Movies: Opera

The opening work of the 2019-2020 season of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma was Verdi's grand opera based on a historical uprising Sicily in 1282. Conducted by Daniele Gatti and directed by Valentina Carrasco. Given in the original French version as "...

“Foolish indeed is he who marries in old age.” Thus ends Don Pasquale: with a wise dictum not lacking in irony that sums up the disappointments of its hero, a rich bachelor keen to marry who is deceived by his nephew Ernesto and his young bride-to-be...

Claude D'Anna's film of Verdi's Macbeth is a gloomy affair, stressing the descent into madness of the principal villains. It's acted by the singers of the Decca recording of the opera (with two substitutions of actors standing in for singers) and the...

The devil is hard at work in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress! The three-act opera was premiered at Venice’s La Fenice in 1951 and is whimsically staged and performed in this production from the 2010 Glyndebourne opera festival....

A man who accused a catholic bishop of abusing him when he was a child dies in the Austrian city Salzburg. Everyone except his widow and the eccentrical detective Simon Brenner keeps silent and believes that the man killed himself....

Simon Rattle conducts the Berliner Philharmoniker in Stepháne Braunschweig's production of Richard Wagner's Die Walküre. A Festival d'Aix-en-Provence 2007 production, in coproduction with Osterfestspiele Salzburg. Directed for HDTV and video by Don K...

Recorded at the Paris Opera and co-produced with Siberia’s Novosibirsk Opera, this new Macbeth uses cutting-edge multimedia technology to give the viewer a fresh perspective on the work. Google Earth satellite images plunge us into the heart of the a...

A staging of Britten's opera filmed at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice in June 2008....

Johanna, a young drug addict, falls into a deep coma after an accident. Doctors miraculously manage to save her from death's doorstep. Touched by grace, Johanna cures patients by offering her body. The head doctor is frustrated by her continued rejec...

Eugene Onegin, a jaded young dandy from the big city of St. Petersburg, travels to the country to ingratiate himself into the affection of a dying uncle. There he meets the idealistic and romantic poet Vladimir Lensky, who introduces him to the daugh...

Giacomo Puccini's bittersweet opera of high-spirited bohemians and the doomed love between Rodolfo, the idealistic poet and Mimi, the consumptive flower-maker, is a beautifully balanced series of tableaux depicting the infectious joie de vivre of you...

The Budapest Opera House's diva commits suicide after the owner ruins her career for having rejected his advances but her conductor-husband, believed killed in a fire, plans his revenge on all those he deems responsible for her suicide....

In this musical, a tempermental opera singer falls in love with a hearing-impaired young woman....

John Dexter’s brilliant production of Britten’s searing opera stars Dwayne Croft in the title role of the handsome young sailor whose kindness and innocence cause his downfall. The great James Morris is Claggart, master-at-arms on the 18th-century wa...

The Bayreuth Festival Opera House mounted this production of Richard Wagner's 1865 opera Tristan und Isolde as part of the Bayreuther Festspiele. Staged by Heiner Müller, it stars Siegfried Jerusalem, Waltraud Meier, Poul Elming and Uta Priew, and fe...

Birgit Nilsson and Jon Vickers star in this filmed record of the Theatre Antique d'Orange's acclaimed 1973 production of Wagner's epic tale of doomed love in the Middle Ages. Tristan und Isolde also features the Orchestre National de R.T.F., under th...

Met Music Director James Levine leads this Live in HD presentation of Wagner’s early Romantic opera, starring Johan Botha in the title role of the minnesinger torn between earthly passion and true love. Eva-Maria Westbroek is Elisabeth, whose unswerv...

Luciano Pavarotti brings his spectacular voice and artistry to one of the most famous of all tenor roles—Manrico, the ardent troubadour, trapped in an impossible situation by forces beyond his control. The sensational Dolora Zajick, only days after h...

Archeologist and avid puzzle solver Professor Layton and his assistant Luke are caught up in an adventure when a masked figure steals an entire opera house and forces those in attendance to play a high-stakes game. The winner will receive eternal lif...

Performance of La Bohème in Teatro alla Scala, 1979....