Alvis Hermanis

The 1980s. Kārlis did his military service in Afghanistan and is now confined to a wheelchair. Before he left, he had fallen in love with the teacher Judīte, but she has now married a rich man...and poses nude for Kārlis' neighbour, the cynical photographer Rūdofs. Soon Rūdolfs is found dead, and Kārlis admits to having murdered him. But investigator Konrāds suspects that Kārlis is incriminating himself.

For the first time since the 1904 La Scala premiere, Riccardo Chailly restores Puccini's original two-act version to the La Scala stage.

The film is based on true events leading up to the historical 2013 resignation of Benedict XVI. After succeeding John Paul II, and serving as Pope for eight years, Joseph Ratzinger shocked the world by becoming the first Pope to voluntarily resign in over 600 years. In light of moral and ethical upheavals in the Catholic Church, and the unique challenges of the 21st century, Ratzinger's cited reason of declining health raises more questions than it answers.

A film about national belonging, featuring Latvian director Alvis Hermanis.

Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Béla Bartók: Three masters of modernity, three masters of orchestral composition brought to life by Internationally-acclaimed Russian conductor Tugan Sokhiev, Music Director and Chief Conductor of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow and Music Director of Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse (ONCT) since 2008. Richard Strauss’ penultimate, satirically mythological opera Die Liebe der Danae (The Love of Danae, after a draft by Hugo von Hoffmansthal. The Wiener Philharmoniker play under the baton of Franz Welser-Möst, under whom they “conveyed the glittering colors and lyrical intricacies of Strauss’s late score” (NY Times).

The story of Jenůfa and her stepmother, the verger’s wife, is set within the confines of a closed community. Rivalry, jealousy and social control degenerate into the murder of an illegitimate but innocent child. Leoš Janáček’s third opera, based on the controversial play by Gabriela Preissová, is best known as Jenůfa, but by giving it the subtitle Her stepdaughter, the composer underlined the importance of the stepmother. Janáček’s score was rejected for a long time by the National Theatre in Prague. Jenůfa was nevertheless his breakthrough as a composer in musical theatre, where he used the speech melody as ‘the most authentic expression of the soul’. The Latvian director Alvis Hermanis, one of the masters of European theatre, makes his debut at La Monnaie. Our chief conductor Ludovic Morlot is the musical director.

In 15th-century Venice, Jacopo Foscari, son of the Doge of Venice Francesco Foscari, is to be tried by the Council of Ten for a crime of which he claims to be innocent. The Foscari family’s sworn enemy, the vindictive Jacopo Loredano, treacherously secures his sentence of exile. Despite the pleas of Lucrezia, Jacopo’s wife, the unfortunate father is forced to sign his son’s banishment order, even though he is convinced of his innocence. The young man dies of despair just before the real murderer comes forward. Loredano secures the removal of Francesco Foscari, who collapses, lifeless. "I due Foscari" is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, with a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, which premiered at the Teatro Argentina in Rome on 3 November 1844.