Il Trovatore premiered in Brussels: Tcherniakov hits a big show again, Scott Hendricks too

Il Trovatore, La Monnaie/De Munt in Brussels, June 10 2012

Director ..... Dmitri Tcherniakov

Music direction ..... Marc Minkowski

Il Conte di Luna ..... Scott Hendricks

Manrico ..... Misha Didyk

Azucena ..... Sylvie Brunet-Grupposo

Leonora ..... Marina Poplavskaya

Ferrando ..... Giovanni Furlanetto

La Monnaie Symphony Orchestra & Chorus

From La Monnaie/De Munt with love: Excellent Guy Joosten production of Salomé

Guy Joosten, together with Ivo van Hove and Guy Cassiers, is one of those Flemish miracles of the 90's-00's who possess talent and audacity, style and intelligence to elevate opera shows to the level of significant theatrical events. His Elektra at La Monnaie/De Munt was highly appreciated, but I particularly liked his Salomé, that I was able to see a few years back, when it was premiered at Liceu in Barcelona.

Dir- Guy Joosten, cnd- Carlo Rizzi; cast Chris Merritt (Herodes), Doris Soffel (Herodias), Amanda Echalaz (Salomé), Scott Hendricks (Jochanaan), Gordon Gietz(Narraboth)...

2010-2011, 2011-2012 2012-2013 in Belgium

Can you find a better intendant of an opera house in Europe [or anywhere else] than Peter de Caluwe? Of course not! With a much smaller budget, compared to the top European opera houses, year after year, he and his team manage to compose a well balanced and highly interesting program. .

Thalys to Aulide or to Tauride postponed due to heavy snow

The fast train "Thalys" -which normally takes you from Paris to Brussels in 1 hour and 22 minutes- had its timetable  screwed up today because of the thick layer of fluffy snow on the tracks. Never have I seen so much snow in Paris and it HAD to happen today! :(
Since my train wouldn't arrive to Brussels before 15:00, I had to throw out my tickets for two operas today in "La Monnaie/De Munt"

"La Monnaie/De Munt" is one of the very best opera houses in Europe which benefits 4-5 times less subsidies from the government than does Paris Opera (ONP), and yet manages to compile a far better and much more coherent program than the uninspiring rich-man amusement "made in elsewhere and imported to France" in ONP. La Monnaie is lead by an amazing and dynamical young intendant, Peter de Caluwe, who had a clever idea to program "Iphigénie en Aulide" and "Iphigénie en Tauride" back-to-back.
The critics [NYT, FT, Le Figaro, Welt, Nigel's blog] apparently didn't like the Pierre Audi's directing, but they all seem to have loved Christophe Rousset, his phenomenal orchestra "Les Talens Lyriques", and three excellent singers Véronique Gens, Stéphane Degout, and Topi Lehtipuu.

Better luck next month for "Elektra"!