Belgian opera in the digital age

Recently, the Théâtre Royal de La Monnaie in Brussels was awarded the prestigious title of ‘Best Opera House of the Year 2024’. Today, La Monnaie aims to be even more innovative and modern, with one goal in mind: to make opera more accessible to younger generations. Currently, only 18% of the audience is less than 30 years, so aiming for least 20% would be a major step forward.

This bold initiative involves dividing the opera Tosca by Puccini into several parts. Puccini, one of the greatest composers of his time, died in Brussels in November 1924, by the way. The piece was divided into 403 videos, each 8 to 13 seconds long, which were then published on TikTok. As we all know, it’s mainly the younger generation that loves this kind of social media: humorous videos, cooking recipes, sports advice… But videos about operas, that’s a first! So that was the challenge – to succeed in drawing the interest of young people through TikTok, by making links between their desires, current trends and the opera. The project was tedious, with many challenges: cutting the opera at the right moments, maintaining a certain coherence and above all, knowing which scenes to keep or not.