Force of Love

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 tribute to marriage coming from a bachelor is a tad suspicious. But for Beethoven the idealization of the woman-bride was heartfelt and sincere. It has always been a unique opera starring a courageous wife who wows audiences. Fidelio is a moral title, associated with the ideals of liberty of the French Enlightenment. Nobility and commoners are united in their thirst for justice against the oppression of power. For once the faithful consort of a desaparecido wins her battle against a treacherous tyrant, and the collective joy truly is “nameless”, as is sung on the stage. Especially because the “our heroes to the rescue” finale is recounted by the triumphant symphonic flair of the quintessential musician. Beethoven really does bring the world to collapse at the conclusion of this opera, which begins like a delightful little comedy, but which scales and transcends all the summits of the dramatic-musical art.

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.

"La Bohème" is one of Giacomo Puccini's most popular and timeless works and the second-most performed opera at New York's Metropolitan Opera. This production, directed by the legendary Franco Zeffirelli, features José Carreras, Teresa Stratas, Renata Scotto and Richard Stilwell. The opera is replete with extraordinary visual beauty as it presents the tragic story of young bohemians struggling to make it in the world.

“Let us assume that Switzerland is truly a paradise. The music hereto was written long ago. We have merely forgotten it.” (Daniel Schmid) This is the material from which the most Swiss of all operas is made: the legendary Wilhelm Tell – a Swiss hero: straightforward, a primus inter pares of the indomitable freedom fighters, a good shot, surefire. A myth that becomes a poetic playground: nature in turmoil, the struggle for freedom and forbidden love. A legendary overture at a gallop with an iconic post horn motif – all this and much more in the thirty-seventh and last opera by Rossini.

The most popular Czech comic opera, with a libretto by Karel Sabina, marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of Bedřich Smetana, in the current production of the National Theater in Prague. For more than 150 years, The Bartered Bride has dominated Czech opera. No one else, not even Smetana himself, has managed to surpass its popularity, which over the years has become part of our national DNA, so to speak. At the time of its creation in the 1860s, however, The Bartered Bride was actually quite a bold experiment – Bedřich Smetana and librettist Karel Sabina masterfully mocked all those who imagined "national opera" as an idyllic picture of the Czech countryside, where national virtues reign supreme.

"Die tote Stadt" is a psychologically layered drama with Hitchcock-like features, about Paul who, after the loss of his beloved Marie, slowly but surely becomes entangled in a dream world of obsessions and delusions. This impressive opera is a passionate as well as a surrealistic plea for mourning. "He who cannot live with death has no life."

2014 marks a year of celebration recognizing the 150th birthday year of the German late-Romantic orchestral, operatic and lied master composer, Richard Strauss (1864-1949). Arabella (premiered 1933, Dresden) was the last of the half dozen Strauss works to feature a libretto by the great Austrian writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal. This production, from the most recent Salzburg Easter Festival is, after Capriccio, the second of three Richard Strauss operas C Major is releasing in honor of the composers birth, life and work. The star-laden cast includes soprano Renèe Fleming, baritone Thomas Hampson, Albert Dohmen (Covent Garden, Wiener Staatsoper, MET) and Gabriela Beaková (Wiener Staatsoper, Covent Garden). With Christian Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden, the music of Richard Strauss is in the best of hands. (ORF) Thielemann gets the best out of the cast...especially Renée Fleming with her luxurious soprano FAZ

On a June night in 2017, opera lovers thronged to the Royal Opera House in London to hear tenor Jonas Kaufmann, recently acclaimed by The Daily Telegraph as the world s greatest tenor, make his eagerly anticipated debut in the title role of Otello Verdi s greatest and most demanding role for tenor voice. As the New York Times wrote Mr. Kaufmann made his debut in the part, and he calmly, confidently sang it for the ages.

Attila

The Lyric Opera of Chicago's 1985 production of Puccini's opera, set in the late nineteenth century in the city of Nagasaki, about a young Japanese woman who weds an American naval officer who later abandons her and the child she bore him.

Tosca is a melodrama of love, betrayal and death set in the revolutionary unrest of 1800. The story concerns the opera singer Floria Tosca who tries to save her lover, the painter Mario Cavaradossi, from the brutal chief of police, Scarpia. Through-composed and expertly orchestrated it contains some of Puccini’s best-known lyrical arias and remains one of his most performed operas. In this 2022 production, an eminent cast is directed by the acclaimed Australian director Barrie Kosky – ‘the Amsterdam audience was completely swept off its feet by Kosky’s stunning production’ (Opera News).

