Opera Ballet Vlaanderen faced difficult years, not only due to covid, but also due to internal troubles. General director Jan Raes put the company in order with a reorganization. After covid, the connection with the audience had to be restored. Despite the previous season proceeding in fits and starts, OBV successfully restarted and attracted more audience than ever before.
Jan Raes also corrected the perception that the company's audience consisted only of elderly people. The average age dropped to 51 years through programming and 13% are younger than 30 years. With the arrival of choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, interest in ballet performances increased four times! After 7 years heading the ballet department, he is leaving for Geneva to start a new chapter. However, he doesn't disappear completely from the radar. His work remains part of the programming. The gap is filled by 3 'associated artists' Jan Martens, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Jermaine Spivey. They committed themselves for four years.
Three pillars: Ballet / Opera / Vonk
Opera Ballet Vlaanderen continues on the path it has taken and assembled a prestigious program on all three fronts. Unique are also the hybrid performances, the combination of opera and ballet. In recent years, the ballet department has worked with a whole series of renowned choreographers with their own vocabulary and style. Few companies have such versatility in-house. There is international recognition for the company's uniqueness.
Ballet
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© Filip Van Roe[/caption]
The Flemish dance scene has belonged to the absolute world top since the end of the last century with Alain Platel, Wim Vandekeybus, Jan Fabre, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. They created a breathtaking and diverse repertoire that can be called unique within the international ballet world and has become embedded in the artistic DNA of our region. But gradually the question arises: how can we nurture this rich living heritage for the next generations. Opera Ballet Vlaanderen has set itself the task of providing a safe home for the great contemporary classics of Flemish dance within its repertoire.
The season starts earlier than usual this year and begins with a premiere. For the first time, Opera Ballet Vlaanderen is invited by the Festival van Avignon with a production by Jan Martens, one of the leading choreographers of the moment. Someone who understands the structure of music and can expose it. On the iconic Cour d'Honneur, the world premiere of Futur Proche is presented. This production fits perfectly into the annual theme LONGING. What do we pose with art against dark future perspectives? This production will also be seen in Amsterdam and The Hague, Sankt-Polten, Turnhout, Paris and Bruges and in the home country in deSingel, with which OBV enters into close collaboration.
Bengali/English choreographer Akram Khan is also returning as a guest with the production Creature, inspired by George Büchner's classic Woyzeck. This production too revolves around the future of humanity.
After the Paris Opera, OBV is the second company allowed to dance the large-scale productions of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. First in line her Mozart Concert Arias.
At the end of the season, another world premiere and triple bill with work by Pite/Spivey/Forsythe follows.
Opera
The major opera productions are all dedicated to the theme of LONGING.
A new Tristan und Isolde is on the program in a production by Philippe Grandrieus, a renowned name from the world of French cinema whose sensual film language perfectly matches the destructive passion between the antagonists.
Faust, between opera and oratorio with text by Victor Hugo, musical direction Philippe Herreweghe. Over the years, much of the original text was lost. A few new monologues are being written, to be performed by accomplished actor Johan Leysen.
A new production is Aufstieg und fall der Stadt Mahagonny by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht directed by Ivo van Hove. In a visually tight style that focuses on the blurred boundary between the real and the virtual, he bridges the societal crisis of the late 1920s and now.
On the program is the lesser-known work Ernani by Verdi. This work marks a transition from the early nationalist-tinged works to works with greater psychological depth.
Fin de partie, the opera from 2018 by Györg Kurtág, based on the work of the same name by Samuel Beckett. The Hungarian composer is 93 when his first opera premiered in 2017. It will be a concert opera in collaboration with deSingel to focus all attention on the finesse of the music.
Then there is The Indian Queen by Henry Purcell, in this production director Guy Cassiers explores the boundary between opera and theater.
There is also Le Nozze di Figaro by W.A. Mozart directed by Tom Goossen in a new approach to opera – a sustainable approach, everything comes from stock - and young adventurous French conductor Marie Jacquot.
There is also a revival of Satyagraha by Jonathan Stockhammer and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui.
VONK
VONK, the platform for participation, development, inclusion and experiment continues with the same momentum with some remarkable and media-friendly projects. For A Bigger Thing, Opera Gent is transformed into a ballroom. Argentine choreographer Lisi Estaras will stretch their legs there together with the residents of the city of Gent.
The major youth production will be Kruistocht, an opera based on the well-known youth novel 'Kruistocht in spijkerbroek' by Thea Beckman. Frederik Neyrick composes and Johan De Smet wrote the libretto and directs a diverse cast of actors and 50 children. The Compact Disc Dummies forge a musical alliance with the Symfonisch Orkest Opera Ballet Vlaanderen.
In Vake Poes, of hoe God Verdween, Lisaboa Houbrechts writes and stages a first part of a triptych around a twelve-year-old girl who delves into a traumatic history of her family. Fragments from the Johannespassion accompany her journey.
It will be exciting to see all this beauty.
Klassiek Centraal wishes all artists fair winds for the coming season.