For his new opera season, intendant Peter de Caluwe searched for productions that could illustrate a balance between the divine power of fate and the human strength to resist it. Can humans write their own story or "There will be fate?" Under that title, he positions his 2023-2024 opera season. He wants to make a case for what he calls "possibilism." And that season begins with Das Rheingold from Wagner's Tetralogy. The program book is drenched in the red of fate; next time it will be blue, the color of hope. And de Caluwe believes in that above all. So much so that he asked the new wonder cure of modern technology, ChatGPT, to define that Tetralogy. He read the answer aloud and it sounded perfect. Even though the question remains who actually came up with or created that definition, AI technology or humans.
A welcome challenge for Romeo Castellucci (who else!) to direct that opera series over two seasons. Why him? "Because at the Mint everything is possible, it's the only place where I really feel at home to dare something, including risks and mistakes. I want to follow Wagner in his mythology but also open it up, both in themes and characters, and not lock them into any ideology. " You can already see the music drama Das Rheingold in October 2023.
But the Mint starts its new season with another good acquaintance of the theater, with Bernard Foccroulle. During lockdown Covid times, he began writing Cassandra on commission from the Mint. A new opera about a burning contemporary issue with a figure from ancient Greek mythology. About that priestess whose predictions no one believed. Her counterpart is a young climate scientist and activist Sandra. "There are also people now who say wise things but are not heard." aldus Foccroulle. In the cast also young Sarah Defrise who in 2022 was still named "Young Musician of the Year."
Also in the next season again a kind of remix, a "best of" from the early work of Giuseppi Verdi. It is a very special selection from a number of operas that Verdi wrote at a frantic pace in his young years, when he was also plagued by many setbacks. And they become two separate and perhaps also exceptional evenings under the title With this debut CD, Boho Strings makes a cautious choice: works (often rearranged) for string orchestra by Flemish composer Wim Henderickx, who received the Golden Career Label from Klassiek Centraal in 2016. It turned out to be a survey through the evolution of his compositions. Only the final work, Nostalgia, leans toward the Middle East. Henderickx originally composed it for a shimmering instrumental ensemble from that region. The rearrangement remained colorful, though I felt it could have used a bit more spice. and Revolution, directed by Krystian Lada, who was also dramaturg at the Mint for many years. Verdi was once a revolutionary and stood on the barricades for Italian unification. Peter de Caluwe: " In our youth we want to achieve ideals and change things. And as we get older we want to preserve the things we fought for. Is that then conservatism?" That new Verdi story revolves around friends who remember May '68 and later look back nostalgically on their revolutionary years. Two key moments in their life stories, performed by two generations of singers.
In 2024 it will be a hundred years since Giacomo Puccini died in Brussels. The Mint pulls out all the stops with his final opera Turandot. But it won't be a traditional reading of that popular opera. "Must we blindly follow what tradition says?" asks intendant Peter De Caluwe "I plead resolutely for the opposite". Let's wait and see what director Christoph Coppens and conductor Kazushi Ono make of it together, certainly not with the classical ending, we hear, but fortunately with "Nessun dorma."
The program also includes a revival of that successful and enchanting "The Tale of Tsar Saltan" and also Benjamin Britten's "The Turn of the Screw" directed by Andrea Breth, which in 2021 was only to be seen online. One to dream away to, the other a nightmare.
We live in times of migration flows. An appropriate moment to bring an opera project based on a true story of Ali, a Somali refugee who ends up in Brussels via Tunisia and Malta. Director Ricard Soler Mallol, known for his intercultural and interdisciplinary approach, and multimedia artist Grey Filastine provide that world premiere.
Furthermore, Mint conductor Alain Altinoglu presented the symphonic season with, among others, Mahler 2 (Resurrection) and 6 (Tragic) concerts around the Ring of the Nibelungs but also Arnold Schoenberg, works by film composers Erich Korngold and John Williams, a kids concert with Peter and the Wolf and not to forget there are still 18 dance productions, with new work by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker: The Art of Fugue, in the Sint Michiel en Goedele cathedral. The Concertini series with chamber music continues and a new series is added, Vocalissimo with big names like Magdalena Kozena, Cecilia Bartoli, Matthias Goerne...
We saw a cheerful intendant who reported that things are going well at De Munt, "…season closed on a positive note, fragile though it may be, but we remain a healthy organization with an audience and staff that continues to rejuvenate." And sure enough, he added one last ChatGPT-generated quote for good measure: "The arts have the power to inspire and move us in ways that defy explanation."
