Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Lucio Silla

The Queen of the Night enlists a handsome prince named Tamino to rescue her beautiful kidnapped daughter, Princess Pamina. Aided by the lovelorn bird hunter Papageno and a magical flute that holds the power to change the hearts of men, young Tamino embarks on a quest for true love, leading to the evil Sarastro's temple where Pamina is held captive. The Pierre Audi production of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte was recorded live at the 2006 Salzburger Festpiele.

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.”

Jean-Marie Villegier's modern interpretation of Handel's "Rodelinda" – filmed live at the world-renowned Glyndebourne Opera House in the United Kingdom, sets the timeless tale of jealousy and treachery in the black-and-white world of the silent-movie era. Soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci sings the title role of Rodelinda, with tenor Kurt Streit and bass Umberto Chiummo performing the parts of Grimoaldo and Garibaldo, respectively.

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

Javier Espada explores how Luis Buñuel, one of the greatest precursors of surrealist cinema through works like An Andalusian Dog and The Golden Age, began to move away from this movement but never completely abandoned it, maintaining a strong oneiric element in his films. Taking us deep into his past and evolution as a creator, this documentary provides an unprecedented window into the world and work of an irreplaceable genius whose influence has reached the rest of the arts.

A production of an opera by George Frideric Handel, about the Skyrian princess Deidamia helping Achilles while he is disguised as a girl to avoid dying in the Trojan War, based on Greek mythology.

A major work from the remarkable partnership of playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill, Mahagonny was first performed in Leipzig in 1930. Its first ever Royal Opera staging, by Associate Director of Opera John Fulljames, is sung in English, and conducted by Mark Wigglesworth – recently announced as the successor to Edward Gardner as Music Director of English National Opera. Mahagonny is a satire on money, morality and pleasure-seeking among the dubious citizens of a fictional city. The richly varied, jazz-infused score, influenced by ragtime music, includes such irresistible melodies as the ‘Alabama Song’ and many dramatic ensembles. The superb cast includes Kurt Streit as the wild lumberjack Jimmy, Christine Rice as his sweetheart Jenny, Anne Sofie von Otter in a welcome return to The Royal Opera as the cunning Leokadja Begbick, and Peter Hoare and Willard W. White as her helpers and fellow-fugitives Fatty and Moses.

Rome, 79 AD. The emperor Titus narrowly escapes the attack his best friend Sextus has plotted against him under pressure from his beloved Vitellia. Titus is faced with the heartrending choice of following his feelings and granting his friend clemency, or following his reason and condemning him. In La Clemenza di Tito Mozart returned to opera seria just a few months before his death. He had not worked in this genre since Idomeneo. For a long time this work, quite unjustifiably, remained in the shadow of his other great masterpieces, despite the fact that much of the music he wrote for this work is among the best in his oeuvre. Having previously staged Idomeneo, Ivo van Hove, now together with Ludovic Morlot, is presenting a new interpretation that will undoubtedly do full justice to the everlasting topicality, powerful drama and musical splendour of this mixture of friendship and revenge, passion and politics.

The Chorus and Orchestra of Teatro Alla Scala conducted by Marc Minikowski; Teatro alla Scala, Milan, March 2015

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.

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.

ARTE pays tribute to bass-baritone José van Dam, who passed away on February 17, 2026, and who will remain one of Belgium's most iconic voices. In May 2010, the “maestro” bid farewell to the stage at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, in one of his favorite roles, Jules Massenet's “Don Quichotte.” A moment out of time.

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

For reasons that are by no means clear, in this production the work is set in an hotel at which the guests are invited to a soirée based on the legend of Count Ory. They dress up as the characters in a rudimentary way. The director clearly gets much fun from the disguise of the men as nuns in Act 2 when their nuns’ habits are worn over old-fashioned underwear which they take every opportunity to reveal.

Film recording of Robert Wilson’s stage production of the opera by Gluck. John Eliot Gardiner conducts Berlioz’s 1859 revision of Gluck’s opera “Orphée et Eurydice” at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. Soloists Magdalena Kožená, Madeline Bender and Patricia Petibon are accompanied by Gardiner’s regular chorus, The Monteverdi Choir, and the 19th-century period instruments of the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique.

One of the most popular zarzuelas by Amadeu Vives, directed by Lluís Pasqual and starring María José Moreno and Celso Albelo.

