La Monnaie invites all Belgian amateur choirs to perform a key scene from Kris Defoort’s opera The Time Of Our Singing!
The Time of Our Singing, awarded ‘Best World Premiere’ at the International Opera Awards in 2021, returns to La Monnaie in October 2024. Based on Richard Powers’ novel of the same name, the opera by Belgian composer Kris Defoort blends jazz and classical music to tell the moving story of the Stroms, a mixed family both united and divided by music in the turbulence of post-war America.
For this revival, La Monnaie invites all amateur choirs in Belgium to perform a key excerpt from this opera in an special arrangement adapted to each musical level.
1. Watch the tutorial below and sign up for the project using the form under the button. This will allow us to provide you with the scores and audio files needed to rehearse the excerpt.
2. Rehearse with your vocal ensemble and unleash your creativity! Your own improvisations are most welcome.
3. If you wish: film the final result in landscape format and send the video to events@lamonnaie.be (via WeTransfer if the file is too large) before 7 Octobre 2024.
4. The most original videos will be included in a montage that we will share in the context of the Festival Raising Voices, organised around The Time of Our Singing in Octobre.
As part of the worldwide Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the façade of La Monnaie was lit up in pink on Sunday, 19 October. Through this symbolic gesture, our house aims to highlight what is still insufficiently known about the disease.
During a literary encounter with J. M. Coetzee on the stage of La Monnaie, Christina Scheppelmann announced that the 2003 Nobel Prize winner in Literature is writing a libretto for a new La Monnaie opera, to be premiered in the 2027–2028 season: Elizabeth Costello in limbo.
Christina Scheppelmann, who became the first female General and Artistic Director of La Monnaie this season, has been nominated for the ELLE Woman of the Year 2025 award.
