Prima la musica: an intriguing Capriccio in Brussels

By Matthew Rye, 11 November 2016

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“ear-tingling attention to detail”

Reviewed at La Monnaie | De Munt: Grand Hall, Brussels on 10 November 2016

Strauss R., Capriccio

La Monnaie | De Munt

Lothar Koenigs, Conductor

David Marton, Director

Christian Friedländer, Set Designer

Pola Kardum, Costume Designer

Sally Matthews, The Countess

Dietrich Henschel, The Count

Edgaras Montvidas, Flamand

Lauri Vasar, Olivier

Kristinn Sigmundsson, La Roche

Charlotte Hellekant, Clairon

François Piolino, Monsieur Taupe

Elena Galitskaya, Italian singer (female)

Dmitry Ivanchey, Italian singer (male)

Christian Oldenburg, Haushofmeister

La Monnaie Symphony Orchestra

Members of La Monnaie Chorus Academy

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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Matthew Rye

Matthew read music at Oxford and worked in music journalism for 30 years as a writer, critic and editor. He wrote numerous programme and CD booklet notes, spent 13 years as a Daily Telegraph critic, worked at BBC Music Magazine and was reviews editor of The Strad. He also wrote for The Wagner Journal and Opera and blogged at ferneklang.blogspot.co.uk. He was general editor of 1001 Classical Recordings You Must Hear Before You Die (Cassell Illustrated, 2007) and was the author of a new series of eBooks, Masterpieces of Music (Erudition).