La Monnaie Launches Der Ring Des Nibelungen

Between October 2023 and February 2025, the new Monnaie Ring will be forged by music director Alain Altinoglu and director Romeo Castellucci - who began his opera career at La Monnaie with Parsifal in 2012. Those who recently attended the performance of Requiem know how the Italian composer can penetrate to the essence of a stage work. The company's music director already showed in Lohengrin (2017), our scenic production of Tristan und Isolde (2019) and earlier this season during a concertante Parsifal that feels Wagner's scores in every fibre. They are therefore the ideal house duo for us to bring to life the theatrical drama in the music on the one hand, and to distil and stage the universal themes of Wagner's saga opera on the other.

The last time this grand opera part was staged in Brussels was in the 1980s. Gerard Mortier then engaged the Sylvain Cambreling/Herbert Wernicke tandem for Der Ring des Nibelungen. Bernard Foccroulle's project with Antonio Pappano and Willy Decker fell through in the 1990s for artistic reasons. High time for a new tetralogy tailored to our house and in line with the spirit of the times.

Das Rheingold will premiere in October 2023, Die Walküre will follow in January 2024. Siegfried (September 2024) and Götterdämmerung (January 2025) are in the last season of current intendant Peter de Caluwe.

"I am eager to bring together two essential pillars of the opera repertoire in my last season at La Monnaie: Richard Wagner and Claudio Monteverdi. Their works are essentially about the quest for the divine in man, and vice versa. The dichotomy between power and love is central to both composers and is a perfect reflection on the spirit of our times. The preservation of the man-made world order continues to take precedence over the place and needs of the individual. For me, the Monteverdi trilogy and the presentation of Wagner's tetralogy - together with the many world creations that we still have in prospect - are a perfect rounding off of what we have realised in Brussels over the past decades. I look forward with excitement to the realisation of these ambitious projects that will continue to keep our house in the international spotlight", says Peter de Caluwe, General and Artistic Director of La Monnaie.