In 1835 Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor made it's triumphant debut at the San Carlo in Naples. For it's Parisian appearance four years later as Lucie de Lammermoor, the composer went much further than merely Gallicising the heroine's first name, he subjected the opera to a condensation in which Lucie became the only woman in the entire cast. Donizetti's orchestration remains largely the same but the French influence is audible in new recitatives. This later version is no surrogate or mere abridgement, but, perhaps because of it's greater concision, is more brutal and emotional than the original.

A century after it's world premiere at Teatro all Scala under Arturo Toscanini, conductor Francesco Cilluffo opened the 2024 season of the Teatro Lirico in Cagliari with this acclaimed production of Arrigo Boito's rarely performed Nerone. Set in Rome and focusing on Nero during a time of conflict between belief in Roman Gods and Christianity, Boito's opera displays a forward-looking harmonic palette with an eloquent and masterly handling of large orchestral forces.

In the early 1670s, soon after Venetian opera became established in Naples, a series of comic figures began to inhabit secular but also sacred operas. These stock characters included the Neapolitan, the Calabrian and the Boy, and all three plus a fourth, 'The Spaniard', appear in a comic intermezzo inserted in the 1673 opera Il disperato innocente by the little-known Francesco Antonio Boero. This is the oldest surviving Neapolitan comic intermezzo, and, along with it's Prologue, seems to have been written by other authors. This video preserves a historically informed performance given by Antonio Florio with Pino de Vittorio that explores the tradition of the intermezzo in 17th century plots.

Initially composed for performance during the season of Lent, Donizetti's Il diluvio universale ('The Great Flood') takes a Biblical story and mixes it with the human nature of the main characters, creating a uniquely intense drama. Performed here with a stellar cast in it's acclaimed 2023 revival at the Festival Donizetti in Bergamo, this production transports Donizetti's opera into the present day. In this staging collective and individual destinies are interwoven, urging us to reflect on issues such as the environmental crisis and climate change.

Influential German poet Barthold Heinrich Brockes reinvented the Passion oratorio tradition, transforming it's textures into a much-admired poetic meditation that took hold of the imagination of many German Baroque composers. Of several settings Handel's is by far the most famous, creating an eloquent and moving score from his friend's libretto. This acclaimed staged version directed by Walter Sutcliffe extends the vision of the original by asking fundamental questions about the evolution of mankind and it's dangerous implications for planet Earth.

In Eine Winterreise, renowned director Christof Loy has created a memorable evening of music theatre in which Schubert's tragically short life is depicted by and extended through his immortal music and songs from Winterreise, Die sch�ne M�llerin and Schwanengesang. The soul of the composer is brought to life by the internationally celebrated mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter alongside acclaimed pianist Kristian Bezuidenhout. Drawing on nostalgia for Viennese Biedermeier intimacy the narrative explores extremes of human feelings from the joy of life to a longing for death, all portrayed through a cast that includes Schubert's disreputable friend Schober, among other shadows from his past and his imagined future. Track listing: Eine Winterreise (staged version by C. Loy) (Theater Basel, 2022) (Blu-ray, HD)

Tosca is a melodrama of love, betrayal and death set in the revolutionary unrest of 1800. The story concerns the opera singer Floria Tosca who tries to save her lover, the painter Mario Cavaradossi, from the brutal chief of police, Scarpia. Through-composed and expertly orchestrated it contains some of Puccini’s best-known lyrical arias and remains one of his most performed operas. In this 2022 production, an eminent cast is directed by the acclaimed Australian director Barrie Kosky – ‘the Amsterdam audience was completely swept off its feet by Kosky’s stunning production’ (Opera News).

Francesco Cilea's Gloria, performed here in it's 1932 revised edition, takes as it's theme the ultimately tragic story of two lovers caught up in a conflict in 14th-century Siena. The libretto is based on Victorien Sardou's play La Haine (Hatred) and the opera features Cilea's refined orchestral writing inspired by the Russian and French schools, with vocal lines that are varied and rewarding. Opera Today called this production 'musically magical', while Operawire. Com extolled the inventive and convincing staging along with Francesco Cilluffo's compelling musical direction.

