Is This The End? | 1. Dead little girl

How to stage the hereafter, that unknown timespace on and beyond the treshold of death?— Ingrid von Wantoch Rekowski

To start the opera season, La Monnaie commissioned a pop requiem from the Belgian composer Jean-Luc Fafchamps. With the title Is this the end?, this new piece has three parts, the first of which, Dead Little Girl, will be performed as a live-filmed opera and broadcast on our website.

Éric Brucher’s libretto introduces us to a teenager who is caught between life and death and faces other characters hovering in a transitory state of ‘departing consciousness’. With the current Coronavirus crisis, this theme takes on a particular meaning in that many victims’ families or loved ones have been unable to say goodbye to them.

Ingrid von Wantoch Rekowski directs, aiming to give life to this ‘Mass’ of people who are half alive. Presented in a brand-new format, the show combines a film — shot in La Monnaie buildings — with live performances by seventeen musicians from La Monnaie Symphony Orchestra, eighteen vocalists from La Monnaie Chorus and three soloist singers.