The new season at Opera Ballet Vlaanderen: À la flamande

What connects us to Belgium, Europe and the rest of the world? In times of geopolitical turmoil, when decades-old certainties are looking anything but reliable, the question arises as to what kind of Flanders we want to live in and what the possibilities for the future are.

What is certain is that, over the past decades, our language community has left its artistic mark on the world of dance, opera and music theatre. Next season, Opera Ballet Vlaanderen will, with all due modesty, shine the spotlight on a number of world-renowned Flemish creators and their successors.
The River Scheldt flows like a connecting ribbon through the productions. Literally, as it lends its name to the oratorio by Peter Benoit, but also in the background in productions such as Lohengrin, De Materie, Der Schmied von Gent and De draaischijf.

In total, there are twelve major productions on the programme, including five world premieres and six other productions that are new to Opera Ballet Vlaanderen.

The temporary closure of Opera Ghent does not mean we are abandoning the Ghent public, and this is once again evident from the opening production. In a large-scale site-specific project, theatre maker and artist Thomas Verstraeten takes over Ghent’s city centre with De opstand van de gevels. Two facades of Ghent buildings decide to set off on a journey through the city: a facade from the stately Vrijdagmarkt and a facade from the working-class Brugse Poort neighbourhood thus swap places, accompanied by a procession of local residents and musicians. This spectacular open-air project will then also be given a theatrical interpretation on the stage of NTGent, created in collaboration with a diverse group of musical Ghent residents who will form a new city orchestra.

For many, the season’s first opera will be a revelation. De Materie by the Dutch composer Louis Andriessen is a little-known masterpiece that had its world premiere in 1989, directed by theatre legend Robert Wilson. A score brimming with swinging boogie-woogie, heart-stopping percussion and mesmerising minimalism tells a four-part story of the 16th and 17th centuries – a period of revolt and shipbuilding – about Antwerp’s female mystic poet Hadewijch, about Piet Mondrian and about Marie Curie. In each instance, the transformation of the material by the immaterial, the human spirit, takes centre stage in this philosophical opera. De Materie will be the type of hybrid production for which OBV is renowned. Director and set designer Phia Ménard, a regular guest at the Festival d’Avignon, and choreographers Antonio de Rosa and Mattia Russo (of the hip collective Kor’sia) bring together soloists, chorus and dancers from OBV in an intense, all-encompassing spectacle.

With Bartók/Beethoven/Schönberg associate artist Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker passes on three of her early works to a new generation of dancers. To Bartók’s fourth string quartet, Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge and Schönberg’s Verklärte Nacht the dancers of OBV will perform large-scale versions of De Keersmaeker’s choreographies, originally developed for Rosas. This masterful evening of dance will be accompanied live by the strings of the Opera Ballet Vlaanderen Symphony Orchestra.

It has been more than twenty years since La traviata by Giuseppe Verdi last appeared on our programme. Next season, this classic will be our end-of-year performance. Following his triumphantly received Mozart productions, director Tom Goossens proves with this production that he can bring an equally original vision to translating Verdi’s romantic world into the present day. None other than Vuvu Mpofu – last season’s impressive Lucia di Lammermoor – will take on the role of Violetta.

The visionary Spanish choreographer Marcos Morau made his debut on our stage with a spectacular Romeo + Juliet, which has toured Europe with great success over the past few months. Now we present his vision of The Sleeping Beauty and delve into the unsettling dream world of the Sleeping Beauty herself. Tchaikovsky’s romantic score is enriched with electronic sounds by the contemporary composer Juan Cristóbal Saavedra.

In the 1980s, a wave of radical innovators in the field of dance emerged in Flanders. Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Wim Vandekeybus, Marc Vanrunxt, Jan Fabre, Alain Platel and many others surprised the world with an innovative take on what dance could be. In no time at all, this ‘Flemish wave’ swept across the world. Now, in A Wave, choreographer Zoë Demoustier takes stock. Together with dancers from OBV, platform K, dancers from the original productions such as Fumio Ikeda or Annamirl van der Pluijm and young people and children, she deconstructs famous scenes from the 1980s and 1990s. Together, they explore what should be preserved and what could do with an update.

Flanders’ most celebrated author Tom Lanoye wrote De draaischrijf, a novel based on historical facts about the darkest chapters in the history of Antwerp’s theatre and opera world. At a time when both the Bourla Theatre and the Antwerp Opera were led by two brothers who, each for their own reasons, collaborated with the Nazis. Nowhere else could this novel be adapted for the stage but here, and performed by preeminent Flemish actors. Peter Van den Begin delivers the protagonist’s confession. Jan Decleir becomes his sounding board. Composer Steven Prengels, known for his collaboration with Alain Platel on C(H)OEURS and Ombra, adapts musical pieces featured in the novel. Frank Van Laecke directs and takes us into Antwerp’s cultural world during the Second World War.

