House of Creations

#3.5 Wintermärchen

Bernard Foccroulle, Gerard Mortier’s successor (and the composer of Cassandra), also approached the Boesmans/Bondy duo for a new opera. Shakespeare’s The Winter's Tale was chosen. The scenes on the Bohemian seacoast (forgive Shakespeare's limited geographical knowledge) are primarily in English and are accompanied by jazz-rock music. A challenge for conductor Antonio Pappano, who had to seamlessly fit the Belgian ensemble Aka Moon’s music into the orchestral parts.

#4.5 Julie

Julie, created in 2004 with Luc Bondy and Kazushi Ono, is a new masterpiece based on August Strindberg’s Fröken Julie. In Julie, we experience the forbidden love between Julie, the Count's daughter, and Jean, her servant, both in the kitchen and on the fringes of an evening party. They are enraptured to the point of delirium by their dreams of escapism, social elevation and love. Kirsten, Jean’s cook and concubine, defends the social and moral order, which comes crashing down like a hatchet when the Count returns home.

# 5.5 Yvonne, Princesse de Bourgogne

In 2006, Philippe Boesmans stopped his residency at La Monnaie and retired the following year. His musical career, however, continued. He produced his last opera with Luc Bondy, Yvonne, Princesse de Bourgogne, in 2009. It was created at the Opéra de Paris but was performed at La Monnaie soon afterwards. Witold Gombrovicz’s absurd play of the same name, about an ugly, apathetic and taciturn princess, amused Boesmans greatly, and his ‘tragic comedy’ is permeated with the same black humour.

# 6.5 Au monde

Au monde, created at La Monnaie in 2014, is the first of two operas on which Philippe Boesmans collaborated with Joël Pommerat. He reworked one of his own plays into a libretto and also directed it. In the opera, which won the International Award for Best World Premiere, a wealthy industrialist is arranging his succession. He favours his son, a soldier, who is returning home. The atmosphere between family members is heavy and oppressive, full of ambiguities and unspoken opinions. Is the son the serial killer who is terrorising the region? And what is the role of the adopted daughter? With their words, the women - three sisters - ensure that the relationship between the protagonists remains intact and that the underlying tensions never erupt.

# 7.5 Pinocchio

A new theatre, a new opera! The newly renovated La Monnaie opened its doors in 2017 with Pinocchio. Once again, it was based on a piece by Joël Pommerat. His version bypassed Disney and went back to Carlo Collodi’s original story. Philippe Boesman’s music is very close to the plot: strangely atonal in the whale’s belly, dreamy when the fairy appears, frank and free during the circus scenes. And, a rarity in contemporary operas, the moving central theme is one of those immortal melodies that you can hum when you leave the theatre.

Anna Moody - The Librettist’s Process

Step 1: writing a synopsis

When writing a new opera, the very first step is always to create a full synopsis. Not only does this detail exactly what happens in each scene, but it gives me an overview of the whole story and the dramatic arc of each character and their relationships. It is only when I have this full shape in front of me that I can start writing the libretto itself.

From sketchbook to music stand

From the handwritten notes on paper to the edited score on the orchestra's music stands: what stages does a new symphonic work go through these days? We checked it out for our next creation, Beyond, and put the question to composer Harold Noben.

"My sketchbook remains an indispensable working tools for those parts of the music that I cannot process directly on the computer. So I use it often. Nevertheless, I mainly write with a digital piano keyboard, introducing everything via music notation software (Finale).

On my computer score, I also have additional draft blocks on which I transfer ideas, or different working versions of these ideas, in order to assemble and organise them in the right place in the music. This feature - impossible with a sketchbook - allows me to have an overall view of the result on the score.

Once the text is finished, I edit everything myself in another file, the conductor's part and the instrumental parts separately, which allows me to have another time for rereading and corrections. Ideally, it is always wise, once the whole thing is finished, to have a friend or colleague proofread the score with an outside eye to avoid errors, typos and other details that you can't see yourself when you've had your nose in it for weeks. But often a lack of time does not allow this: a composer who is late is a pleonasm for most of us (smile), and the material has to go through the Music library, which needs to have the time to process it and to pass on the scores to the musicians, especially the principals who are responsible for coordinating all the musical movements (the bow strokes, for example), and the conductor who should have the time to get to grips with the score before the first rehearsals."

The first bars of Philippe Boesmans' On purge bébé, an opera he dedicated to his friend, the journalist Camille De Rijck.

