Gluck: Orphée et Eurydice

Staatsoper Berlin’s new production of Rameau’s tragédie lyrique, directed by Alletta Collins; featuring costumes, sets and lighting designed by Ólafur Eliasson; and musical direction by Simon Rattle, who makes his debut with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra.

On Thursday 2 May 2019, the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists, led by John Eliot Gardiner, brought a new production of Semele to “London’s oldest new theatre” at Alexandra Palace. This concert-staging of “Handel’s sexiest opera”, directed by Thomas Guthrie, was the only London date on a prestigious European tour. Featuring a young, glamorous cast of international soloists, the performance provided London audiences with a fuller version of the work, notably with some passages by Handel very rarely heard in modern performances.

This large-scale live recording (Gardiner's second) was made in Venice's St Mark's Basilica. It captures the drama as well as the ceremonial aspect of the work, despite sometimes cloudy recorded sound.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide. “Gardiner's second [recording of the Vespers], spectacularly recorded live in St Mark's, has a punchy choral sound, near-operatic solo singing (Bryn Terfel and Alistair Miles are among the basses), emphatic enunciation, big contrasts and deliberate exploitation of the building's spaces. Its outright theatricality sets it apart from other performances.

Philippe Jaroussky as Ruggiero is in thrall to Patricia Petibon as the sorceress Alcina in Katie Mitchell’s virtuosic production of Handel’s opera from the 2015 Aix-en-Provence Festival, described by Bachtrack as “a night of a thousand delights”. Conducted by Andrea Marcon, this was, in the words of Opera News, “musically … a performance of the highest festival level”. The production of Alcina, by the British director Katie Mitchell, was welcomed by the Financial Times as “meticulously executed …, rich in detail, consummately polished”. As the New York Times wrote: “It involves a huge sorcery machine for turning people into animals (or whatever). And Ms. Mitchell works magic of her own onstage, constantly showing the enchantresses Alcina and Morgana alternating between glamorous public personas and their ‘real life’, older, private selves …There are also bits of simulated sex, mingling genders and suggesting, among other things, inventive new ways to hit high notes.”

A staging of Jules Massenet's opera "Manon" stage by Olivier Py. Recorded at the Grand Théâtre de Genève.

“As I child, I always had music in my head. I thought everybody did,” the legendary conductor Sir Simon Rattle recalls. His charming and humorous reflections on the unifying magic of conducting are complemented by interviews with well-known contemporaries and accompanied by thrilling concert footage. His music is a joy to all those who listen to it!

Two of Mozart's best-loved choral works - the 1791 Requiem, and the Mass in C minor, both of which were unfinished when he died. Performed at the Palau de la Mùsica Catalana in Barcelona in December 1991 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Mozart's death.

Mozart and Da Ponte use the theme of "fiancée swapping", which dates back to the 13th century; notable earlier versions are found in Boccaccio's Decameron and Shakespeare's play Cymbeline. Elements from Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew are also present. Furthermore, it incorporates elements of the myth of Procris as found in Ovid's Metamorphoses, vii.[10] Place: Naples Time: the 18th century

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).

Newman's poem tells the story of a soul's journey through death, and provides a meditation on the unseen world of Roman Catholic theology. Gerontius (a name derived from the Greek word geron, "old man") is a devout Everyman. Elgar's setting uses most of the text of the first part of the poem, which takes place on Earth, but omits many of the more meditative sections of the much longer, otherworldly second part, tightening the narrative flow.

Love, power and ambition meet on the stage of the Teatre de Liceu in Barcelona with L'Incoronazione di Poppea by Monteverdi directed by Jordi Savall and directed by Calixto Bieito.

At the end of 2013, the year that marked the 50th anniversary of Francis Poulenc’s death, his gripping and moving operatic masterpiece, Dialogues des Carmélites was staged in Paris by director Olivier Py with a cast featuring some of France’s finest female singers – Patricia Petitbon, Véronique Gens, Sandrine Piau and Sophie Koch – under the baton of Jérémie Rohrer. Le Figaro described the production as “a thing of wonder,” while Le Monde called it: “A masterpiece ... the most exciting and consummately achieved show to have been seen on a Parisian stage in a long time … This was great work, magisterial and unforgettable.” “The memorable Dialogues des Carmélites at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées marked the climax of commemorative activities for the 50th anniversary of Poulenc’s death,” wrote Opera magazine of the production of Poulenc’s gripping and moving opera that was staged by the French director Olivier Py in Paris in December 2013.

From the Rai ‘Arturo Toscanini’ Auditorium in Turin, conductor Ion Marin and Czech mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená pay tribute to the Italian composer Luciano Berio with his *Folk Songs* for voice and orchestra, followed by *Rendering*, based on Schubert’s sketches for an unfinished Tenth Symphony. Between the two pieces by Luciano Berio, Ion Marin presents Arvo Pärt’s Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten.

German director Claus Guth´s Mozart-Da Ponte trilogy was concluded at the 2009 Salzburg Festival with Cosí fan tutte featuring a starry cast including Miah Persson, Bo Skovhus, Isabel Leonard as well as Patricia Petibon. Adam Fischer conducts the Vienna Philharmonics. Those familiar with Claus Guth´s previous work such as the psychoanalytic Nozze di Figaro, the Don Giovanni set amongst junkies in a wood in the middle of the night, the Ariadne who commits suicide on Naxos, Richard Wagners Tristan in love with Mathilde Wesendonck and a Walküre set in a miniature dolls house will know better than to expect a bubbly Mozartian comedy.

This epic opera follows Virgil, beginning as the Greeks appear to have ceded the field after ten years of the Trojan War. Cassandra tries to warn of the terrible fate to come, but fate is set and Troy falls. The first two acts cover this tragic end, then the flight of survivors to Carthage and events at Carthage continue in acts 3 - 5, culminating in the further voyage for Italy and Rome. This is Virgil's classic epic, in operatic form, in about a three and a half hour performance from French Opera.

Documentary about sixteen great conductors of the 20th century.

Margreet Honig, eighty-four years old, is an internationally sought-after Dutch singing teacher. She teaches all over Europe and works with world-famous singers. She has developed her very own way of working.

The most famous Scenes and Arias from French operas

Mozart's opera telling the story of the King of Crete who returns from Troy to find his his son in love with the daughter of the slain Paris, King of Troy. Conducted by Sir Roger Norrington and performed by Ramon Vargas, Magdalena Kozena, Anja Harteros and Ekaterina Siurina.

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

Johann Sebastian Bach’s St John Passion with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Sir Simon Rattle was one of the outstanding events of the past season. As before with the St Matthew Passion, star director Peter Sellars succeeded in creating a staging which made the spiritual and dramatic content of the Passion story even more intensive. The New York Times also praised the “brilliant and energetic” playing of the orchestra, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung the “haunting, almost unsurpassable singing of all those involved.”

The story of Henry Purcell.

The central character of Mozart’s opera Lucio Silla is inspired by the historical figure of Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix, a dictator and Roman general who ruled during the 1st century BC. In this production at Madrid’s Teatro Real, an intriguing minimalist staging is complemented by Ivor Bolton’s expert music direction, and a talented cast.

Sir Simon Rattle was in no doubt: the performance of the St Matthew Passion which he realised together with the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Rundfunkchor Berlin in 2010 was for him “the single most important thing we ever did here”. Critics around the world agreed. They praised the semi-staged “ritualization” by American star-director Peter Sellars, as well as the outstanding musical performances by the soloists, including Magdalena Kožená, Christian Gerhaher, Thomas Quasthoff and Mark Padmore as the Evangelist.