The American choreographer Trajal Harrell will make his debut with us in an innovative hybrid production of Franz Schubert’s Winterreise. Yet he has long been a celebrated name in Europe as the former resident choreographer of the Schauspielhaus Zürich, director of the Zürich Dance Ensemble and associate artist of the Holland Festival. In his dance language, Harrell weaves together elements from the queer ballroom scene, postmodernism and Japanese Butoh. He sets Winterreise against the backdrop of a fashion show for winter coats. This will be the first time he has worked with dancers from a ballet company. Rising star baritone James Newby will sing the song cycle.

Following their acclaimed opera debut with Les Pêcheurs de perles, the theatre collective FC Bergman returns, this time to present their flamboyant take on the figure of Peter Benoit, who founded this opera house in 1893. They select two of his major Dutch-language oratorios as their starting point: Lucifer and De Schelde. Two works that resonated both at home and abroad in the late nineteenth century, but subsequently fell into oblivion. The last time this theatre staged a performance of De Schelde was in 1984. For the first time, his oratorios are now being given an impressive staged production.

With the moving Ombra, choreographer Alain Platel bid farewell to the theatre two years ago. However, he could not sit still for long. Opera Ballet Vlaanderen is delighted to bring him back once more for a world premiere. In Soûl, set to Gustav Mahler’s monumental Totenfeier, Platel creates a new choreography exploring darkness and hope. This world premiere enters into dialogue with Adagio, a work by Pina Bausch set to the first movement of Mahler’s unfinished tenth symphony. An evening filled with Mahler and featuring works by Alain Platel and Pina Bausch brings the season to a close.

The revival will be of Der Schmied von Gent, the opera by Franz Schreker, with which director Ersan Mondtag made his internationally acclaimed operatic debut in 2020.

Following the success this season of Lucia di Lammermoor, we will present two titles in concert versions next season.

Orphée et Eurydice by Christoph Willibald Gluck will be performed under the baton of none other than Francesco Corti, who recently conducted an impassioned Don Giovanni. The Austrian mezzo-soprano Sophie Rennert will portray Orphée. Eurydice will be portrayed by the Portuguese soprano Ana Quintans, who performed the role of Ilia in Idomeneo with us in 2016.

Following Parsifal this season, next season we welcome his son Lohengrin in Richard Wagner’s opera of the same name, which we will perform in concert form under the baton of our new music director Stephan Zilias and with an outstanding cast. The Korean tenor Kyungo Kim – who played the prince in Rusalka in 2010 – will portray the knight. The German Wagner soprano Clara Nadeshdin will perform the role of Elsa. None other than the Polish mezzo-soprano Ewa Vesin – who recently made a great impression as Abigaille in Nabucco– will be Ortrud, and the German baritone Michael Kupfer-Radecky – one of our Jochanans from Salomé – will perform the role of Telramund. In Antwerp, we will present this concert at the Koningin Elisabethzaal.

Stephan Zilias will also conduct Schubert’s ninth symphony and Jean Sibelius’s fifth symphony in two concerts.
Together with DE SINGEL, we are co-presenting a concert performance of George Gershwin’s masterpiece Porgy and Bess by the Chineke! Orchestra and the Cape Town Opera Vocal Ensemble conducted by Enrique Mazzola.

We will also be featuring Flemish composers in our series of aperitif Concerts. We pay tribute to the chamber music of Wim Henderickx, who will be commemorated in 2027 with various projects across Flanders. Piet Swerts’s Clarinet Quintet is on the programme.
We will continue to offer our aperitif Concerts in Ghent at the MIRY concerthall.

Next year’s Queen Elisabeth Competition will be dedicated to singing. One of the laureates’ concerts will be accompanied by the Opera Ballet Vlaanderen Symphony Orchestra.

This year, we are swapping the open-air concert on Sint-Jansplein for a grand open house day on 5 September, featuring numerous free performances, activities and surprises.

Next season, once again, the third pillar of our activities, Vonk (‘spark’), will provide experimentation, opportunities for young talent and surprising encounters for a young audience.

The aforementioned De opstand van de gevels and A Wave will be Vonk productions.

But Choreolab is also returning. Once again, five dancers from OBV will take their first tentative steps into the world of choreography and present their work in a performance that never fails to surprise with its versatility and sincerity.

In last season’s Choreolab, Figures in Flight, the choreography created by Shane Urton and inspired by the oeuvre of artist Panamarenko, was one of the absolute highlights. Next season, it will be presented to schools so that young people can be introduced to the world of dance through this accessible performance and a tailored supporting programme.

In Operalab, in collaboration with the International Opera Academy, we present the soloists of tomorrow.
In addition, we will bring together the young voices of the International Opera Academy with the musicians of the Youth Orchestra Flanders in a concert. The comic one-act opera Mavra by Igor Stravinsky and excerpts from La rondine by Giacomo take centre stage, complemented by La Valse by Maurice Ravel.

And there are also numerous partner performances, a refreshing series of aperitif Concerts, and our collaboration with Opéra de Lille is being expanded. Next season is shaping up to be one to remember.

OBV is launching a series of panel discussions that delve deeper into the theme À la flamande.
Writer and radio presenter Heleen Debruyne invites a number of experts to her proverbial table to discuss the social issues raised by our productions.