After the presentation of the Cassandra maquette, General Manager and Artistic Director Peter de Caluwe provides an update on the project:

'Between the presentation of the concept for Cassandra and the world premiere scheduled for September 2023, our workshops have sufficient time to turn the designs into a functioning set. The artistic team has done an admirable job of keeping to our specifications, i.e. integrating La Monnaie’s Green Opera policy into the theme of the new composition and into the realisation of an ecological set design.

The opera is about the tragedy of not being heard. At the same time, the work looks at climate change, which we are all aware of, but seem relatively unconcerned about. Like Cassandra, who warned of the impending destruction of Troy, we see the danger coming but we cling to our old ways, thereby contributing to the further melting of the icebergs and the extinction of the bees. This theme inspired the team to create a set made up entirely of recyclable materials. A good example of this are the large number of second-hand books symbolizing the library of Troy, but their gradual disappearance from the stage also references the current fate of the glaciers and rainforests. Next season, in order to achieve this, we will invite our audience to leave a meaningful book at La Monnaie, which will then take its place in the set.

Meanwhile, composer Bernard Foccroulle has managed to complete seventy-five percent of the score. Bees are an important element in his composition. At four different moments in the opera, the buzzing of ‘les abeilles’ audibly diminishes, leading us to conclude that an initially large swarm is reduced to just a few solitary bees… This, of course, symbolizes the loss of one of the most important organisms that so mysteriously helps maintain the delicate balance of the earth’s ecosystem.

So as well as being a philosophical reflection on where we stand as human beings, as ‘users and abusers’ of our planet, Cassandra is also a production made according to the rules of our Green Opera strategy. Or how theory can also be practice. Who knows, it may prompt us to give more serious consideration to the subject. For far from being an individual problem, not being heard hangs like a catastrophe over the whole of society.    

Kick-off amateur choir Cassandra

For the world première of Cassandra, La Monnaie is putting together a large amateur choir. Do you like singing, do you care about environmental issues and would you like to participate in the creation of an opera? As a choir member, you will attend three rehearsals each month between October 2022 and June 2023, and you will get to know the inside of La Monnaie during guided tours, events, encounters and dress rehearsals of our opera performances. The choral repertoire will be varied and include a whole variety of topical and activist songs as well as suggestions from chorus members themselves.

Can’t wait? Then send an email to events@lamonnaie.be for the big kick-off of this project at La Monnaie on Saturday afternoon 3 September.

First workshop with the Children's and Youth Chorus
 
Today, the La Monnaie Children's and Youth Choirs under the direction of Benoît Giaux, got a first introduction to the music of Solar. Composer Howard Moody and director Benoît De Leersnyder introduced the opera to our young singers, who then set to work on four choral passages.

After A Brussels Requiem and Push, among others, Solar is the fourth collaboration between Howard Moody and Benoît De Leersnyder, who had already met the day before to go through the libretto and a few musical moments of the opera. For the two men, it is essential that they are able to work with the artistic team and the performers well in advance. It enables them to prepare the children and young people early on in the process, but these encounters also offer inspiration for their work on the score and the staging. 'I really see the rehearsals as a process of creation. I get to hear the voices that will sing my music and can adjust my lyrics accordingly,' says Howard Moody. 'During this first meeting, with the help of a choreographer, I hope to physically liberate the young singers, who can sometimes still be a bit rigid in their already quite professional singing practice,' adds Benoît De Leersnyder. The enthusiasm for the project is palpable and will undoubtedly grow in the months to come...

Howard Moody - The composer’s journal 
 

I am looking forward to the first workshop / rehearsal of Solar on June 29. It will be the first time that some of Solar will be sung by ‘The Sun’ (children’s choir), and ‘The Apprentices’ (youth chorus). Having received Anna’s wonderful libretto at the beginning of May, I have written the chorus music for the first two scenes in preparation for our first get together as a cast (without the four principal soloists). We have this precious opportunity to experiment with the chorus singers before I complete the composition of the whole opera, enabling me to hear the actual voices involved.

The main pressure for a composer is always the deadline to deliver the new score. I find that writing music takes such a long time from the first moment at which I have managed to internalise a story and its characters, hear the music in my head and then attempt to write it down. With an opera, it is expected that the rehearsal score is for a solo piano with voices, with the piano simulating something of the energy and colour that will eventually be played by the orchestra. Once in the rehearsal room, there is no time to waste on correcting details and answering questions. Any score has to be accurate, clear and singable. Young chorus singers usually learn by ear and by instinct, so it is difficult for them to re-learn the same music at a later date. Small alterations may be necessary but I have to believe that what I have written will work. June 29 is a chance to meet everyone before I get back to the solitary composing life. I must submit the final complete score in October. Solar is an opportunity to express urgent and important issues through character, myth and music.