Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe

Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe (b. 1995) is a performer, countertenor and director of musical and visual art performances.

He regards theatre as an echo chamber in which old and new forms intermingle. He is not interested in a clash of styles, but has made ‘connecting’ into his artistic practice: his work builds bridges between genres, art movements, artists, and audiences.

After graduating from the Toneelacademie Maastricht in 2018, Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe almost immediately plunged into the opera world. With its blending of music and drama, it serves as the ideal biotope for the Big Emotions that Meirhaeghe invariably seeks out in his work. Meirhaeghe’s passion for the genre also makes him want to break it open and rewrite it; the age-old music must be liberated from the yoke of tradition. It must become the music of today: “Art and repertoire are far more exciting in a kind of relay in which you hand them on to others who set to work on them, than in the eternal repetition of covers.” Meirhaeghe sees it as a challenge to combine classical fragments with new symbols and radical sounds. This results in profoundly sensitive, overpowering performances with the strength of rituals that resonate with today’s world.

For his creations, Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe collects a colourful company both onstage and off. He strives to bring people together who at first sight seem to have nothing in common, but who for this very reason can step into a new world and thus depict the future. In his work, you hear dancers singing and see singers dancing. Thus in at a single stroke he calls concepts such as musical perfection and virtuosity into question. The surprising combination of performers also leads to an intermingling of audiences, one of Meirhaeghe’s primary goals. He wants to lure the pop world to the theatre, and draw concert audiences into the playhouse. 

At Opera Ballet Vlaanderen in 2020 he created A Revue, a retro-futuristic and queer cabaret in which aliens dig up the lost artefacts of the opera again. This visually dazzling performance was selected for the TheaterFestival 2021.

In 2021 there was also the ritual concert Spectacles, a performance and a record in which relentless beats, disarming love songs, Meirhaeghe’s fragile counter-tenor, and jazz and group influences come together. Along with producer Laurens Mariën and dancer Hanako Hayakawa, he transformed the concert into a theatrical experience.

Madrigals premiered in early 2022. Meirhaeghe kneaded the Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi by Claudio Monteverdi, lively vocal works about war and love, into a call for freedom driven by pugnacity and passion, and blended these with the experimental pop of Jesse Kanda.

His first creation for Toneelhuis was Ode to a Love Lost (2023). This performance is based on the personal love story of Meirhaeghe himself, and plays out in the deep crater of a heart.

In autumn 2023, Meirhaeghe was invited by Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz for his own, magnificent variant on the creation myth: Death Drive - Everything everyone ever did.

In early 2024 he made Shelly Shonk Fiffit at Toneelhuis: with a replica of the James Webb-space telescope centre stage, the music of Caterina Barbieri and pictorial movements. 

Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe is a member of the band Isabelle Lewis, together with composer and producer Valgeir Sigurdsson and violinist Elisabeth Klinck. In October 2024 they released their debut album Greetings.

Also in 2024 Johan Simons invited Meirhaeghe to be a guest director at Schauspielhaus Bochum. Give Up, Old Ghosts! Became an encounter between performers of different generations and backgrounds, with Mozart’s Requiem as the centre point. 

In spring 2025 at Toneelhuis, Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe made Mantike: a visual monologue, written by Louise Van den Eede and performed by Marjan De Schutter, about the art of prediction in light of an approaching apocalypse.

In the 2025-2026 season, there are no fewer than three premieres on the programme, each of which is based on a piece of classical music. Chapters of Celebration, a sweeping musical theatre performance in collaboration with Wouter Deltour, DE SINGEL, B’Rock and Europalia, has as its central motif one of the oldest musical themes from European music: La Folia. With a rite of spring, set to new, rousing music by Lander Gyselinck, Meirhaeghe pays tribute to the evergreen classic The Rite of Spring as a radical account of female sacrifices today. The final piece is a remake of Give Up, Old Ghosts!, with a leading role for Mozart’s unfinished Requiem. 

Since 2022, Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe, together with Lisaboa Houbrechts, Görges Ocloo, FC Bergman and Olympique Dramatique, has taken on the artistic leadership of Toneelhuis.