Lisbeth Gruwez and Nicolas vladyslav zoom in on what fear does to the body. An intense performance that goes further than just a demonstration of tight muscles and stress.
Laurent Pelly exploits the satirical side of Rimsky-Korsakov's The Golden Cockerel at La Monnaie in a darkly humorous but colourfully performed production.
An opera that pokes fun at opera seria? An opera that features backstage preparations for a show, followed by an opera within an opera? No, it’s not Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos.
The world première of Giya Kancheli’s Nu.Mu.Zu is the blow-your-socks-off highlight of an evening that includes colourful playing of Falla and Strauss.
Sometimes catching a performance with its second cast can be as revealing as attending a first night, and that was the case with this production of Rigoletto by the Canadian director Robert Carsen at La Monnaie in Brussels.
It can be a strange experience to listen to Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto no. 2 without the visuals of Celia Johnson’s doe-eyed sadness and Trevor Howard’s tortured half-smile to go with it, so synonymous is the work with Brief Encounter, Noël Coward’s celebrated paean to 1940s English morality and thwarted love.
Few venues do “faded grandeur” better than the Royal Conservatoire of Brussels. The auditorium of Belgium’s premier music college is a venerable grande dame of a concert hall – all off-white paint peeling from cracked walls and heavy red velvet curtains coated with dust – making it an elegant and alluring place in which to while away an evening, its imperfections lending a certain sepia-
Most musicians with an arresting stage presence tend to command attention with an awe-inspiring magnetism. There are, however, a handful who possess a rare ability to mesmerize an audience just as much with a calm and phlegmatic demeanour.
Brussels’ Palais des Beaux-Arts occupies the site where once stood the Pensionnat Héger, the school where Charlotte and Emily Brontë lived during their sojourn in the Belgian capital – an appropriate setting, as it is not difficult to imagine Bruckner’s mighty Fourth Symphony underscoring one of the sisters’ Gothic tales of unrequited love.
In Pierre Audi’s new production of Handel’s Orlando, currently running at La Monnaie in Brussels (until 12 May, and thereafter available free online on their website for three weeks), the knight Orlando is portrayed as a modern-day fireman who in his fascination with fire has become an arsonist – “pyromane” as Audi explains in the programme.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Scorned womanhood has no better archetype than Euripides's Medea. And you're unlikely to see a more powerful or affecting Medea than Nadja Michael's performance in Cherubini's opera Médée, in the first production of the new season at La Monnaie in Brussels (De Munt, if you're a Flemish speaker.)Like all good Greek tragedy, we all know the story.
The poetry of Arthur Rimbaud was, to borrow a phrase from the 1960s, "way out there." His 1870s collection Les Illuminations inspired Benjamin Britten, who set a selection of the poems to music: the words are surreal, bizarre, sometimes erotic, always onomatopoeic and packed with interesting sounds.
Retour de Romeo Castellucci à La Monnaie, pour une Flûte enchantée attendue avec impatience. On s'attendait à une mise en scène non conventionnelle. On fut servi.
L’affiche regroupe dans un diptyque inattendu Il Prigioniero de Luigi Dallapiccola et Das Gehege (L’Enclos) de Rihm. Deux opéras qui posent les bonnes questions.
Que ce soit pour sa mise en scène, sa distribution ou sa direction musicale, cette production des Dialogues de Carmélites au Théâtre de la Monnaie est un franc succès.
Félicitons Peter de Caluwe d’avoir pris le risque de mettre Lucio Silla, cet opéra écrit en 1772 par un Mozart adolescent de 16 ans à peine, au programme de cette saison de la toujours aventureuse maison bruxelloise.
Aurait-on mieux pu entamer cette année 2017 qui marque le 450ème anniversaire de la naissance de Monteverdi que par cette merveilleuse exécution de ce deuxième opéra (et premier chef-d’oeuvre) de l’histoire de la musique au Palais des Beaux-Arts ?
