Cultural Compass: Flanders Festival Ghent, Verdi's comedic side and a sneak peak in Bruges
Every Sunday, Belga English picks its favourite events from the cultural agenda. This week: masses descend on Ghent for a whirlwind of music, Shakespeare and opera come together for comedy romp, and Bruges teases its newest cultural icon.
Flanders Festival Ghent, until 2 October
Each autumn, the historic heart of Ghent becomes a stage for Flanders Festival Ghent, a celebration of music in its most transcendent forms, where classical, jazz and world music converge in spectacular fashion. The city plays host to more than 180 concerts, showcasing the talents of 1,500 international artists.
More than 50,000 music lovers visit the city every year to experience this programme, whether devoted fans of stained-glass-quiet chamber music or adventurous listeners discovering new sounds. The festival is as much about tradition as it is about discovery, offering performances in architectural gems, concert halls, churches and other atmospheric venues.
Falstaff, 21 September-9 October, La Monnaie, Brussels
Giuseppe Verdi, famed for his grand tragedies, chose to end his operatic career with a laugh. “After having relentlessly massacred so many heroes and heroines, I have at last the right to laugh a little,” he said of his final work, Falstaff.
This sparkling comic opera follows the misadventures of Sir John Falstaff, an ageing nobleman, notorious drunk and hopeless womaniser, who finds himself deep in debt. Hoping to solve his financial woes, he hatches a clumsy plan: woo two wealthy married women, Alice Ford and Meg Page, and gain access to their husbands’ fortunes. Sending them identical love letters, Falstaff believes his charm will do the rest.
But Alice and Meg are far sharper than he imagines. With the help of their friends, they turn the tables, plotting a series of humiliating tricks to expose his treachery, from ridiculous disguises to a notorious dunking in the Thames.
Based on Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, Verdi’s Falstaff brims with wit, mischief and beautiful ensembles. It is a joyous farewell from one of opera’s greatest composers: a work that proves comedy, no less than tragedy, can be timeless.
WELKOM BRUSK, 21&22 September, Bruges
The new BRUSK art gallery marks the pre-opening of the building, inviting visitors to discover its architecture before its formal exhibitions begin in May. Art and spectacle will literally take over the city. From a gigantic mechanical art installation to poetic music and dazzling aerial acrobatics: BRUSK shows how art connects the literal and figurative.
The programme mingles spectacle, art and sensory experience. Inside BRUSK, the international collective Numen/For Use will install a monumental tape-art piece: thousands of metres of transparent tape will weave through the galleries in forms you can crawl, climb and wander through.
This immersive setting is complemented by a soundscape by Bruges composer Patrick Hamilton, with moments of live music layered into the ambient composition.
Outside, the festival expands through the city. High in the air, a highline by the Belgian collective Lyapunov will stretch almost 400m between Bruges’ Belfry and the Church of Our Lady, where tightrope walkers will perform accompanied by the unique Skyolin string instrument, dance and live music.
Meanwhile, the French Compagnie La Machine brings La Grande Araignée, a giant mechanical spider, to roam the streets between ’t Zand and the Visartpark.
All events are free and the whole of Bruges’ inner city will be transformed into an open stage of art and performance.
John Baldessari: Parables, Fables and Other Tall Tales,
19 September-1 February, Bozar, Brussels
John Baldessari (1931–2020) was one of the towering figures of contemporary art, renowned for overturning artistic conventions with wit and invention. Blending text, photography and painting, he pioneered a playful new visual language often drawing on popular culture, film and mass media.
Bozar will present the first major European exhibition of his work since his death. Filling the Ravenstein galleries with more than 60 works, including monumental pieces and European premières, the show offers a vibrant immersion into Baldessari’s universe.
The American artist’s ties to Brussels run deep: he held solo shows there in the 1970s and collaborated for decades with Galerie Greta Meert. His affinity with Belgian humour, and his admiration for artists like Magritte and Broodthaers, made the city a natural artistic home. This exhibition is a sort of homecoming for an artist who never stopped reinventing himself.
Stephan Vanfleteren: Transcripts of a Sea, 20 September-1 April, MSK, Ghent
For the first time, the photographer reveals the enchantment that has drawn him to (and into) the sea over the past five years. His previously unseen images invite viewers to experience centuries of marine art, from the 17th century to today, through a new lens.
Driven by what he calls a “dangerous obsession and fluid desire”, Vanfleteren explores the sea in all its moods: stormy, mirror-smooth, mist-shrouded, thundering, treacherously calm or swirling like a runaway drum. He doesn't remain safely on shore but immerses himself in a direct, physical confrontation, literally diving into the waters he seeks to capture.
The exhibition places Vanfleteren in dialogue with artists equally possessed by the sea – among them Courbet, Ensor, Spilliaert, Strindberg and Dumas. Like them, he resists mere observation. Instead, through years of persistence, he renders “his” sea personal, shifting, and inexhaustible.
MAURICE, Tristesse et rigolade, 19 September-21 December, Hangar Brussels
Brussels artist Charlotte Abramow has been fascinated by images since childhood. She began exploring themes of the body, femininity and life’s transitions through surreal and often absurd compositions.
At 24, she was the visual director for Belgian pop star Angèle’s debut album BROL, creating its entire photographic universe and directing several of her iconic music videos, including La Loi de Murphy and Balance ton Quoi.
Abramow’s most personal project emerged from her relationship with her father. In 2018, she published her first book, MAURICE, Tristesse et rigolade, a poetic tribute to Maurice Abramow, a doctor, teacher and survivor of childhood hiding during the war.
Combining family archives with her own images, the book was born from their shared journey through his illness. Maurice, who had been Charlotte’s first studio model, never lived to see its release.
Now revisited as an immersive exhibition at Hangar, MAURICE is more than a story of loss. It is a celebration of complicity, humour, tenderness and resilience. Father and daughter have created a visual dialogue that turns grief into light.
Ongoing events
Brussels
Bruxelles, la Congolaise
Loisirs-Plezier: Brussels 1920-1940
Ghent
Beauty as Resistance
Fairground Wonders
Hasselt
Rococo Reboot
Leuven
Ecstasy & Orewoet
Grace Schwindt: A History of Touch
Kortrijk
Rekindling
(MOH)
#FlandersNewsService | What We Can Do Together, part of the Ghent Festival Flanders programme © PHOTO YURI VAN DER HOEVEN
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