LA MONNAIE DE MUNT

‘I bring light and joy to many on earth, sorrow becomes sweet in a song; in a tale, fear becomes endearing.’ Years after Tsar Saltan ...

'As I have never truly experienced the happiness of love in my life,' Richard Wagner wrote to Franz Liszt in December 1854, 'I would like ...

Robert le Diable, the first opera in French by Giacomo Meyerbeer, was inspired by the medieval legend of the Norman duke Robert, with at its ...

In his Poetics of Music, Igor Stravinsky wondered how, for a composer, past and present, and tradition and renewal relate to each other. He came ...

Unlike what was later made of it by Hollywood, Mary Shelley's original novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus tells the profoundly sad tale of a ...

In his day, Amilcare Ponchielli was considered the most important Italian composer of the generation after Verdi, but today we know him primarily for La ...

'I like to shine; I love joking'. The words of the coquettish Norina, the female character at the heart of Don Pasquale, Donizetti's 64th opera, ...

'There is a divine spark in every being!' It was under this humanist motto that Leos Janecek composed his final opera, Z mrtveho domu (From ...

'Strength has triumphed, rewarding beauty and wisdom with an everlasting crown!' Culminating in praise of those virtues, Die Zauberflote has since become an emblem of ...

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.’ If there is one work that can claim to illustrate these words of Beethoven’s, it ...

‘Hopes, chimeras, distant mysteries... What does this story tell us?’ The Prologue to Bluebeard’s Castle invites us to consider the work as a mysterious adventure ...

His pagan barbarity, his explosive and angrily defiant melancholy, his demoniacal instinct...these are all echoes...of the thousand-year-old Hungarian psyche’: words attributed to Béla Bartók. Following ...

In 2018, for the ninth time in its history, the Queen Elisabeth Competition will focus on singing. From 1 to 12 May, an international jury ...

‘In reality, this Lohengrin is an entirely new phenomenon for the modern consciousness!’ Richard Wagner himself understood the innovative character of his sixth piece of ...

Achterland is a seminal choreography in Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s highly individual body of work, as it contains the fruit of what preceded it as ...

One of the most popular opera double-headers is once again on the bill at La Monnaie after an absence of 15 years. In these two ...

Béla Bartók, speaking of Franz Liszt, described ‘... an astonishing audaciousness, in both form and content. This boldness is quite simply the fanatical tendency towards ...

‘I wrote this requiem for myself...’, bemoaned Mozart, worn-out but conscious that his Mass for the Dead would become his musical testament and would guarantee ...

New choreographic works by Sasha Waltz invariably surprise us with their grouping, the depth of their subjects and styles, and their stunning aesthetics. Her next ...

Sultan Shahryar was of the opinion that all women were unfaithful and he had therefore decided that all his wives had to be killed after ...

‘Hope: the final torture...’ Ever since a jailer called him ‘brother’, a prisoner has hope that he will be freed. The door of his cell, ...

‘We are not afraid: we imagine we are afraid. Fear is a delusion sent by the devil.’ In his screenplay Dialogues des Carmélites, later adapted ...

In 2008, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Alain Franco created Zeitung. In Zeitung, they focused on choreographic and musical material that dealt with composition, improvisation, ...

‘I now realise that innocence and a good heart are far more precious to the soul than false glory.’ ‘La Clemenza di Silla’? In Mozart’s ...

‘Love has guided all my endeavours; true love knows no fear.’ Dressed as a man and under the name of Fidelio, Leonore takes a job ...

Against the backdrop of the power struggle between the Byzantines and the Saracens, the city state of Syracuse is divided by internal conflicts. The hoped-for ...

‘It’s natural to think that Pinocchio has always existed; it is impossible to imagine the world without him.’ Italo Calvino put it well: we all ...