-ninth and last opera, Rossini took a completely new direction compared to his previous works, and in 1829 presented one of ...

Sibelius’ symphonic credo was ‘I admired the symphony’s severity of style and the profound logic that created an inner connection between all the motifs,’ and ...

The baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky is invited by the most prestigious opera houses, showing his talent for Mozart and Verdi and playing the great roles of ...

When Jean-Philippe Rameau died in 1764 – 250 years ago – the world lost not only a great musicologist, but also a great opera composer ...

Following the success of The Brussels Requiem, British composer Howard Moody has been inspired by Sindbad, the adventurer and wise master, present in some of ...

‘Nobody can understand the pain of others and nobody can understand the joy of others. We always think we are getting closer to each other ...

Gerd Albrecht returns to direct the Symphony Orchestra of La Monnaie with a superb selection of Czech music from the late 19th and early 20th ...

The story of Jen?fa and her stepmother, the verger’s wife, is set within the confines of a closed community. Rivalry, jealousy and social control degenerate ...

In a huge apartment in a twilight atmosphere, an old man, rich and powerful through the large international companies he has developed, yet in a ...

Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony was initially conceived as a symphonic poem and was called ‘Titan’, in reference to the novel by the German author Jean ...

Just as in her two previous recitals at La Monnaie, the Dutch mezzo-soprano Christianne Stotijn is again performing a highly original programme of Lieder. She ...

Les Mamelles de Tirésias, Francis Poulenc’s first opera, was composed during the Second World War and was based on a surrealist play of the same ...

A work without equal in musical writing, Steve Reich’s Drumming unfurls its powerful score for percussion from a single obsessive rhythm which grows and is ...

The famous story of Hamlet and Ophelia is played out between the opposite poles of real and feigned madness, love and avenge. After the murder ...

A very interesting and eclectic programme is being offered by Ludovic Morlot. In fact he is bringing together classical, neo-classical and modern works all in ...

By mixing theatre, dance, puppetry and the visual arts, the Franco- Austrian Gisèle Vienne develops a polymorphic work of spellbinding strangeness. Her shows and her ...

Three top-ranking British soloists, including Mark Padmore, who has already been acclaimed at La Monnaie for his rendering of Schumann’s Heine-Lieder, give pride of place ...

Shostakovich composed his Fourth Symphony at a turning point in Soviet history – the start of Stalin’s ‘Great Terror’ in 1936. After the appearance of ...

For Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, who delights in the complexity of contemporary music, Vortex Temporum has been the piece around which her attention has centred ...

«I am the enemy you killed, my friend...» (Je suis l’ennemi que vous avez tue?, mon ami). Les vers du poe?te britannique Wilfred Owen, te?moin ...

Rome, 79 AD. The emperor Titus narrowly escapes the attack his best friend Sextus has plotted against him under pressure from his beloved Vitellia. Titus ...

In the latter days of Romanticism, German Lieder once again enjoyed tremendous popularity. At the end of the 19th century, such composers as Hugo Wolf ...

In 2008 Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker created Zeitung with the pianist Alain Franco, based on compositions by Bach, Webern and Schoenberg. A fascinating show, which ...

Even now, thirty years after its creation, the mythical Rosas danst Rosas continues to surprise us with its modernity and move us with the determined ...

Thanks to passionate experts of baroque like Andrea Marcon, the last decades we have rediscovered many previously unknown works by the prolific Antonio Vivaldi, including ...

In a single evening, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui brings together four special duets whose variations – couples, doubles, opposites or complementary – already constitute a full ...

The two main works in this concert, dedicated to Ludwig van Beethoven, were written during a dark and difficult period. In 1809 the composition of ...

SACRE On 29th May, 1913, Le Sacre du printemps, composed by Igor Stravinsky for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and choreographed by Nijinsky, caused a scandal at ...

All four of them have highly acclaimed careers as soloists but they come together to form an exceptional quartet of singers who set out to ...