Kent Nagano superbly masters the challenges presented by this score, shapes the dynamics with subtle intensity, and casts the score in a mellow glow. As Marfa, the spurned lover of Ivan Khovansky‘s son Andrei, Doris Soffel unfolds such a rich palette of sonorities, from the pathos of the lower ranges to shaded discant heights, that “one is tempted to speak of a Russian mezzo”. The final chorus, which Mussorgsky did not compose, is played in the orchestrally transparent version of Igor Stravinsky – the third great Russian composer who contributed to making “Khovanshchina“ a timeless, gripping stage work. With his stripped-down sets and historicising costumes, director Dmitri Tcherniakov, one of the new voices of contemporary Russian theatre, builds a bridge to the political present. A lesson in history and music!

At first glance, the title of Shostakovich’s opera seems to speak for itself: Katherina, neglected and unhappy in her marriage, commits the most heinous crime just like the Shakespearian Lady Macbeth. But Nikolai Leskov’s short novel, which portrays Katherina as a monster, was only the starting point for Shostakovich to elicit understanding for an oppressed woman whose pursuit for self-determination is suppressed by society. Through combining satiric, grotesque and tragic elements in his music, Shostakovich succeeds in striking the balance between repulsion at Katherina’s immoral acts and sympathy for her. Violence, eroticism and the paralysing boredom of Russian society in the 19th century are the founding elements of this composition. The choir and orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino conducted by James Conlon accompany tremendous soloists such as Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet, Vladimir Vaneev and Vsevolod Grivnov in the original language in this live recording.

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)

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.

Princess Fedora, who is to marry the Count the following day, arrives and sings of her love for him, unaware that the dissolute Count has betrayed her with another woman. The sound of sleigh-bells is heard, and the Count is brought in mortally wounded. Doctors and a priest are summoned, and the servants are questioned. It is proposed that Count Loris Ipanov, a suspected Nihilist sympathiser, was probably the assassin. De Siriex (a diplomat), and Grech (a police inspector) plan an investigation. Fedora swears on the jewelled Byzantine cross she is wearing that Count Andrejevich's death will be avenged.

In ancient Babylon, SEMIRAMIDE (Anderson) encourages her lover Assur (Ramey) to murder her husband, King Ninus. Her son, Ninius, disappears, believed dead, and Semiramide rules in her own right. 15 years later, as the opera opens, she is about to announce the name of her successor. Idreno (Olsen) and Assur are the leading candidates for the throne and the hand of Princess Azema (Shin), but Semiramide has taken a fancy to young Arsace (Horne), her victorious military leader who has been summoned back to Babylon. Only the high priest Oroe (Cheek) knows that Arsace is actually Ninius, spirited away to safety after the coup. As the queen announces Arsace as her successor, the ghost of her husband appears from his tomb, demanding that Arsace punish the late king’s murderers... Filmed at New York's Metropolitan Opera, John Copley's production of Rossini's last, longest and most elaborate dramatic opera brings together what many consider the definitive contemporary cast.

LA PIETRA DEL PARAGONE (The Touchstone) concerns the Count Asdrubale who is wealthy and therefore of great interest to many women – notably Aspasia, Fulvia, and Clarice. Only Clarice, however, loves him for something other than his riches. There are also male hangers-on: the corrupt journalist Macrobio, the poetaster Pacuvio, and Giocondo, who is Asdrubale's true friend, but who has his own eyes on Clarice. To test his friends and would-be fiancées, Asdrubale pretends that he has been bankrupted. Sure enough, only Clarice and Giocondo stand by him, and when his fortune is "miraculously" saved, the three have the last laugh on everyone else... or do they? This production is set in what looks like the early 1960s. But the real innovation is the use of blue screen technology: using tiny cameras and sets, along gigantic screens hanging over the stage, a kind of video mixing makes the singers appear to inhabit any number of fanciful settings and perform a myriad of improbable actions.

Verdi’s IL TROVATORE again storms the Met stage in a star-studded, anvil-wielding cast , including Sondra Radvanovsky, Dolora Zajick and Dmitri Hvorostovsky. Marcelo Álvarez sings Manrico, the troubadour of the title. The story is well-known already: The gypsy Azucena has harbored a grudge for thirty years, but she is about to have revenge at last. Meanwhile, her son Manrico is in love with Leonora, but so is his arch-enemy, the Count Di Luna. A pot-boiler, where every tune is a hit.