Götterdämmerung ('Twilight of the Gods') is the final opera of Wagner’s epic tetralogy "Der Ring des Nibelungen" ('The Ring of the Nibelung') in which his visionary masterpiece reaches its cataclysmic conclusion. Betrayal and death, murder and remorse, lie at the opera’s heart, in a work that draws together every plot element in writing of blazing intensity. As the ring is restored to the Rhinemaidens, the age of the gods ends, with the opera offering the certainty of destruction but the consolation of renewal. Staged by the award-winning director Stefan Herheim, this innovative new production from Deutsche Oper Berlin features a leading international cast conducted by Sir Donald Runnicles. The release includes "Making Of" documentary featuring interviews with Stefan Herheim and Sir Donald Runnicles, and behind the scenes footage.

Having been granted unprecedented authority by Louis XIV, the Sun King, no one could stage operas in France without Jean-Baptiste Lully’s permission. By 1686, however, Lully’s authority was waning and his long-standing librettist deserted him to write sacred works. Despite these setbacks, Lully wrote Acis et Galatée, a pastorale héroïque, and one of his final masterpieces. (Dynamic)

Alessandro Scarlatti's Il trionfo dell'onore (The Triumph of Honour) - his only comic opera - was first performed in Naples in 1718. With it's distinctive recitatives and expressive arias, and a cast including four pairs of lovers, it can be considered one of the forerunners of opera buffa. The central character is the unrepentant seducer Riccardo Albenori, a Don Giovanni-like figure though without the villainous aura. In this opera, Scarlatti ensures not only perceptive psychology but a rich variety of arias, duets and quartets that generate the work's pathos as well as it's humour and eroticism.

Gluck's Orphee et Euridice is a masterpiece of the operatic canon, inspired by one of the most mysterious and cruel stories in Greek mythology. The gods allow Orpheus to descend into the underworld to revive his beloved wife Eurydice, but on condition that he must not look at her while returning. This production from Florence re-imagines this myth as a story for our times. It explores each character anew, highlighting the music and text as a more sophisticated psychological thriller than previously imagined, creating a moving and transformative narrative with which we can all identify.

Roberto Devereux is the fourth and finest of Donizetti's works dedicated to the Tudor period of English history, and is considered by many to be the ultimate masterpiece amongst his Italian operas. The tragic narrative is a tale of intrigue and vengeance in the court of the elderly and weary Queen Elisabeth I, with Donizetti's powerful score expressing all of the intense drama and sorrowful emotion demanded by the opera's finely etched characters. This star-studded Donizetti Opera Festival production received wide critical acclaim.

Zoraida di Granata, a stirring tale of love, betrayal and reconciliation, set in the Moorish kingdom of Granada in Andalusia in 1480, gave the 24-year-old Donizetti his first major operatic triumph. It marked his establishment as a true musical dramatist with a sure sense of craftsmanship and a flair for the dramatic. The opera's virtuosic central roles, fine choruses and powerful set-pieces show Rossini's unavoidable influence, though it is more a presence rather than imitation. This performance of the 1822 edition, not the 1824 revision, is performed on original instruments by Gli Originali and conducted by Alberto Zanardi.

Donizetti's Don Pasquale is one of a triumvirate of 19th-century Italian opere buffe - L'elisir d'amore and Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia being the others - that continue to enchant the world's stages. Don Pasquale represents the high point of the opera buffa tradition, employing figures taken from commedia dell'arte - the blustering old man, his lovesick nephew, the wily widow and the scheming doctor - and brings new life to the genre in this beautifully constructed comic opera full of cabalettas, cadenzas and coloratura, gently tinged with melancholy. This production employs a new critical edition of the work and stars the seasoned baritone Roberto de Candia in the central role, alongside Giulia Mazzola as Norina.

MacBeth is one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies, telling the story of a power couple galvanised by witchcraft and superstition, and obsessed by a craving to conquer the throne by force, even by murder. This French version of Verdi's opera takes us into a sphere of decorum and decency that hides monsters capable of the worst atrocities, portrayed in some of the composer's most blood-curdling and intense passages of music. A genuine rarity on stage, this 2024 production of the French version was acclaimed for it's powerful vocal performances and fine acting.

This new production of Tosca from Maggio Musicale Fiorentino is set in the late 1920s. Puccini's 'Roman Opera' sees a city bathed in majesty but also curdled by eroticism and sadism, where sartorial elegance and pathological violence co-exist. Taking visual clues from Bernardo Bertolucci's cinematic masterpiece, Il conformista, the cast is led by the passionate Vanessa Goikoetxea and features the magnetic Alexey Markov in the role of Scarpia. Daniele Gatti directs a performance praised for it's 'courageous and surprising' impact.

