Tancredi (Teatro dell'Opera di Roma)

Francesco Cavalli, a natural successor to Monteverdi, was the most famous and influential Italian opera composer during the mid-17th century. Cardinal Mazarin, chief minister to the king, commissioned Cavalli to create a Parisian spectacle to celebrate the wedding of the ‘Sun King’ Louis XIV and the Infanta of Spain. Ercole amante (‘Hercules in Love’) was the flattering subject chosen for this regal extravaganza combining larger-than-life characters with mythology, and genuine human emotions with natural and cosmic phenomena. The result is a sumptuous Baroque spectacle, conceived on a vast scale in this lavish production by directors Valerie Lesort and Christian Hecq.

Michael Mayer’s acclaimed production, first seen in the 2012–13 season, sets the action of Verdi’s masterpiece in 1960 Las Vegas—a neon-lit world ruled by money and ruthless, powerful men. Piotr Beczała is the Duke, a popular entertainer and casino owner who will stop at nothing to get what he wants. Željko Lučić sings Rigoletto, his sidekick and comedian, and Diana Damrau is Rigoletto’s innocent daughter, Gilda. When she is seduced by the Duke, Rigoletto sets out on a tragic course of murderous revenge. Štefan Kocán is the assassin Sparafucile and Michele Mariotti conducts.

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 2026 production of La Traviata at the Arena di Verona uses a “Moulin Rouge”-inspired Paris setting, blending the Belle Époque atmosphere with a glamorous, period-pop look, while keeping the focus on Violetta’s emotional and social drama.

Beneath the gilded ceilings of the Palais Garnier, Gustavo Dudamel takes us on a colorful journey between Spain and South America, performed by the Orchestra and singers of the Paris Opera Academy. The program includes works by Heitor Villa-Lobos, Leonard Bernstein, Astor Piazzolla, Enrique Granados, Kurt Weill, and others.

Simon Stone's take on Arrigo Boito's Mefistofele, opening the 2023/2024 season at the Opera di Roma.

In 15th-century Venice, Jacopo Foscari, son of the Doge of Venice Francesco Foscari, is to be tried by the Council of Ten for a crime of which he claims to be innocent. The Foscari family’s sworn enemy, the vindictive Jacopo Loredano, treacherously secures his sentence of exile. Despite the pleas of Lucrezia, Jacopo’s wife, the unfortunate father is forced to sign his son’s banishment order, even though he is convinced of his innocence. The young man dies of despair just before the real murderer comes forward. Loredano secures the removal of Francesco Foscari, who collapses, lifeless. "I due Foscari" is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, with a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, which premiered at the Teatro Argentina in Rome on 3 November 1844.

Antonio Florio, conducting the Orchestra and Choir of the Teatro Regio, tackles Claudio Monteverdi's rich score. The cast includes Roberta Invernizzi, Mauro Borgioni, Francesca Boncompagni, Monica Bacelli, Luigi De Donato, and Luca Tittoto, internationally renowned soloists and recognized experts in the field of Baroque opera.

For his first appearance in the pit in Paris with his Artaserse ensemble, Philippe Jaroussky has chosen a masterpiece that he knows well, having sung the role of Sesto on numerous occasions, notably in the highly acclaimed Salzburg production alongside Cecilia Bartoli. As for the staging, we will welcome for the first time on Avenue Montaigne a Venetian who is used to the greatest European stages and who has undertaken his first Handel, Alcina, in the summer of 2019 in Salzburg with Ruggiero... Philippe Jaroussky. Everyone agrees on his ability to imagine delicate and highly effective dramaturgical worlds (his Barber of Seville for the Paris Opera is an irresistible visual translation of Rossini's frenzied score). His debut in opera seria with Alcina also showed his intelligence in giving coherence and emotion to the demanding arias da capo. On stage, a team familiar with the Théàtre des Champs-Elysées and this repertoire, led by a very fine trio of French women.

Medea lives with Jason and her children in Corinth and becomes increasingly aware of her husband's betrayal of love. When she is certain that Jason is to marry the king's daughter Creusa and that she herself will be banished for doing so, she swears to take bitter revenge

An extraordinary event marking the run-up to the opening of the Rome Opera House for the 2025/2026 season and celebrating the 125th anniversary of *Tosca*.

