A Winter's Journey

Star soprano Anna Netrebko adds Donizetti’s hapless heroine to her growing list of Met triumphs in this production by Mary Zimmerman that updates the events to the 19th century. Rising young tenor sensation Piotr Beczała is Edgardo and Mariusz Kwiecien plays Lucia’s brother Enrico whose brutal authority forces her to deny her heart and marry for the sake of her family. The famous mad scene brilliantly depicts the cascading fragments of Lucia’s disintegrating mind.

Madcap physical comedy and impeccable coloratura come together for Natalie Dessay’s indelible portrayal of the feisty tomboy raised by a regiment of French soldiers. Juan Diego Flórez is the young Swiss villager who conquers her heart—and a slew of high Cs. Also featuring uproarious performances by Felicity Palmer and Alessandro Corbelli, as well as a cameo by Tony Award winner Marian Seldes, this laugh-out-loud production was a runaway hit that left audiences exhilarated.

Donizetti’s timeless comedy shines in Otto Schenk’s enchanting production, conducted by James Levine and featuring a remarkable cast. The incomparable Anna Netrebko is Norina, the young widow beloved by Ernesto (a suave Matthew Polenzani), who is about to be disinherited by his miserly uncle, Don Pasquale (John Del Carlo). It takes the clever scheming of Dr. Malatesta (Mariusz Kwiecien) to set things right and to teach the old curmudgeon a lesson—fits of temper, mistaken identities, and all kinds of comic confusion included.

IL CAMPANELLO DI NOTTE, Farce in one act by Gaetano Donizetti, is set in Naples. Don Annibale Pistacchio, an old apothecary, have just married the young Serafina. Enrico, former lover of Serafina, interrupts constantly the wedding night showing on several disguises and calling at Pistacchio's drugstore by ringing the night bell, asking the unfortunate groom a preposterous list of prescriptions.

This follow-up to the 1989 documentary ONE YEAR IN A LIFE OF CRIME revisits three of the original subjects in New Jersey during a five-year period in the 1990s. We share in their triumphs and setbacks as they navigate lives of poverty, drug abuse, AIDS, and petty crime.

A group of merchants and vikings navigate dramatic events both within and without in this epic musical based on the Icelandic Vinland sagas. As secrets are exposed, two women (Freydís and Gudrid) have a reckoning.

Marcos Morau : La Belle au bois dormant

Ten short pieces directed by ten different directors, including Ken Russell, Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Altman, Bruce Beresford, and Nicolas Roeg. Each short uses an aria as soundtrack/sound, and is an interpretation of the particular aria.

Pious restraint comes face to face with sensuous hedonism in Camille Saint-Saëns’s grand-opera retelling of the Bible story of Samson and Delilah. Multi-Olivier Award winning director Richard Jones returns to The Royal Opera to stage this spectacular fin-de-siècle masterpiece, not performed at Covent Garden since 2004. Elina Garanca stars as the Philistine Dalila, SeokJong Baek as the inspiring Jewish hero Samson and Antonio Pappano conducts the full forces of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. With superb singing in solos and duets of great intimacy and fervour, gorgeous music with thrilling orchestral interludes, and splendid choral numbers for the Royal Opera Chorus – this is a performance to remember.

As Aragon descends into unrest, a count jealously fights for a noble lady's heart. But she has already given it to a passionate troubadour whose mother holds a terrible secret.

The stupendous climax to Wagner’s four-part Ring cycle is brilliantly realized by the Otto Schenk/Günther Schneider-Siemssen production and byJames Levine’s monumental conducting. The Met orchestra, chorus, and an all-star cast make this Götterdämmerung one that truly rises to the occasion. Hildegard Behrens’s Brünnhilde must be experienced to be believed, as does Matti Salminen’s richly sung, domineering Hagen. At the center of the drama is Siegfried Jerusalem as Siegfried, who does not realize he has been drawn into a plot of betrayal until it is too late. Christa Ludwig is magnetic as Waltraute and Ekkehard Wlaschiha is a compelling Alberich.

