Lucrezia Borgia - Teatro degli Arcimboldi

Giordano: Andrea Chénier - Teatro alla Scala

Madama Butterfly - Teatro alla Scala

Rossini: La Gazza Ladra - Teatro alla Scala

Anna Bolena - Reate Festival di Rieti

n his 'new life' as a baritone, Placido Domingo has triumphed in the role of Francesco Foscari in Los Angeles, London and Vienna. Now he takes to the role to La Scala, Milan, the theatre that is the symbol of Italian opera. I due Foscari, premiered in 1844, famously one of Verdi's darkest operas, is staged by Alvis Hermanis, who made such an impact at the Salzburg Festival with "Die Soldaten" and "Il trovatore". Domingo is joined by two of Italy's most exciting singers, the soprano Anna Pirozzi and the tenor Francesco Meli, and the acclaimed Italian conductor Michele Mariotti. The Financial Times was deeply moved by Domingo's performance, calling his interpretation of the role "sublime".

One of the composer's most beguiling scores, La Favorite is Gaetano Donizetti's La favorita in it's original French form; a tale of love and war that represents a glorious mix of Italian bel canto and 19th c. grand opera. Vincent Boussard's arresting Toulouse production does full justice to this newly renewed masterpiece. Three international principals take on the work's demanding roles: Chinese tenor Yijie Shi is a 'revelation' as Fernand, the rich-toned, authoritative French baritone Ludovic Tezier as King Alphonse XI and lauded American mezzo Kate Aldrich - 'the Carmen of this generation' - plumbing the emotional depths of Leonor's music. Conductor and bel canto specialist Antonello Allemandi adds to the passionate proceedings onstage. Maestro Allemandi demonstrated full authority over the stage for the musically complex scenes, and in the arias and duets demonstrated his confidence in the singers by establishing ample tempos to support their soaring vocal lines.

Lucrèce Borgia, une femme au Vatican

Six Italian directors explore contemporary Milan in a rich and eclectic portrait of urban life and spaces—both rooted in history and bursting with a diversity of architecture and humanity.

After the coal mine he works at closes and his father commits suicide, a Finnish man leaves for the city to make a living but there, he is framed and imprisoned for various crimes.

Nikander, a rubbish collector and would-be entrepreneur, finds his plans for success dashed when his business associate dies. One evening, he meets Ilona, a down-on-her-luck cashier, in a local supermarket. Falteringly, a bond begins to develop between them.

Sunday in August

Newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane is taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist. As a result, every well-meaning, tyrannical or self-destructive move he makes for the rest of his life appears in some way to be a reaction to that deeply wounding event.

Selma, a Czech immigrant on the verge of blindness, struggles to make ends meet for herself and her son, who has inherited the same genetic disorder and will suffer the same fate without an expensive operation. When life gets too difficult, Selma learns to cope through her love of musicals, escaping life's troubles - even if just for a moment - by dreaming up little numbers to the rhythmic beats of her surroundings.

An ugly ducking attempts to become desirable.

Everyday Is Like Sunday is a comedy/drama aiming the lens at post-collegiate characters stuck between their imminently-ending youth and impending adulthood. The film follows Mark, Jason, and Flora, as they realistically attempt to pull themselves out of economic and emotional doldrums.

A young hippie couple rent a secluded cabin on the beach in an attempt to re-connect with each other and save their marriage. Unfortunately, the man they rented the cabin from is a military-brat sociopath with two dogs more vicious than his temper.

A young officer returns to his base after a daring mission. The cook's assistant, a religious Holocaust survivor, is envious of him. He believes that there is a place in heaven reserved for the brave officer who endangers his life for the sake of his Jewish brethren. The officer, in the spirit of the Zionist ethos, is secular and a non-believer. At the moment, he is so hungry that, for a plate of shaksuka, he is prepared to sign a contract transferring his secured place in heaven to the cook. Some forty years later, the present time of the movie, the tables have turned - the officer, now a retired general, is on his death bed in the hospital. His son who, to his father's horror, has found religion, is in a race against time. Before his father dies, he has to find that cook's assistant who, forty years earlier, bought his place in heaven. If and when he finds him, the son has to nullify the contract. If he doesn't, his father will go to hell.

Based on real events, and set in Rio de Janeiro, A Wolf at the Door is the nerve-rattling tale of a kidnapped child and the terror of the parents left behind. When Sylvia discovers her six-year-old daughter has been picked up at school by an unknown woman, police summon her husband, Bernardo, to the station for questioning. From that point on, the film takes increasingly sinister turns as it delves into the events that led to the girl’s kidnapping. With plot twists that will keep the audience on the edge of their seats, A Wolf at the Door is a darkly disturbing journey into the extreme limits of the human capacity for obsession and revenge.

A nine-year-old boy’s preening obsession with straightening his hair elicits a tidal wave of homophobic panic in his hard-working mother, in this tender but clear-eyed coming-of-age tale.

Two brothers and their wives have dinner in a fancy restaurant to discuss their teenage children's misdeeds. An excoriating assessment of Europe’s contemporary social ills.