La Cenerentola

The complete version of Verdi's Otello performed by Placido Domingo and Kiri Te Kanawa, at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Gala Performance in honour of Sir Georg Solti's 80th birthday.. 27 October 1992. BBC 2 Television live relay.

Officers Ferrando and Guglielmo are certain that their lovers Dorabella and Fiordiligi are faithful to them, but the cynical Don Alfonso challenges them to a bet that the women will be unfaithful given the chance. The officers thus pretend to go off to war, and return in disguise as Albanian strangers, to woo Dorabella and Fiordiligi incognito. The ladies are initially frosty, but soon warm to their new suitors, spurred on by their maid Despina. Performed at the La Scala Theatre in Milan.

Among DVDs of "Hoffmann" currently available, this is the only one that even begins to stand comparison with the superlative Powell and Pressburger film (whose ideas it occasionally borrows). Olivier Py's baroque imagination, which sometimes leads him into self-indulgence and incoherence, is well suited to bringing out this opera's darkness and he does an excellent job

Performed live at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Gluck's opera in three acts is conducted by Hartmut Haenchen. Performers include Jochen Kowalski, Gillian Webster and Jeremy Budd, alongside the Royal Opera Chorus and Orchestra. When Orpheus mourns for his late wife Eurydice, the god Cupid offers him the chance to descend into the underworld and lead her back to the land of the living, on the condition that he does not look at her face. He sets out on his journey, but his path to the Elysian Fields is blocked by the fierce Furies.

The celebrated mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli joins Bryn Terfel for a recital of arias and duets recorded at Glyndebourne Opera House in 1999. The programme features favourite pieces from Mozart, Rossini and Donizetti, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Myung-Whun Chung.

John Eliot Gardiner conducts Gluck’s 1776 French version of “Alceste” at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. Soprano Anne Sofie von Otter takes the title role of Alceste, Queen of Thessaly, who offers to die at the hands of the gods in place of her husband, Admète (Paul Groves), so that the people will not lose their king. Alceste is then saved from the underworld by Hercule (Dietrich Henschel).

This is a joy from beginning to end. Although there are many tricks and ideas from Laurent Pelly, as always he seems to still retain the Offenbach magic. La Lott and Monsieur Beuron are a joy, but so is everyone else. The Patriotic Trio by the sea is both a hoot and wonderfully sung, the score seems truly complete yet never flags and the finale sequences for especially acts 1 & 2 are a joy of movement and sound fused as one glorious Offenbachian moment.

Handel's 1724 opera Tamerlano followed the success of his previous year's Giulio Cesare with another colourful historical costume drama. This time the setting is the court of "Timur the Tartar", who has just defeated the Turkish Sultan Bajazet at the battle of Angora. There are, naturally enough, romantic complications when both Tamerlano and his ally, the Greek Prince Andronico, fall in love with Bajazet's daughter Asteria. She, however, has plans to revenge her father's defeat. This production was directed by Jonathan Miller and staged in the intimate surroundings of the Goethe Theatre of Bad Lauchstadt as part of the 2001 Halle Handel Festival.

Live performance from Cologne Opera. Conlon conducts a skittishly dynamic performance of Don Giovanni. He relies on Thomas Allen’s tough Don to give the work much of its dark menace and on Holle’s terrifying Commendatore to provide the moral outrage – his job is to keep things moving, and he does. The exteriors – blank city spaces reminiscent of the paintings of Giorgio De Chirico – and moodily claustrophobic interiors mirror effectively the anguish of the orphaned Anna and the abandoned Elvira; this is a performance in which the two women victims of the Don function effectively as correctives to his libertine charm. Andrea Rost as Zerlina brings real delicacy to her role, reminding us that “La ci darem la mano” is a duet about her flirtation with Don Giovanni and not just a famous stand-alone moment. This is an admirable presentation of a fine performance.

