Between October 2023 and February 2025 the new Munt Ring will be forged by music director Alain Altinoglu and director Romeo Castellucci – who began his opera career at the Munt with Parsifal in 2012. Those who recently experienced our production of Requiem know how the Italian creator can penetrate to the essence of a stage work. And that our music director feels Wagner's scores in every fiber was demonstrated in Lohengrin (2017), our scenic production of Tristan und Isolde (2019) and earlier this season during a concert Parsifal. It is therefore for us the ideal house duo to on the one hand bring the theatrical drama in the music to life, and on the other hand distill and stage the universal themes from Wagner's saga opera.
The last time this grand opera tetralogy was performed in Brussels was in the 1980s. Then Gerard Mortier engaged the tandem Sylvain Cambreling/Herbert Wernicke for Der Ring des Nibelungen. Bernard Foccroulles project with Antonio Pappano and Willy Decker failed in the 1990s for artistic reasons. High time then for a new tetralogy tailored to our house and in line with the spirit of the times.
Das Rheingold premieres in October 2023, Die Walküre follows in January 2024. Siegfried (September 2024) and Götterdämmerung (January 2025) fall in the final season of current intendant Peter de Caluwe.
"I insist on bringing together two essential pillars of the opera repertoire in my final season at the Munt: Richard Wagner and Claudio Monteverdi. Their works are essentially about the quest for the divine in man, and vice versa. The conflict between power and love is central to both composers and forms a perfect reflection of our zeitgeist. The preservation of the world order created by humans continues to take precedence over the place and needs of the individual to this day. The Monteverdi trilogy and the presentation of Wagner's tetralogy represent for me – together with the many world premieres we still have in prospect – a perfect conclusion to what we have realized in Brussels over the past decades. I look forward with great anticipation to the realization of these ambitious projects that will keep our house in the international spotlight", said Peter de Caluwe, general and artistic director of the Munt.
