Composer Philippe Boesmans was born on 16 May 1936 in Tongeren, Limburg—a place where, at the time, cultural life was all but nonexistent. “There were no concerts. There was a bandstand for brass bands and wind ensembles, and there was the radio,” Boesmans would later recall. In this provincial town near the language border, he was known, in his own words, as the ‘anarchist’, owing to his social engagement. After studying at the Liège Conservatory, he moved to Brussels, where he even joined the Communist Party.

Boesmans initially aspired to a career as a concert pianist, but his teacher, Stefan Askenase, dissuaded him. In the Liège circle around Henri Pousseur, he discovered the contemporary music scene, where electroacoustic experimentation led to the creation of new sounds. Stimulated by this discovery, Boesmans began to compose and, through his work at RTBF, had the chance to refine his craft. For radio plays and documentaries on the French-speaking network, he wrote pastiches—original music in the style of other composers. Later, in his operas, he would continue to allude playfully to his (historical) peers.

Philippe Boesmans is best known as an opera composer—a genre that, by the mid-twentieth century, was on the brink of extinction. In the 1980s, Gérard Mortier, then director of La Monnaie, approached Boesmans for a new work: La Passion de Gilles (1983). Its success marked the start of a long collaboration. From 1985, Boesmans served as composer-in-residence at the opera house, creating several landmark productions. Some critics placed his second opera, Reigen, in the pantheon of modern opera; the work was even published in the prestigious L’Avant-scène Opéra series. All of Boesmans’s operas were staged in Brussels, most of them receiving their world premieres there.