From Venice's Teatro La Fenice, the traditional New Year's Concert conducted by Maestro Michele Mariotti, featuring arias, duets, and choral pieces performed by soloists Rosa Feola and Jonathan Tetelman. The event will be enhanced by dance performances by étoiles Eleonora Abbagnato and Friedemann Vogel.

Taking a classic opera and turning it on its head, Karin Henkel, a leading director in contemporary German theatre, offers a new interpretation of Verdi's masterpiece. In a world dominated by men, where women are exploited and history repeats itself, she explores the fate and sacrifice of a 19th-century heroine through a contemporary female perspective.

The Greek army is gathered at Aulis, ready to sail for Troy, but the winds fail. The seer Calchas reveals that the goddess Artemis is angry and demands a sacrifice. King Agamemnon’s daughter, Ifigenia, must die for the fleet to depart. Torn between duty to Greece and love for his daughter, Agamemnon initially uses a ruse to bring Ifigenia to Aulis; he claims she is to marry Achilles. When Ifigenia and her mother Clitennestra arrive and learn the truth, they are devastated. What hero might intervene to save Ifigenia from the altar of sacrifice?

From the Rai Arturo Toscanini Auditorium in Turin, the Rai National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Giuseppe Mengoli, performs Arvo Pärt’s *Fratres*, Antonio Vivaldi’s *Stabat Mater* (featuring countertenor Carlo Vistoli), and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92.

Dutch conductor Ton Koopman, one of the leading experts in the early music repertoire, will lead the Choir and Orchestra of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Mozart’s Mass in C minor, K. 427, and Symphony No. 41, K. 551, “Jupiter.” The soloists include sopranos Maria Grazia Schiavo and Roberta Mameli, tenor Tilman Lichdi, and bass Luca Tittoto.

Countertenor Carlo Vistoli takes us on a musical journey through 17th-century Italy. The nascent opera genre was producing its first masterpieces at the time, with composers such as Monteverdi, Cesti, Cavalli and Stradella. These genius composers laid the foundations for opera and helped establish it as a major art form. The programme includes arias, love laments and scenes of madness.

New production of Rigoletto at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, co-produced with the Teatro Regio in Turin, the Opéra de Wallonie Liège, and the Shaanxi Opera House. Libretto by Francesco Maria Piave.

The hero of this admirably complete August 2013 Guillaume Tell from Pesaro is homegrown maestro Michele Mariotti. The inimitable overture is (mercifully) unstaged and terrifically played, with splendid cello and flute solos: the fine standard never flags. Rossini’s extraordinary 1829 score audibly presages Meyerbeer, Berlioz, Glinka, Verdi and Wagner, among many others. Graham Vick’s direction privileges class conflict, with a clenched fist on the red-and-white forecurtain. The Edwardian costumes place Austrians in white evening garb; the black-clad Swiss polish the floor while the rulers savor a filming (much of that to follow) — the fisherman Ruodi, in a boat with a blonde and fake scenery, with Tell and his family providing tech support. Vick deploys geographical and historical kitsch liberally but not (always) pointlessly. Ron Howell’s pretentious, mannered choreography, however, beggars belief.

Mariella Devia, one of the greatest bel canto singers of 20th century, chooses Venice’s La Fenice as the stage for her last Norma.

A ruthless dictator falls in love with a sexy woman. Together, they get rid of every obstacle in their way: his wife, her former lover, and also the voice of reason. Everything is sacrificed to passion, in this tale where evil triumphs, virtue and reason are humiliated, and nothing corresponds to our moral principles. Jan Lauwers, the director and choreographer, sets L'incoronazione di Poppea in a way congenial to his means: a visual artist, he translated the emotions expressed by Monteverdi’s music into dancing and visual images. The result was mixed; the general impression was one of many ideas, seemingly not fully developed or analysed. The stage was constantly cluttered with moving bodies, or tableau vivants, leaving a sense of confusion, and distracting from the music.

Puccini’s passionate opera is conducted by Antonio Pappano and stars a superb young cast including Nicole Car, Michael Fabiano and Mariusz Kwiecień, in a new production by Richard Jones.