Movies: Werner Van Mechelen

This May 2010 production of Massenet's 1910 opera "Don Quichotte" marked the opera's centenary and also Jose Van Dam's operatic farewell at the Theatre de la Monnaie, Brussels. It is beautiful in every way--vocally, scenically, sonically, and visuall...

Premiered in Stockholm in 1978, the work is based on a play by Michel de Ghelderode (1898-1962) and unfolds in an imaginary land inspired by the famous Dutch painter Pieter Brueghel the Elder: Nekrotzar, the Grand Macabre, announces the end of the wo...

The farce Gianni Schicchi is the triptych’s third and final chapter. In 2012 at the Puccini Plus Festival, the Opéra de Lyon presented Puccini’s Il trittico over the course of several evenings. The plot is set in Florence in the 13th century. The e...

The Bayreuth Festival's annual new production is one of the most eagerly awaited events of the operatic calendar, and in 2025 Matthias Davids brings his experience as a multi-award-winning director of musical theatre to Wagner's only mature comedy, D...

‘In reality, this Lohengrin is an entirely new phenomenon for the modern consciousness!’ Richard Wagner himself understood the innovative character of his sixth piece of music theatre, completed in 1848, the year of revolutions. Although it is reckon...

At the Opéra Royal de Wallonie-Liège, stage director David Hermann and music director Christian Zacharias lead a production of Otto Nicolai's 1849 opera The Merry Wives of Windsor, a work that draws its inspiration from William Shakespeare's beloved ...

A deeply-moving tragedy, Il Tabarro is the first chapter, a one-act opera that follows two lovers confronted by a violent, cuckolded husband. In 2012 at the Puccini Plus Festival, the Opéra de Lyon presented Puccini’s Il trittico over the course of ...

Composed between 1875 and 1878, Le roi d'Ys was met with incredible success, with 100 performances the year of its premiere. The soprano Giuseppina Piunti (Margared) joins the Wallonie-Liège Royal Opera Orchestra under the direction of par Patrick Da...

Premiered in 1733, Pergolesi's La Serva Pedrona is a Major event in the history of opera. Due to the lightheatedness of the plot and the ordinariness of the characters – not to say their coarseness – La Serva Pedrona launched what is known today as "...

Six marriages, two annulments, two beheadings and the founding of his own Church, against the authority of Rome... in his search for a suitable spouse, the notorious Tudor King of England Henry VIII shrank from nothing. Here we focus on the amorous a...