Iwona Sobotka

Victorious in battle, admired by his men, loved by his wife - fate seems to smile on Otello. Happy moments, however, pass imperceptibly when the hero’s mind begins to be gripped by suspicion and jealousy seeps into the heart. And doubts lead to destruction. Live from Poznań on the opening night of a new production, OperaVision brings you this great opera presented here in the hands of another distinguished artistic pairing; director David Pountney and conductor Jacek Kaspszyk. High drama and passionate music taking us into the darker corners of the human mind.

Destined for the convent, the young Manon falls head over heels in love with a handsome stranger and decides to flee with him. Yet aspiring to a life of wealth and luxury, she ends up throwing herself into the arms of a rich nobleman. Can she forget her true love? Puccini’s adaptation of the novel by Abbé Prévost had a complicated gestation. An alarmingly long list of librettists succeed each other in trying to satisfy the composer’s demands in terms of dramatic structure and fine verbal detail. Was Puccini struggling perhaps to make his opera sufficiently different from Massenet’s on the same subject? Puccini probably never reached a ‘definitive’ form of this opera but it was his first international success and arguably the first in which the composer found his voice as a musical dramatist. Opera Poznań has entrusted their new production - streamed live on the opening night - to a former winner of the European Opera Directing Prize, Gerard Jones, and conductor Marco Guidarini.