Mika Kares

Prince Tamino promises the Queen of the Night that he will rescue her daughter Pamina from the enchanter Sarastro. He begins his quest, accompanied by the bird-catcher Papageno – but all is not as it seems… Tamino and Papageno discover Sarastro is a wise and kind leader. They undergo three ordeals. By the end they are united with their true loves: Tamino with Pamina, and Papageno with his Papagena.

Handel: Agrippina

The ambiguities of Verdi’s theatre are particularly clear in his baritone roles, among which is that of Boccanegra, corsair turned doge of Genoa and the troubled observer of the conflicts that tore apart 14th century landowners and peasants. An eminently political opera in which power struggles are interwoven with family conflicts, Simon Boccanegra echoes the life of its composer – the man who championed the cause of Italian unification and overcame the loss of his wife and children. Calixto Bieito, that most Shakespearean of opera directors, brings humanism and truth to a work haunted by gleaming images of the sea.

Donizetti's French masterpiece was in the hands of Italian conductor Antonello Allemandi. This maestro, a bel canto specialist, captured the fire and intensity of the passions from the get-go, making the overture a superbly eloquent transition to a musical world based on beautiful lines and colors that elaborate distress and make it compellingly elegant. Allemandi demonstrated a full authority over the stage for the musically complex scenes, and in the arias and duets he demonstrated his confidence in the artistry of distraught singers by establishing ample tempos to support their soaring vocal lines while he concentrated on pulling every possible nuance from the pit players.

Premiered in 1787, “Don Giovanni” exposes the timeless theme of a man hovering between vitality and destruction. Neither morality nor the law can stop this serial lover in his quest to conquer all women as he places his own pleasure above all other principles. Today, the rich depth of Mozart’s masterpiece still astonishes audiences with its mix of comedy and seriousness, pleasure and love, entertainment and murder. At the helm of this new Salzburg Festival production, in a near-live broadcast from the Great Festival Hall, director Romeo Castellucci promises to focus on the ambiguity and inner turmoil of this serial lover whose immoral behaviour condemns him to a deadly solitude. The exceptional cast – featuring Italian baritone Davide Luciano (Don Giovanni), Russian soprano Nadezhda Pavlova (Donna Anna) and Finnish bass Mika Kares (the Commendatore) – is accompanied by the chorus and musicians of the musicAeterna ensemble, conducted by Vitaly Polonsky and Teodor Currentzis.

The production by Calixto Bieito extracts all the potential from this work in a most convincing and spine-chilling way. The action takes place in a closed society of the 1950s, taking this story of witchcraft, sex and religion to the realism of imitation leather sofas, crochet cardigans, medical abuse and child molestation.

Richard Wagner: Das Rheingold - Aus der Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin

Richard Wagner: Die Walküre - Aus der Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin