One of opera’s grimmest tragedies received a powerful new production during the 2021–22 season when director Bartlett Sher unveiled his Weimar-era staging of Verdi’s Rigoletto. In this performance, recorded as part of the company’s Live in HD series of cinema transmissions, commanding...
Anja Harteros excels in the title role of Michael Sturminger’s cinematic staging of Puccini’s “Tosca”, the centrepiece of Salzburg Easter Festival. Aleksandrs Antoņenko compellingly portrays Cavaradossi, while Ludovic Tézier is a thrillingly malevolent Scarpia. Christian Thielemann leads...
With this DVD and Blu-ray of Rodelinda, one of Handel’s most emotionally complex operas, conductor Emmanuelle Haïm adds to her impressive Erato catalogue of the composer’s works. The imaginative production, by Jean Bellorini, was seen at the Opéra de Lille in Autumn 2018, and the cast...
Grand festivities are held at the court of the Duke of Mantua. But the community which enjoys itself no longer knows values and amuses itself out of deadly boredom. The most cynical of all is court jester Rigoletto. He only wants to protect his daughter Gilda against the depraved world. He...
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...
After twenty years of absence, Puccini’s Turandot was revived on the stage of the Teatro Real in a new production by American stage director Robert Wilson. One of the most important theatre and visual artist of our times, the director who gave life to Philip Glass’s Einstein of the Beach and...
