His mouth is always scandalous
A Pasolini-inspired Tosca at La Monnaie does not quite find the pleasure in the pain.
La Monnaie / De Munt
Roméo et Juliette
Jeanine de Bique, Ismael Jordi, Florence Losseau, and Travon D. Walker star in a live broadcast from Brussels
Streamed October 14, 2026 at 12:55 PM
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Gorgon wild
Iain Bell and Lydia Steier‘s Medusa stuns in Brussels.
Suffering a sea-change
Calixto Bieito‘s production of Idomeneo at La Monnaie is anchored by a committed cast, but gets swept up in pseudo-psychoanalytic imagery — and foot fetishism.
Life of the Mardi
La Monnaie’s flamboyantly busy new production of Benvenuto Cellini reads more burlesque than Berlioz.
Car Park Casta Diva
Fine music-making meets a clunker of a production in La Monnaie‘s revival of Norma
Vigorous to rigorous
Dmitry Matvienko led a performance of Mussorgsky and Shostakovich at La Monnaie with meticulous rectitude.
Drama therapy
Carmen in Brussels is dramatically vibrant, if vocally stretched
Il fascino immortale
Corinne Winters is back at the Met and back in the pages of parterre box, which inclines us to share a bit of Winters in Jenufa
Beyond redemption
This performance of Mahler’s Symphony N°8 at the Bozar in Brussels will probably be my last ever Mahler concert.
The twilight zone
As I mentioned in my last article (on the subject of Calixto Bieito’s production of Das Rheingold at the Paris Opera), in what the French might call une histoire belge, La Monnaie’s Ring cycle started with Romeo Castellucci as its director, and is now ending with Pierre Audi.
Götterdämmerung
The conclusion of Romeo Castellucci‘s Pierre Audi‘s Ring cycle live from Brussels
Game theory
I first became aware of the work of Austrian film director Michael Haneke a few years back when I followed a tip from a friend and rented the well-reviewed The White Ribbon.
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).