As he did with Mozart (Wolf), Monteverdi (Vsprs) and Bach (Iets op Bach and Pitié!), Alain Platel immerses us in an extraordinary musical, choreographic and ...

Dmitry Shostakovich composed his Ninth Symphony in 1945, glorifying the Russian victory over Nazi Germany. In contrast to the dark drama of his earlier symphonies, ...

Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, performed for the first time at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig in 1727, is undoubtedly one of the most emblematic works ...

Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto and Sixth Symphony are unquestionably two of the composer’s most frequently performed works. In 1889 he conceived the plan to compose ...

After his brilliant debut at La Monnaie in Cendrillon, Alain Altinoglu continues to browse through the French repertoire. Like some of Ernest Chausson’s other compositions, ...

This new creative endeavour proposed by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker is the fruit of a shared reflection between the choreographer and Boris Charmatz, one of ...

1905 was a very exciting year. Not only did Einstein publish his special theory of relativity, but three exceptional masterpieces were also composed or first ...

This story of impossible love is shrouded in eeriness and danger. Out of the dimness of a forest appears an enigmatic young woman who transforms ...

Where could the lyrical mastery of Charles Gounod – a ‘musicien de l’amour’ par excellence – come into its own more than in a passionate ...

The inconsistencies of love, do they stem from man or woman? This is the question underlying Marivaux’s La Dispute, one of his most disconcerting and ...

The infamous and scheming poisoner, the sulfurous Lucrezia, inspires both rejection and fascination among the men drawn to her. Only a son, abandoned at birth, ...

Passion and flight end in the solitude of the desert with Manon’s heartrending ‘Ah, non voglio morir!’. This work is an example of an ‘adventure ...

Elena’s Aria – created in 1984 – represented a crucial stage in the young Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s career at the time. Breaking with the ...

What better to represent desire, fragility and secrecy, the three themes around which the season’s artistic project is constructed, than the tragic story of Violetta ...

Die Fledermaus is without doubt Johann Strauss’ masterpiece and the quintessential Viennese operetta. In 1874, in the midst of economic and social disaster, Strauss composed ...

This concert draws on a single decade: the 1840s. Verdi’s overture to Louise Miller is immersed in the grim atmosphere of Friedrich Schiller’s Intrigue and ...

For its annual requiem concert, La Monnaie presents a dialogue between two remarkable works under the baton of Ludovic Morlot. Alfred Bruneau, known for his ...

The nuptials of eros and thanatos unveil their irresistible attraction in this second opera of Alban Berg who, following Wozzeck, describes the sometimes bright and ...

After Alban Berg’s death, his widow asked three composers of the Second Viennese School and its entourage to complete the third act of Lulu: Arnold ...

Beethoven and Mendelssohn: two major German composers who combine classicism and romanticism marvellously. Beethoven embodies the turning point between the two styles, while Mendelssohn – ...

Philosopher and writer – writer and philosopher – Friedrich Nietzsche developed a decisive original school of thought in the second half of the 19th century ...

Under this designation, KlaraFestival 2012 will be presenting a programme that is can be found somewhere between spirituality and nature, between heaven and earth. At ...

Impossible dialogue dans le monde des morts entre deux êtres qui ont vécu un amour impossible, Passion appelle la danse par les « mouvements de ...

With Cesena – performed at dawn in the Cour d’Honneur in Avignon in 2011 – Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker continues her exploration of the Ars ...

In 2010, the premiere of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s En Atendant – a choreographic and musical exploration based on the Ars Subtilior – was presented ...

The fatal temptation to seek the truth in love: men and women scorch their hearts and wings in trying to unlock the secret of emotions. ...

Gaspard de la Nuit Christianne Stotijn – alto Inon Barnatan - piano Maurice Ravel, Gaspard de la nuit Alban Berg, Vier Lieder, op. 2 Franz ...