Kurt Bikkembergs

Based on the theatre of our compratiot Michel de Ghelderode, Ligeti’sopera evoces the fantastic and demonic world of Jeroen Bosch and JamesEnsor.

‘This opera will win me a martyr’s crown’, wrote Beethoven about"Fidelio". The difficulties encountered by the main opera characters ontheir way to freedom was...

Georg Friedrich Händel wrote about forty Italian operas for the London theatres. Among them, "Ariodante" is definitely a masterpiece, even though the reputation of...

As in Verdi’s other operas to librettos by Friedrich Schiller, "Luisa Miller" centres on the conflict between individual freedom and political power. Luisa Miller,...

The life and work of Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann could only yield akaleidoscopic and fantastic opera. In Offenbach’s opera, variousstories by the German Romantic...

Like "Jenufa", "Kát’a Kabanová" is set in a small and stiflingcommunity that denies its members most forms of self-fulfilment. Kát’awants to escape from her...

With this Idomeneo , Mozart follows in the footsteps of Gluck’sreform of the Italian opera seria. The contemplative nature of theserious...

With this third opera of his, Leoš Janáček made his breakthrough as composer for the music theatre. The story of Jenůfa...

Carmen , the best-known title of the French opera repertoire, lives in collective memory as an opera imbued with southern passion and...

Richard III was the first political criminal, before Macbeth,whom Shakespeare chose to portray as a tragic hero. The hunchbackedking is fascinated by...

Whereas in Le Nozze di Figaro , the notorious barber and jack-of-all-trades thwarts Count Almaviva in his amorous adventures, in Rossini’s...

Flemish composer Louis De Meester's rarely played "radio-opera" is given a new performance in Antwerp and Ghent.  

According to Giuseppe Verdi, it was the opening lyrics of the legendary slave chorus –  Va pensiero, sull’ ali dorate  (Fly,...

Georg Friedrich Händel wrote  Semele  after his Italian operas, during a period when the majority of his compositions were oratorios. The...

Following the successful world creation of  Richard III  last season, Flanders Opera is again programming a work by the Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli....

Passion and rich coloration are the characteristics Hector Berlioz admired most in this opera, which was composed by twenty-five-year-old Bizet in less than three...

Mozart’s  Il dissoluto punito ossia Il Don Giovanni  — ‘The Rake Punished, or Don Giovanni’ — lends the theatrical character who...

Pikovaya Dama , a.k.a. the Queen of Spades, is Tchaikovsky’s second most famous opera, after Evgeny Onegin . For the...

‘Concert opera’ and ‘dramatic saga’. Such are the descriptions Hector Berlioz himself offered for La Damnation de Faust . As with...

Flanders Opera’s Fellini cycle – with  Satyricon  (Maderna),  Prova d’Orchestra  (Battistelli) and  Aladdin en de Wonderlamp...

Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites takes us within the closed setting of a Carmelite convent at the time of the French...