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

By Katherine Syer, 03 May 2021

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“a pair of over-sized wardrobes later serve as portals to darkly imaginative spaces”

Reviewed at La Monnaie | De Munt: Grand Hall, Brussels on 30 April 2021

Britten, The Turn of the Screw

La Monnaie | De Munt

Ben Glassberg, Conductor

Andrea Breth, Director

Raimund Orfeo Voigt, Set Designer

Carla Teti, Costume Designer

Alexander Koppelmann, Lighting Designer

Sally Matthews, Governess

Julian Hubbard, Peter Quint

Carole Wilson, Mrs Grose

Giselle Allen, Miss Jessel

Katharina Bierweiler, Flora

Thomas Heinen, Miles

Henri de Beauffort, Miles

Ed Lyon, The Prologue

La Monnaie Chamber 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.

*****

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?

*****

Black gold: Rimsky-Korsakov in Brussels

Matthew Rye, 13th December

Laurent Pelly exploits the satirical side of Rimsky-Korsakov's The Golden Cockerel at La Monnaie in a darkly humorous but colourfully performed production.

****1

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Katherine Syer

Katherine Syer is a Los Angeles-based writer/editor, public scholar, and dramaturg following a teaching career at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and UCLA

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