House of Creations

"This commission is the final link in a chain of miracles." (continued). We write September 1 of the 2020 corona year. After months of lockdown, La Monnaie announces its rescheduled autumn programme. The first opera for which an audience is allowed back in the Great Hall? À l’extrême bord du monde, Harold Noben’s chamber opera about the last days of writer Stefan Zweig and his wife Lotte, just before their suicide in Petrópolis, Brazil. Whereas the planning of an opera house is normally fixed for years, this piece now unexpectedly gets the chance to have its world premiere at La Monnaie. The arrival of the piano quartet is hanging by a thread, in just a few weeks a semi-staged production must be worked out and the number of rehearsal days in La Monnaie are very limited. But Leonard Bernstein already knew that "to achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time." The creation on 4 October is such a success that General director Peter de Caluwe promptly asks the composer for a new symphonic creation...

With three quarters of the opera score now completed, composer Bassem Akiki has meanwhile had the opportunity to test his innovative compositional technique (more on this later) on a symphonic orchestral work. Huis Clos I is based on two musical themes from Amor fati, which are consistently developed according to the same mathematical principles that also govern the opera. The title refers to Sartre's existential drama that, together with Racine's Andromaque, forms the basis of the libretto, but also to the fact that the piece was written in full lockdown. Bassem Akiki conducted its premiere on 27 August 2020, at the head of the Sinfonia Varsovia chamber orchestra.

This commission is the final link in a chain of miracles.

In 2018, composer Harold Noben, then already the author of several instrumental works, is applying for a project on contemporary creation at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel. During his residence, he gets the opportunity to write his first work for the human voice under the auspices of mentor-composer Benoît Mernier. What was initially supposed to be a modest project, through a combination of coincidence, luck and gumption eventually takes the form of a true chamber opera for mezzo-soprano, tenor and piano quartet: À l’extrême bord du monde. This video follows Harold Noben during work sessions with singers and musicians of the Music Chapel.