Läderlappen

Sasha Regan’s award-winning All-male Company are set to lift everyone’s spirits with a treat in their new West End pirate’s cove. The swashbuckling pirates and their winsome lasses sail into the Palace Theatre with their inventive new take on W. S. Gilbert & Arthur Sullivan’s classic operetta THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE. Featuring a dazzling cast singing songs including: “I am a Pirate King”; “Oh, happy day, with joyous glee” and “A rollicking band of pirates we”, they are sure to raise the roof off the Palace Theatre!

Bluebeard, an opéra bouffe by Jacques Offenbach, premiered in Paris in 1866. Directed by Laurent Pelly, the National Opera in Lyon stages this musical comedy about a man suspected of murdering his wives. Hortense Schneider originally played Boulotka, a village girl who reforms Bluebeard. Yann Beuron and Héloise Mas star, with Christophe Gay as the alchemist Popolani.

B. Britten's famous opera, which became a major theatrical event in its production by the National Theater Brno... The story of the opera Peter Grimes is as harsh and stormy as the landscape in which it takes place. A boy dies in a fishing village on the North Sea coast. Fisherman Peter Grimes is suspected of his murder. Although he is acquitted by the court, the locals have their own opinion and make it known. Social outcasts and the sea are the thematic pillars of this tragic opera, in which the staunch pacifist and humanist Benjamin Britten sides with all those who deviate from the norms of mainstream society. Although Benjamin Britten's work forms a fundamental part of contemporary opera production and he is the most frequently staged composer of the 20th century worldwide, in the Czech Republic we rarely have the opportunity to encounter his work. His most famous opera, Peter Grimes, from 1945, had its Czechoslovak premiere two years later at the National Theater in Brno.

Robert Lepage’s remarkable Met Opera production of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, the 2013 Grammy Award Winner for Best Opera Recording, is now available as individual DVDs. Siegfried features Bryn Terfel, Jay Hunter Morris, and Deborah Voigt, with Fabio Luisi conducting.

Ring Cycle, pt 4. Siegfried is drugged and tricked into kidnapping his wife, since she has the Ring now. More double-crossings, Siegfried ends up dead. Brunnhilde has had enough of this, tosses the Ring into the river and torches the place.

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.

A film version of the famous Bizet opera, where a soldier (Don Jose) falls in love with a beautiful factory worker (Carmen), but she does not reciprocate his feelings.

It is to composer and librettist Arrigo Boito and his constant pestering of the octogenarian Verdi that there remained within him one last great comedy fighting to get out that we owe this absolute miracle of an opera. Produced in 1893 as Verdi turned 80 there is much in this masterpiece that can be identified as a modernist neoclassical work. The use of short motifs instead of long arioso melodic lines, the spry and reduced orchestral textures and the lack of a single 'stand and deliver' dramatic declamatory aria all serve to make this more of a 20th century work than an example of 19th century late-Romanticism.

Cio-Cio-San, a young Japanese geisha, seeks to fulfill her dreams through marriage to an American naval officer. Her faith in their future is shattered by his empty vows and the loss she endures touches something deep within us all.

Cio-Cio-San, the young Japanese bride of American naval officer Lieutenant Pinkerton, finds her romantic idyll shattered when he deserts her shortly after their marriage. She lives in hope that one day he will return.

Anna Netrebko und Rolando Villazón singen "La Traviata"

Opera by Harry Somers portraying Metis leader Louis Riel and his Northwest Rebellion. 1969 CBC-TV production based on the original 1967 opera.

Adaptation of John Gay's 18th century opera, featuring Laurence Olivier as MacHeath and Hugh Griffith as the Beggar.

Silva Varescu, a self-sufficient and professionally successful cabaret performer from Budapest, is about to embark on a tour of America. Three of her aristocratic admirers, named Edwin, Feri and Boni, prefer her to stay. Edwin, unaware that his parents have already arranged a marriage for him back home in Vienna, orders a notary to prepare a promissory note of his expected marriage to Silva within ten weeks.

A young and wealthy widow, Maritsa, is a tempting prize for fortune hunters in search of a rich bride. To scare off all the suitors once and for all, Maritsa randomly invents a fiancé’s name. But it turns out that a man with that exact name actually exists—and now he’s happily rushing to meet his “bride.”

A filmed version of Tchaikovsky's opera. Onegin visits a friend, his fiancee and her sister Tatiana, who believes Onegin is her fated love. She writes a note telling him so, but he rejects her. Years later he returns, finding her married, but now he's smitten with her.

Hammerstein and Kern’s Show Boat is a true classic of American musical theater - a tale of life on the Mississippi from the 1880s to the 1920s is both a poignant love story and a powerful reminder of the bitter legacy of racism. The exuberant production from the San Francisco Opera features songbook classics such as “Ol’ Man River” and “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man”.

When the most voluptuous, sought-after courtesan in the world meets an ascetic monk whose life is devoted to God, you know erotic sparks are going to fly. And when the clash takes place in a glorious, but rarely performed, opera by Massenet, it’s a delight to the ear just as much as to the eye. Renée Fleming is every inch the glamorous Thaïs, swathed in elegant gowns designed by Christian Lacroix. Thomas Hampson is Athanaël, the tortured man of God. This production by John Cox, which premiered in December 2008, brilliantly sets the stage for a confrontation as old as civilization itself.

Glyndebourne's Saul stole the summer and had critics raving. The Guardian (****) applauded virtuoso stagecraft from director Barrie Kosky in his debut production there, calling the show a theatrical and musical feast of energetic choruses, surreal choreography and gorgeous singing. For The Independent, which ranked it amongst five top classical and opera performances of 2015, there was no praise too high for the cast. The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under Ivor Bolton sparkles from the pit with period panache, and designer Katrin Lea Tag's exuberant costumes (The Times ****) set the Old Testament story in Handel's time, with a witty twinge of the contemporary.

Film version of the Rimsky Korsakov opera from the Pushkin story. Motsart i Salyeri (Mozart and Salieri), based on a legend that Salieri poisoned Mozart, meditates on the nature of creativity while introducing, in brilliantly compressed speeches, what was to be one of the important Russian themes—metaphysical rebellion against God.