An Opera in Seven Tableaux composed by Paul Hindemith and performed at the Theater an der Wien in 2012

Conspiracies and regattas form the backdrop to the fortunes of a young singer. Harassed by a heartless spy, she sacrifices everything to save the man she loves and the woman he prefers over her. Ponchielli based his flamboyant opera on Victor Hugo’s play Angelo, tyrant of Padua. An expert on Hugo, director Olivier Py offers us a dream-like version of this dark Romantic tragedy, presided over by sex and death. Paolo Carignani conducts an exceptional cast in the six demanding main roles.

Grief is the most profound state of heartbreak. Because the loved one is no longer there, they are gone, and memories become elusive and capricious. That's why their clothes and shoes should stay untouched in the closet, just as they were before leaving. Closets don't empty themselves. This speaks of loss, loneliness, fear, hope, and the way each human being faces that pivotal moment in life. Though capable, as we are, of burying or cremating a loved one, we nevertheless do not know how to begin emptying a closet. We intuit that the day it is empty, our hearts will truly begin the process of normalizing absence.

French version of Cherubini's opera staged in Brussels by Krzysztof Warlikowski

Bellezza (Beauty) admires herself in the mirror, but knows that her beauty will one day pass. Piacere (Pleasure) tries to cheer her up, promising her eternal beauty if she remains only faithful to pleasure. Bellezza promises never to leave her, or else to accept severe punishment. Piacere warns of the destructive power of useless worry, but now Tempo (Time) and Disinganno (Disillusion) get involved in the conversation. Together they seek to explain the ephemeral nature of beauty, which quickly wilts like a blossom.

Lluis Pasqual's powerful production for the Spanish capital sets Da Ponte's timeless story of sleaze and seduction into the dark world of 1940s Spain. Carlos Álvarez, in the title role, toys with the affections of Donna Anna, Zerlina and the Spanish lady Donna Elvira, before his overpowering methods finally bring his own destruction.

To avoid serving his prison sentence, a fashionable socialite sneaks off to a lavish party. The champagne flows as guests waltz the night away, but several of them have something to hide. This internationally renowned production by Otto Schenk takes the audience on a bumpy ride through all kinds of intrigues, clothing mix-ups and mistaken identities, until we finally reach a rather hung-over happy ending. Conducted by Franz Welser-Möst and streamed on Strauss’ birthday, this performance is part of OperaVision’s events celebrating the inaugural World Opera Day on 25 October 2019.

The work was given its first performance in Rome in 1812. It is still unclear whether Rossini was 14 or 18 when he wrote it; what is beyond doubt, however, is the anticipation of great things to come. The libretto is a far-fetched tale of feuding kings, mistaken identities, disguises and cruel fates typical of the late 18th-century opera seria. Young stage director Davide Livermore, heading a production of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Urbino, turns the libretto into a ghost story, setting the action behind the stage of an opera house, when everyone has left and all that remains are the spirits of an opera that yearns for the breath of life much like the practically forgotten Demetrio e Polibio itself.

This May 2010 production of Massenet's 1910 opera "Don Quichotte" marked the opera's centenary and also Jose Van Dam's operatic farewell at the Theatre de la Monnaie, Brussels. It is beautiful in every way--vocally, scenically, sonically, and visually--and a worthy record of Van Dam's farewell. Van Dam is just shy of 70 in this production, but you would never guess it from his singing or stage movements--a consummate artist. His is a noble portrayal and deeply moving. The Act V death scene is a model of beautiful singing and acting.

In the last and most dramatic aria in Roberto Devereux , one of the four Tudor period operas composed by Donizetti in 1837 (along with Anna Bolena , Maria Stuarda and Il Castello di Kenilworth), the protagonist, Queen Elizabeth I of England, exclaims: "I do not reign, I do not live". This statement encapsulates great operatic themes, and it is the culmination of an opera that reveals the passions of characters who live among palace intrigues. Written in the mature period of the leader of Italian romanticism, the opera displays a great vocal virtuosity, and is an example of Donizetti prizing the voice above all in the genre. The staging, by South African director Alessandro Talevi, who has been very successful in great opera houses as well as with more experimental theatre, places the play in an undetermined period, focusing on the chiaroscuro. Bruno Campanella conducts.