1 post tagged “belgium”

Bruxelles is a tiny but beautiful city with atmosphere.

At De Munt La Monnaie in Bruxells on Feb 30th, 2007, I attended The Fiery Angel by Prokofiev directed by a Japanese conductor Kazushi Ono. The production, having too avant-garde sound of music with sensual and demonic contents, had been banned from performing at opera houses in Russia. Even now, the number of the performance of The Fiery Angel is much fewer than that of other blockbuster productions like Carmen or Aida.

Ono said at the interview with me after the production the reason why he chose such an esoteric production which was even sung in Russian language on regular basis during the season 2007 in Belgium. "Music works with valuable quality to appreciate should be performed even though they were not popular yet and people weren’t interested in them, but spreading unknown great music works is totally my job”.

I might want to add something to his comment: Ono could choose The Fiery Angel because it was in Bruxelles. There is an interesting history: music works that could not be performed because of political reason (banned by a government) or artistic reasons (too avant-garde,etc) had been freely staged in Belgium. Also, De Munt La Monnaie has put an effort into “audience development” to make people take more interests in music. Yes, people in Bruxelles have been ready to accept and even absorb something new.

 

“putting the right production among the right people”

 

The marketing of classical music is the same as other business.