Movies: Opera

Without question, this is an incredibly bizarre production. The revised storyline makes little sense, and there is a surprising amount of violence and sexual innuendo. However, the singers are superb, both vocally and in regard to their stage presenc...

Directed by Ursel Hermann, this 2005 production of Mozart's last opera stars a remarkable cast with Susan Graham in the role of Sesto, Christoph Prégardien giving life to Tito and Catherine Naglestad embodying the ambitious Vitellia. Premiered in Sep...

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The opera Turandot by Giacomo Puccini from the Arena di Verona (2024), with desings by late Franco Zeffirelli. Turandot is sung by Ecaterina Semenchuk....

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This thought-provoking, modern-day interpretation of Rossini's 'Mosè in Egitto' sets the scene for superior music-making at the prestigious Rossini Festival in Pesaro. For conductor Roberto Abbado, the transposition of the action to the present day r...

This highly acclaimed production of Strauss Salome from the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden is staged by German director Nikolaus Lenhoff. Starring Angela Denoke as a brilliant Salome, who is joined by a great ensemble of soloists, Kim Begley, Doris Soffel...

Soprano Yvonne Kenny turns in a spirited performance as Aspasia in this brilliant staging of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's first notable opera -- penned when he was only 14 years old. The production, set in early Roman times, follows the inner c...

After a celebrated career as a composer of lighthearted operetta, Jacques Offenbach turned his hand to more serious fare—only to die before his one true opera was completed. That work, Les Contes d’Hoffmann, was based on a play that strung together a...

Live performance of Philip Glass's opera Kepler (2009) by the Landestheater Linz Upper Austrian State Theater in 2011, conducted by Dennis Russell Davies....

Un ballo in maschera (A Masked Ball) is an 1859 opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The text, by Antonio Somma, was based on Eugène Scribe's libretto for Daniel Auber's 1833 five act opera, Gustave III, ou Le bal masqué. The plot concerns the ass...

Emmanuelle Haïm has established herself as one of the world’s leading performers, conductors and interpreters of Baroque repertoire, not only with Le Concert d’Astrée, the ensemble she founded in 2000, but with several of the world’s greatest orchest...

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In 2010, for the first time in its history, the Bolshoi Opera presented Alban Berg’s masterpiece Wozzeck conducted by Teodor Currentzis. Dmitri Cherniakov’s aim with this bold, sensitive transposition was “to highlight the hidden sorrows of a late tw...

Madama Butterfly is, with Bohème, the most loved and staged of Puccini’s works. This Blu-ray production was staged at the 2007 Puccini Festival in Italy’s Torre del Lago, Puccini’s home town. Starring as Cio Cio San is the Russian soprano Elmira Ve...

Parsifal from the 1998 Bayreuth Festival...

A dramatic concert performance of Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio, streamed live from Leeds Town Hall. This romantic melodrama, inspired by a true story from the French Revolution, speaks to our times with its themes of isolation, liberty and humani...

The Zurich Opera gathered a superb cast for this production: Italian soprano Eva Mei sings the Countess Violante, known as Sandrina, the feigned gardener of the title. Spanish soprano Isabel Rey is her opponent Arminda, and Arminda's former lover, th...