Mirella Freni, Placido Domingo, Christa Ludwig, and Robert Kerns star in this Jean-Pierre Ponnelle-directed version of the Puccini opera, with Herbert von Karajan conducting the Vienna Philharmonic. Madama Butterfly is a staple of the standard operatic repertoire for companies around the world, ranking 7th in the Operabase list of the most-performed operas worldwide.

A return to its roots for Castor et Pollux, Jean-Philippe Rameau’s lyric tragedy first performed in 1737 at the Académie royale and inspired by the mythological episode of the Gemini. Rarely performed in its original version – the score was reworked by Rameau himself in 1754 –, this daring work plays on contrasts and expressiveness, as in the famous “Tristes apprêts”. The aria is sung by Télaïre mourning the death of her fiancé Castor, killed in battle, before his twin brother Pollux descends into the Underworld to ask his father, Jupiter, to bring him back to life. While this opera celebrates brotherly love, its prologue poses an essential question for director Peter Sellars: how do you stop a war and its attendant hatred and resentment?

Following a tragic accident that leaves him disfigured, crazed composer Erique Claudin transformed into a masked phantom who schemes to make beautiful young soprano Christine Dubois the star of the opera and wreak revenge on those who stole his music.

The Italian and international press were unanimous in their praise for "Peter Grimes" at La Scala, which revived the tradition of Britten's operas on the lyric stages of Italy. A top British cast was marshaled by the baton of Robin Ticciati. Richard Jones's production focuses on the fisherman as the outside in a brutal and brutalized 1980s society, cut off by mutual suspicion and misunderstanding: an unforgettable production of a 20th-century operatic masterpiece that never loses its power. Filmed in High Definition and recorded in true Surround Sound.

John Adams’s groundbreaking work vividly brings to life US President Nixon’s 1972 visit to the People’s Republic of China. Peter Sellars’s Metropolitan Opera production, based on his 1987 world-premiere staging, features choreography by Mark Morris and stars James Maddalena as Nixon, Robert Brubaker as Chairman Mao, Janis Kelly as First Lady Pat Nixon, Russell Braun as Chinese Premier Chou En-lai, and Kathleen Kim as Chiang Ch’ing, Mao’s wife. From the pomp of the public displays to the intimacy of the protagonists most private moments, Adams, Sellars and librettist Alice Goodman reveal the real characters behind the headlines in this landmark American opera.

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.

Passion, jealousy and betrayal take center stage at Londons Royal Opera House in a spectacular production of the worlds most popular opera. Bizets Carmen is packed with some of the best-loved and memorable music in all of opera. In this characteristically vivid and vibrant stage production by Francesca Zambello, beautifully filmed in 3D by Julian Napier, Seville is brought to life with ranks of soldiers, crowds of peasants, gypsies and bullfighters as well as a magnificent horse, a donkey and even some chickens! This spectacular RealD and Royal Opera House production features a supremely talented cast, gripping drama and Bizets energetic and passionate score. It is truly a musical event to remember!

Serge Kakudji is a twenty-year-old Congolese counter tenor who fell in love with opera as a young boy, listening to audiotapes of opera recordings in his room in Lubumbashi. Later he traveled to Europe to achieve his dream of becoming a top opera singer. Although Serge's artistic ambitions are pure and uncomplicated, the reactions among his environment and audiences are often ambiguous and divided. While some people respect and acknowledge his artistic vocation, others see him as an exotic oddity, or complain that that his African timbre jars with classical opera. Serge refuses to be discouraged by any of this. On the contrary, he wants to hold up a mirror to Western culture and confront it with its underlying beliefs. He also wants to use his story and experiences in the west to bring opera to Congo. Together with his countrymen and women, he wants to found a Congolese opera tradition based on African stories that will inspire people to follow their dreams.

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.