Xerxes is one of Handel’s latest and most frequently performed operas, famous for its marvelous opening aria ‘Ombra mai fu’. At the centre of the confusing tragicomedy, very loosely based upon the life of Xerxes I of Persia, is a powerful and lovesick royal eccentric, King Xerxes. Rising...
It’s Christmas in the Ukrainian village of Dikanka and the blacksmith Wakula is unhappily in love with Oksana, daughter of a landowner. She only wants to marry him on the condition that he gets her the Tsarina's golden shoes. In desperation, Wakula turns to the devil to fly him to the capital and...
