Charlotte Hellekant

Experience Claudio Monteverdi's three-act opera in the environment it was meant to be seen with this release of a filmed performance captured live during a 2000 production staged at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence in France. Mireille Delunsch, Anne Sofie Von Otter, and Sylvie Brunet star, and conductor Marc Minkowski leads the Les Musiciens du Louvre, Grenoble. Klaus Michael Grüber directs for stage.

After a siege of ten years, the Greeks leave Troy. A giant wooden horse has been left on the beach. Despite Cassandra's dark premonitions, the offering is borne into the city...Pierre Audi directs Dutch soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek and American tenor Bryan Hymel in this epic Berlioz's opera, that requires an omnipresent chorus, a huge orchestra and a great virtuosity from the solists.

Margaret Williams directs this 2001 production of adaptation of Benjamin Britten's television opera based on a short story by Henry James. Performers featured include Gerald Finley, Peter Savidge and Josephine Barstow. The conductor is Kent Nagano. As pertinent now as then, OWEN WINGRAVE was composed by Benjamin Britten at the height of the Vietnam War. The opera poses the question: Is pacifism an act of cowardice? Or rather a desire to escape from the spiral of war and create world peace? To what extent do we determine our own futures? Should we let past events inform the decisions we make? Britten’s characters grapple with timeless issues in this gripping psychodrama.

Sophie left her homeland, the United States, after a secret tragedy. In Paris, she divides her time between an opera house, where she is the dresser for a great Swedish singer, and amateur theater. David, her director, pushes her to her limits: she cannot refuse, so stubbornly, to live and love again. Little by little, Sophie lets herself be disturbed by her speech, and moved by the amorous games and the sensual atmosphere of the opera on which she is working, "Le Chevalier a la rose" by Richard Strauss. After each performance, Sophie sees a silent young man, Valentin. She is convinced that he is coming for the beautiful singer. But one day, he speaks to her, and Sophie finally becomes an actress of her own story.