Bartók à La Monnaie : Barbe-Bleue sublime, Mandarin curieux

By Patrice Lieberman, 10 June 2018

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“ce Barbe-Bleue – créé il a tout juste un siècle – est une exceptionnelle réussite”

Reviewed at La Monnaie | De Munt: Grand Hall, Brussels on 8 June 2018

Bartók, The Miraculous Mandarin, Op.19, Sz 73

Bartók, Duke Bluebeard's Castle

La Monnaie | De Munt

Alain Altinoglu, Conductor

Christophe Coppens, Director, Set Designer, Costume Designer

Ante Jerkunica, Bluebeard

Nora Gubisch, Judith

La Monnaie Symphony Orchestra

James Vu Anh Pham, Dancer

Benvenuto Cellini: Strassberger loses the plot at La Monnaie

No’a L. bat Miri, 28th January

Thaddeus Strassberger’s Brussels debut presents Berlioz's opera semiseria with plenty of good music but far more visual noise.

***11

Verdi caught in La Monnaie's revolving door

Eleanor Knight, 22nd March

A marathon double bill using music from Verdi's early operas largely falls flat in Brussels.

**111

Mixed messages lost in the medium: Foccroulle's Cassandra

Eleanor Knight, 10th September

Foccroulle’s limited score imitates environmental catastrophe while Jocelyn’s libretto tries – unevenly – to understand why we might ignore it.

**111

Black Swan: Barbara Hannigan returns in Warlikowski's Lulu

Kevin W Ng, 18th November

Barbara Hannigan is better than ever in Krzysztof Warlikowski's iconic Lulu at La Monnaie – an historic event.

*****

Portals into the surreal in La Monnaie's The Turn of the Screw

Katherine Syer, 30th April

A highly satisfying level of polish in La Monnaie's stream in which one recognizes a precisely executed live performance at its core – one that would be thrilling to experience in person.

****1

Listen with Mother: Tsar Saltan as autism parable at La Monnaie

Mark Pullinger, 16th June

Dmitri Tcherniakov's staging turns Rimsky-Korsakov's opera into storytelling for an autistic boy, but does he deliver a fairy tale ending?

*****

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Patrice Lieberman

Pratiquant le piano (puis l’alto) dès l’enfance, Patrice Lieberman - après un passage par le Conservatoire d’Anvers - combine sa passion pour la musique, les langues et la littérature en étudiant la musicologie et la philologie slave à l’Université Libre de Bruxelles, avant de se perfectionner aux universités de Pennsylvanie et Yale. Après avoir été pendant près de vingt ans critique au défunt hebdomadaire anglophone bruxellois The Bulletin, il collabore depuis 2014 à Crescendo Magazine (crescendo-magazine.be). Il a également régulièrement signé des notes de programme et des traductions pour différentes organisations culturelles, dont le Festival de Flandre et l’Orchestre national de Belgique.