Falstaff

Napoleon's tumultuous relations with Russia including his disastrous 1812 invasion serve as the backdrop for the tangled personal lives of two aristocratic families.

Renee Fleming stars in Dvorak's three-act opera based on two fairy-tales which tells the story of a water-nymph called Rusalka (Fleming), who wishes she was human, after falling in love with a mortal.

Live performance 10 February 2011 at the Palais Garnier. Emmanuelle Haïm conducting Le Concert d'Astrée and les Choeurs de l'Opéra national de Paris. Directed for stage by Laurent Pelly.

About the Director: John Eliot Gardiner is one of the most versatile conductors of our time. Acknowledged as a key figure in the early music revival, he is the founder and artistic director of the Monteverdi Choir, the English Baroque Soloists and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. The extent of his repertoire is illustrated in over 250 recordings which have received numerous international awards. Over the years Gardiner has won more Gramophone awards than any other artist. Probably the most francophile of English conductors, John Eliot Gardiner returned to the Opéra Comique, Paris for a much aclaimed production of Carmen last year. On June 25th it was broadcast live to 50 theatres in France and Switzerland and also recorded for TV. This followed an exciting collaboration that began in December 2007 with Chabrier s Opera bouffe L'Etoile, which had opened the new theatre at Opera Comique in December 2007.

Amour, the messenger of the gods, tells Orpheus that he may descend to the underworld and return with Eurydice. His singing has the power to appease the Furies and animate the blessed Shadows. Yet, his voice cannot reassure Eurydice who despairs of the feigned indifference of Orpheus, put to the test by Jupiter. Raphaël Pichon conducts the opera of operas and Aurélien Bory displays the giddiness of the mental and supernatural spaces traveled by Orpheus and beyond. Marianne Crebassa plays a new breeches role with Hélène Guilmette (Hélène in Le Timbre d’argent) and Lea Desandre (the title role in Alcione).

Glyndebourne has brought to light a long-overlooked winner in Donizetti's Poliuto, delivering a superb musical performance (The Telegraph) offering lucent accounts of the principal roles and an incandescent London Philharmonic Orchestra, under Enrique Mazzola (New York Times). This first-ever professional UK staging of the story of third-century Armenian martyr St Polyeuctus features a trio of world-class young singers with Beverly Sills- and Richard Tucker-award-winning Fabiano displaying a thrilling, vibrant tone in the title role, Martínez providing Paolina with pinging coloratura and Golovatenko giving a radiant-toned voice to Severo (The Guardian )

Live performance from the Opéra National de Paris, 2003.

Britten's last opera, in two acts, presented by Teatro Real.

Praised by critics as “magnificent”, “breathtakingly theatrical” and full of “zestful imagination”, Melly Still’s “spine-tingling” Rusalka is a Glyndebourne classic – a magical contemporary reimagining of a much-loved fairy tale. Light and darkness, beauty and danger come together in this passionate tale of love against the odds. At once evocative and unsettling, this production collides two contrasting worlds in Rae Smith’s elegant designs made of “brilliant stage-pictures”. Rusalka’s forest home is a dappled space of sunshine and shadows, full of strange woodland creatures, while the Prince’s court is a world of sleek modernity and sophistication – a world of man.

The Olivier-nominated Royal Opera production featuring a trio of one-act Puccini operas was first performed together on the same bill at Covent Garden in September 2011, and was acclaimed by the Telegraph as "an operatic treat... three hours of gorgeous music that allows big voices to let emotion rip" and by the Evening Standard as "a triumphant vindication of the social awareness and dramatic power of Puccini's triptych". The trio of operas offers a panorama of emotions, with the dark and foreboding Il tabarro and comic Gianni Schicchi bookending a heart-wrenching Suor Angelica.

Hamm is an ageing, blind tyrant who is confined to a wheelchair – but soon becomes locked in a bleakly funny and subversively devastating stalemate. Endgame forms the first half of a double bill, performed alongside Samuel Beckett’s rarely-seen short play Rough for Theatre II.

The Italian and international press were unanimous in their praise for "Peter Grimes" at La Scala, which revived the tradition of Britten's operas on the lyric stages of Italy. A top British cast was marshaled by the baton of Robin Ticciati. Richard Jones's production focuses on the fisherman as the outside in a brutal and brutalized 1980s society, cut off by mutual suspicion and misunderstanding: an unforgettable production of a 20th-century operatic masterpiece that never loses its power. Filmed in High Definition and recorded in true Surround Sound.