La Monnaie : Lohengrin, année zéro

Eric Cutler (Lohengrin), Ingela Brimberg (Elsa von Brabant), Gabor Bretz (Heinrich der Vogler)

Elena Pankratova (Ortrud), Andrew Foster-Williams (Friedrich von Telramund)

By Patrice Lieberman, 23 April 2018

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“une très fine mise en lumière des relations de pouvoir, d’amour, de jalousie ou d’ambition”

Reviewed at La Monnaie | De Munt: Grand Hall, Brussels on 19 April 2018

Wagner, Lohengrin

La Monnaie | De Munt

Alain Altinoglu, Conductor

Olivier Py, Director

Pierre-André Weitz, Set Designer, Costume Designer

Gábor Bretz, Heinrich der Vogler

Eric Cutler, Lohengrin

Ingela Brimberg, Elsa von Brabant

Andrew Foster-Williams, Friedrich von Telramund

Elena Pankratova, Ortrud

Werner Van Mechelen, The King's Herald

Zeno Popescu, 1st Nobleman of Brabant

Willem Van der Heyden, 2nd Nobleman of Brabant

Bertrand Duby, 3rd Nobleman of Brabant

La Monnaie Symphony Orchestra

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.