Il trovatore - Liceu

Götterdämmerung, the final instalment of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung, is a story of human passions. Two essentially benevolent creatures, involved with and possibly doomed by their traffic with the gods, find treachery and evil in the world of the humans, and are ruined by the dark side of humanity. Iréne Theorin, acclaimed worldwide for her portrayal of Wagner’s heroines, stars as Brünnhilde opposite Lance Ryan, who continues his radiant portrayal of the tragic hero Siegfried. The strong cast also includes Mikhail Petrenko as the dark antagonist Hagen and Johannes Martin Kränzle, who once again shines as his father Alberich. Waltraud Meier has a memorable appearance as Brünnhilde’s sister Waltraute. With this 2013 recording of Götterdämmerung, the musically and visually compelling Scala Ring Cycle by Daniel Barenboim and Guy Cassiers was completed and proved to be one of the highlights of the Richard Wagner bicentenary.

In Siegfried, the “Second Day” or third evening of the Ring Cycle, we meet the pivotal hero of the epic tale. The energetic drive from Die Walküre is pursued here while Siegfried finally recaptures the mighty ring from Fafner the Dragon and awakens Brünnhilde from her penal sleep on the great rock. Lance Ryan, having interpreted this role on the greatest stages of the world including the Bayreuth Festival, portrays the naïve hero. His antagonists are Peter Bronder, great and agile as Mime, Terje Stensvold, an experienced Wanderer and Johannes Martin Kränzle, who continues his mean and deceitful depiction of Alberich. The leading ladies are Nina Stemme, once again unrivalled as Brünnhilde and Anna Larsson, moving as the God-mother Erda.

Sergey Prokofiev's operatic tragedy The Fiery Angel was never performed in the composers lifetime the musics brittle energy, drama and eloquent lyrical tenderness would re-emerge in his Third Symphony. The narrative focuses relentlessly on Renata, who is haunted by an angel who turns out to be the devil. Director Emma Dante describes the opera as an explosive mix of fantastical realism and endless confusion of nightmares, madness, sexual impulses and cultural clashes, and this Teatro dellOpera di Roma production was acclaimed as a presentation of Prokofievs masterpiece which sparkles in all its grotesque glory (operawire.com)

Simon Rattle conducts the Berliner Philharmoniker in Stepháne Braunschweig's production of Richard Wagner's Die Walküre. A Festival d'Aix-en-Provence 2007 production, in coproduction with Osterfestspiele Salzburg. Directed for HDTV and video by Don Kent.

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.

A sudden gunshot shatters the dream of two lovers on their wedding day. The fate of Orpheus and Eurydice is cruel: on the very day they sought to seal their love, EurydiceΆs soul embarks on its journey to the underworld. Heartbroken, Orpheus embarks on a perilous journey to bring his beloved back from Hades. A journey that will lead the fearless hero to confront the depths of his emotions and face his greatest fears. This journey will take him through strange worlds and into encounters with some of the greatest musical pieces and arias in the history of music. Will love triumph over death?

Lovely but lethal, the evil Princess Turandot comes to life through the performance of Luana De Vol in this visually stunning production of Giacomo Puccini's Peking-set opera directed by Nuria Espert and conducted by Giuliano Carella. In this 2004 performance at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, Spain, all the subtleties of Puccini's unique tonality and unconventional instrumentation are in ample evidence.

Tosca is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900. This version is conducted by Riccardo Muti at La Scala, Milan.

With this DVD and Blu-ray of Rodelinda, one of Handel’s most emotionally complex operas, conductor Emmanuelle Haïm adds to her impressive Erato catalogue of the composer’s works. The imaginative production, by Jean Bellorini, was seen at the Opéra de Lille in Autumn 2018, and the cast features soprano Jeanine De Bique in the title role, countertenor Tim Mead as her husband Bertarido and another countertenor, Erato’s rising star Jakub Józef Orliński as Unulfo. Reviewing the production, Le Monde noted Emmanuelle Haïm’s “intimate connection with this music, which she knows how to unleash in all its violence, passion and heart-wrenching expressivity.”

Disenchanted opera star Carlotta Manson falls for ruffian cat burglar Barney McGann and gives up her career to marry him. But Barney grows disenchanted himself at being known as the husband of a diva and itches to get back to his life of crime and manliness.