Madama Butterfly marked a new phase in Puccini’s development, in which he enriched his musical palette with the exoticism of the Far East. The fact that his direct emotionality contains a universal dimension is clear from the lasting worldwide popularity of this work. Hotel Pro Forma, known to us for their performance of Rachmaninov Troika in 2015, brings East and West together in a theatrical ritual for our time. Roberto Rizzi Brignoli, a master of the Italian repertoire, makes his La Monnaie debute.

Finding the right librettos was not easy, but one month after the end of the First World War, his triptych – the grim tragedy Il tabarro, the lyrical and sensitive Suor Angelica, and the comedy Gianni Schicchi – premiered in New York. Three different eras, three different settings, three different ‘colours’; though for Puccini, it is through the contrasts between them that the unity of the work is revealed. For his second time directing at La Monnaie, Tobias Kratzer preserves the original order of the pieces, while weaving them together to form a narrative whole, like a circle with no end. With a cast of artists from the extended La Monnaie family, Alain Altinoglu is the ideal conductor to meet the daunting challenges posed by this triptych.