Bajazet was a work of Vivaldi's late maturity, a dramatic tale that recounts the capture of the Turkish sultan Bajazet by the all-conquering Tartar, Tamerlane. It is a pasticcio, a well-established form, in which Vivaldi incorporated arias by some of the greatest young composers of his time - Johann Adolf Hasse, Geminiano Giacomelli and Riccardo Broschi, brother to the famous castrato Farinelli - to form a generous buffet of musical fireworks. Still, Vivaldi's recitatives, choruses and arias form the backbone of the opera, and constitute the majority of the music, producing a work of kaleidoscopic invention.

Teatro La Fenice has a tradition of opera production that goes back to 1792. This collection brings all of the live atmosphere and drama of six operatic masterpieces from a theatre that has seen more than it's fair share of historic premieres. This set includes the 19th-century romance of Bizet's Les pecheurs de perles, the intense drama of Verdi's Luisa Miller, Britten's hauntingly understated Death In Venice, Massenet's tragic tale of love and redemption in Tha�s, Wagner's final opera Parsifal and Korngold's Die tote Stadt, one of the great operatic successes of the 1920s. An entire century's worth of opera can be seen and heard in these acclaimed productions from Venice's legendary venue.

Gaetano Donizetti had big shoes to fill at his debut in Naples in 1823, arriving at the Teatro di San Carlo just after Rossini's departure, full of talent but still seeking his true voice. Alfredo il Grande is influenced by Rossini, but also shows hints of great things to come. The narrative is a celebration of heroism and magnanimous royalty, taking us to 9th century England where King Alfred the Great is on the run from the Vikings. Revived two centuries after the spectacular failure of it's premiere, this little-known opera seria can now stand as a reflection on humanitarian values and gestures of resistance against the destructiveness of war.

A century after it's world premiere at Teatro all Scala under Arturo Toscanini, conductor Francesco Cilluffo opened the 2024 season of the Teatro Lirico in Cagliari with this acclaimed production of Arrigo Boito's rarely performed Nerone. Set in Rome and focusing on Nero during a time of conflict between belief in Roman Gods and Christianity, Boito's opera displays a forward-looking harmonic palette with an eloquent and masterly handling of large orchestral forces.

Ottorino Respighi's 'mystery in three episodes', Maria egiziaca, started out as a concert triptych. It's intensely dramatic and at times symphonic qualities give it a character somewhere between an oratorio and an opera. Based on the life of Saint Mary of Egypt, the archaic story of Maria egiziaca revolves around faith seen through it's various characters, with Maria's journey from prostitution to sainthood conveyed as an expressive and eloquently immediate musical fresco. This Teatro La Fenice production of Respighi's profoundly moving and deeply sensuous stage work was critically acclaimed.

In 1835 Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor made it's triumphant debut at the San Carlo in Naples. For it's Parisian appearance four years later as Lucie de Lammermoor, the composer went much further than merely Gallicising the heroine's first name, he subjected the opera to a condensation in which Lucie became the only woman in the entire cast. Donizetti's orchestration remains largely the same but the French influence is audible in new recitatives. This later version is no surrogate or mere abridgement, but, perhaps because of it's greater concision, is more brutal and emotional than the original.

Initially composed for performance during the season of Lent, Donizetti's Il diluvio universale ('The Great Flood') takes a Biblical story and mixes it with the human nature of the main characters, creating a uniquely intense drama. Performed here with a stellar cast in it's acclaimed 2023 revival at the Festival Donizetti in Bergamo, this production transports Donizetti's opera into the present day. In this staging collective and individual destinies are interwoven, urging us to reflect on issues such as the environmental crisis and climate change.

Francesco Cilea’s Gloria, performed here in its 1932 revised edition, takes as its theme the ultimately tragic story of two lovers caught up in a conflict in 14th-century Siena. The libretto is based on Victorien Sardou's play La Haine (Hatred) and the opera features Cilea’s refined orchestral writing inspired by the Russian and French schools, with vocal lines that are varied and rewarding. Opera Today called this production ‘musically magical’, while Operawire.com extolled the inventive and convincing staging along with Francesco Cilluffo’s compelling musical direction.