Marie-Belle Sandis

The most annoing things about this production is that the actors, Voyager I and II, spoke most of the recitatives as the singers on the most part were making hand jestures to go along with the spoken words, and the Voyagers' weird distracting seizure movements, jestures and bodyslamming themselves to the ground while the singers sang. It's amazing how the singers could focus on their arias and keep their composure.

Phèdre loves Hippolyte, but Hippolyte loves Aricie. And wouldn’t you just know it, Hippolyte is the son of Phèdre's husband Thésée. Rameau tells his story with an expressive force that earned him the reputation of a revolutionary at the premiere in 1733. The richness of his harmonies, rhythms and melodies spans an entire cosmos from the underworld to the heavens, which stage director Lorenzo Fioroni, together with baroque specialist Bernhard Forck, captures in spectacular images fusing music, text, film and dance into a new unity.

A captain is cursed to sail the seas of the world forever, only allowed to make landfall once every seven years. Will he find the love of a faithful woman to break the curse? Richard Wagner came across the legend of The Flying Dutchman in 1838 through Heinrich Heine’s From the Memoirs of Herr von Schnabelewopski. After a stormy voyage from Riga to London – Wagner was again on the run from creditors – he chose the material for his next opera and began to compose it, with the unpredictable power of the sea still fresh on his face. Against the backdrop of this wild nature, Wagner exposes in Holländer his utopia of a love that transcends, offered as an antidote to the 19th century zeitgeist of pounding industrialisation and economic growth. Roger Vontobel’s new production from Mannheim is streamed live on the opening night and audiences around the world can share in some of the most rousing music written in opera.