Lucrezia Borgia

Nabucco - live from Metropolitan Opera, June 2002. On its surface, Nabucco is about the epic struggle of Zaccaria and the Jews suppressed by Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar and his vengeful daughter, Abigaille. But to Italians fighting for their freedom from Austria, Verdi’s first great opera was an inspiring call to arms.

Written 20 years after Madame Butterfly (1904), Puccini's version of an 800-year-old fairy-tale is set in a legendary Peking and scored on a grand scale, incorporating not only Chinese musical techniques but a vast range of oriental percussion. Puccini draws heavily on the chorus, and as ever makes intense demands on his heroine, to which Eva Marton rises powerfully, very well complemented by the tenor Michael Sylvester as Calaf. However, what makes this 1994 San Francisco Opera version so enchanting as a visual experience is the realisation by David Hockney, who not only designed the sets and costumes but also directed the production. His vision is highly stylised, richly imagined, atmospheric and very beautiful, and it is a testament to how well this version is directed that much of the original magic is communicated through the confines of a TV screen.

In the awe-inspiring Teatro Olimpico,Vicenza, Cecilia Bartoli, recognised as one of the best singers of our time, gives the most outstanding recital of work from a variety of composers such as Caccini, Schubert, Handel, Vivaldi, Bellini, Donizetti,Mozart, Rossini, Viardot and Bizet.

A production of Mozart's opera recorded live at Zurich Opera House in 2000. Cecilia Bartoli leads an all-star cast including Roberto Saccà, Liliana Nikiteanu, and Agnes Baltsa. The conductor is Nikolaus Harnoncourt. Filmed live at the Zurich Opera House in February 2000 on a set which visualises the subtitle "The School for Lovers", the plot revolves around two army officers arguing about the fidelity of their brides, then setting out to test their chastity. Despite the often playful humour, this is not only psychologically telling music-making, but reveals Mozart exploring the structure of opera, discarding convention to mix large ensemble sections with arias for as many different combinations of singers as possible. With Liliana Nikiteanu attractively contrasted with Bartoli, and thoroughly convincing performances by Roberto Sacca (Ferrando) and Oliver Widmer (Guilelmo), this Così has a freshness and flow which, coupled with the timeless romantic themes, feels very contemporary.

Arabella, Op. 79, is a lyric comedy or opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, their sixth and last operatic collaboration.

Flemings voice might have been made for Ariadne and she achieved a great personal triumph in this production: The chief glory of the evening was hearing Renee Fleming, the Straussian soprano par excellence, making her role debut as Ariadne… As the possessor of what is, possibly, the most beautiful soprano voice in the world, she put her vocal treasures in the service of an empathic, nuanced interpretation of the role. From the creamy top, through a rich, warm middle, to the bewitching, darker colours of her lower register, Fleming poured her magnificent sound into Strausss enchanting melodic arcs, animating the sadness, vulnerability, and desire of the bereft princess...

Live performance from the Metropolitan Opera, 27 February, 1996.

Live from the Met 1997

Taped live in Barcelona's Gran Teatre del Liceu on January 31, 2002, this L'Orfeo is both a visual delight and a musically satisfying representation of Monteverdi's opera

Live performance from the Gran Teatre del Liceu, 2011

After many years of wandering around the world, an anxious composer chooses love over art. But it may be too late to salvage either. Franz Schreker was a popular composer in the early decades of the 20th century, until his music was banned by the Nazis because he was of Jewish background. Der ferne Klang, his first major work, is a late Romantic opera of grand passions. Director Christof Loy is back at the Royal Swedish Opera with a production set in a dreamlike mise en scène.

The libretto of the most well known opera by Dvořak, which premiered in Prague in 1901, is inspired by the Czech version of the Central European folktale, one we also know as Undine (1811) by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué or The Little Mermaid (1837) by Hans Christian Andersen.

New peoduction, 2009. Filmed by the Royal Opera House in co-production with Opus Arte, June 13/17.

As Christof Loy put it: Così fan tutte invites us to embrace the complexity of life and face the future with heads held high. In his staging of the version he abridged with Joana Mallwitz for the Salzburg Festival 2020 the focus is wholly on the figures and the subtle choreography of their emotional states — in a space that like a magnifying glass exposes the intricate mechanisms between the characters. In this way the production leads the protagonists and the audience to experience the ‘serene calm’ that can perhaps indeed cure our own ‘distempers’.

Les vêpres siciliennes, like the similarly epic Don Carlos, was conceived as a grand opéra for Paris and is driven by the tensions between private passions and public politics. Originally set during Sicily's 13th-century uprising against French rule, in Christof Loy's staging for the Netherlands Opera the action is transposed to a 1940s world of sudden violence and shadowy double-dealing. Imaginatively cast and idiomatically conducted, the performance presents this magnificent score in its entirety, including the allegorical ballet The Four Seasons.

One moment the singer Floria Tosca is standing on the stage, next moment she is the key figure in a deadly political intrigue sparked by jealousy and the craving for power. Giacomo Puccini’s thriller continues to captivate audiences to this day. Helsinki presents an audacious new production of this classic directed by Christof Loy. Award-winning German director Christof Loy promises a new and original vision of Puccini’s masterpiece. Lithuanian soprano Aušrinė Stundytė has the title role for the 2018/19 season, Italian tenor Andrea Carè plays the artist Cavaradossi and Finnish baritone Tuomas Pursio the power-hungry Scarpia. The conductor is Patrick Fournillier.

Live from Munich, 2005. London, 1601: love, lust and a death sentence at the English royal court - that's just the mix for great Italian opera. Roberto Devereux - an opera for a sovereign, a work for Edita Gruberová! The prima donna assoluta of bel canto triumphs in this drama. Either an opera house can acquire the services of "la Gruberová" - or they can forget putting on this opera.

Webers great heroic-romantic opera Euryanthe premiered in Vienna in 1823. It concerns the wronged Euryanthe, victim of a plot to establish her unfaithfulness, but her love imbues her with colossal strength which Weber characterizes with acute psychological insight. Through-composed and dispensing with spoken dialogue, its chivalric plot provides opportunities for a series of arias, ariosos, duets, cavatinas and choruses that contain some of his greatest operatic music. This production employs the operas original version with a few, very minor cuts.