Helene Bracke
Helene Bracke is a multifaceted artist working as a creator and singer in the music theatre world. Through her organisation, The Butter Effect, she engages in co-productions with major entities within the Belgian arts scene, including Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, Festival van Vlaanderen, Les Festivals de Wallonie, Musica Impulscentrum and Theater de Spiegel.
Her productions are staged both domestically and internationally. For example, Loopneus, a production she created with Theater De Spiegel in 2022, has already been performed 180 times. In 2023, it was performed in Germany, the Czech Republic, France, and the Netherlands. In the spring of 2024, the production toured across Flanders and played at prestigious venues such as the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and the Opéra National de Paris. This season, the production has been invited back to both the Opéra National de Paris and the Elbphilharmonie, and will also travel to Vilnius, Lithuania.
In collaboration with Musica Impulscentrum, Helene created @ASTRA, a children’s performance set to music by Wim Henderickx. This show has been performed in Flanders and Luxembourg and was selected to play at the RomaEuropa Festival in 2024.
In 2019, she released the album Once in a Weill with the chamber orchestra Casco Phil, conducted by Benjamin Haemhouts – a full album dedicated to the music of Kurt Weill.
In 2017, she and her prog-rock band The Advent of March (formerly Al di Miseria) released the album Maxwell’s Delusion – a prog-rock opera.
Currently, Helene expresses her love for crossover music in MONTER. MONTER is a duo (of three) that experiments with sounds from yesterday and techniques from tomorrow.
Helene performed in productions in collaboration with the York Trust Opera (UK), INART (SRB), Opera Vlaanderen, Festival van Vlaanderen, Zomeropera Alden Biesen, I Solisti del Vento, Casco Phil Orchestra, Spectra Ensemble, CloseOpera, NTGent, Theater de Spiegel, and Musica.
Helene graduated with a Master’s degree in Classical Music from the Royal Conservatory of Ghent. After her studies, she specialized in opera through a two-year training course at the International Opera Academy. She studied with Annemie Moens, Gidon Saks, Marcos Pujol, Jard van Nes (NL), Robert Alderson (UK), and Catrin Wyn-Davis, and took masterclasses with René Jacobs, Natalie Dessay, Michael Spyres, Charlotte Margiono, among others.
