Opera North’s enchanting staging of The Adventures of Pinocchio, Jonathan Dove’s 21st opera, is a wittily inventive feast for the eyes and ears. A full-length, through-composed grand opera with 29 characters, a sizeable chorus and a profound symphonic score, it is overflowing with visual delights, and children will love it! A sublime achievement by Martin Duncan and team, this production shines a bright new light on Collodi’s dream-like original story, full of charm, darkness and magic. The superb ensemble stars Victoria Simmonds in the title role, and the orchestra and chorus respond splendidly under David Parry’s vibrant baton. This is a wonderful chance for children and adults to relive an exhilarating theatre experience at home.

Opera North’s enchanting staging of The Adventures of Pinocchio, Jonathan Dove’s 21st opera, is a wittily inventive feast for the eyes and ears.

The Adventures of Pinocchio

OperaGlass Works were about to open with a stage production of Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, conducted by John Wilson, in London just when Lockdown began. They had been rehearsing for 6 weeks and the production was at such an exciting point that they just couldn’t let it go. So they made a film. This is not just live capture. This is a new hybrid form that honours the spirit of the original theatre production but that also embraces the current constraints: the presence of the camera is declared and the intimacy of performing to a live audience is replaced by the singers singing directly into the lens. Shot on location at Wilton’s Music Hall, the extraordinary atmosphere and charm of this mid-nineteenth-century theatre suits the haunting ambiguities of this opera perfectly. The whole space, every corner, not just the stage, is used to tell the story.

OperaGlass Works films their production of Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, conducted by John Wilson.

The Turn of the Screw

Rinat Shaham, with her sublime singing, is the provocative and free-spirited Carmen, while Dymtro Popov portrays Don José with a perfect mix of naivety and desire, his rich tenor rolling out across the harbour.

Rinat Shaham is the provocative and free-spirited Carmen, while Dymtro Popov portrays Don José with a perfect mix of naivety and desire.

Carmen

Staatsoper Hamburg and Vincent Boussard’s new staging of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly brings to life the moving tragedy of Japanese geisha Cio-Cio San (Alexia Voulgaridou) in a stylish and sophisticated production. Costumes by Christian Lacroix, set by Vincent Lemaire.

Staatsoper Hamburg and Vincent Boussard’s new staging of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly brings to life the moving tragedy of Japanese geisha Cio-Cio San

Madama Butterfly

Don Giovanni is the second of Mozart’s landmark collaborations with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte (after The Marriage of Figaro and before Così fan tutte). In it, they created a work that has beguiled and entranced in equal measure since its premiere in 1787. Perfectly situated, as no other opera, between tragedy and comedy, this potent drama combines glorious music with a seductive central character who is endlessly fascinating in his complexity. Kasper Holten’s 2014 production for The Royal Opera casts Don Giovanni as an artist who thrives on an audience enticed by his creative gifts. The visually spectacular set by award-winning designer Es Devlin features ingenious video designs by Luke Halls which provide an insight into the characters’ thoughts and emotions. But at the production’s heart are the beauty and invention of Mozart’s dazzling score.

Kasper Holten’s 2014 production for The Royal Opera House casts Don Giovanni as an artist who thrives on an audience enticed by his creative gifts.

Don Giovanni

Glyndebourne has a proud association with the operas of Benjamin Britten, however until 2010 had never staged Billy Budd. The all-male opera with a libretto co-written by E.M. Forster, is based on the battle between pure good and blind evil, and is set on a British man-o'-war ship. Michael Grandage, Artistic Director of the Donmar Warehouse, chose this work to make his long-awaited operatic debut. Sir Mark Elder returned to conduct, marking the 100th opera production in his illustrious career.

The all-male opera is based on the battle between pure good and blind evil, and is set on a British man-o'-war ship.

Billy Budd

The tale of a quick-witted fox and her escape from confinement for a life in the forest that is by turns joyful and violent, The Cunning Little Vixen is an unsentimental parable of death and rebirth that lives through the instinctive and immediate world of nature, animal and human, which Janácek loved so much. Melly?Still’s production for Glyndebourne finds the ‘delicate balance between whimsy and mysticism’ (Daily Telegraph) at the heart of the opera, which Vladimir Jurowski conducts ‘with lustrous style: you can hear the birds in the score, feel the sunshine and thrill to the starlit night sky in the final scene’ (Opera Today).

Janacek's tale of a quick-witted fox and her escape from confinement for a life in the forest.

The Cunning Little Vixen

When the European youth chooses War above Love, Cupid decides to seek out new followers on other continents. The opera thus recounts the way people love, hate, envy or trust overseas, all the while asking its western audience a burning question: how do we love right? In Indes Galantes, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui raise the sensible issues of population movements, fragmented and ever-changing territories and borders, but also the refugee crisis that has shaken Europe to its very core…

When the European youth chooses War above Love, Cupid decides to seek out new followers on other continents.

Les Indes Galantes

Puccini’s Japanese tragedy Madama Butterfly is given a ravishing production by The Royal Opera. 
Its alluring imagery of Japan from the 19th-century European Imagination heightens the intense clash of East and West. When the American naval officer Pinkerton seduces the young ‘Butterfly’ Cio-Cio-San, he seems to promise every happiness – but his cruel abandonment leads to her tragic self-sacrifice.
Antonio Pappano, Music Director of The Royal Opera and renowned for his interpretations of Puccini, conducts an exceptionally fine cast with the Royal Opera Chorus and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House.

Powerful performances show why Madama Butterfly remains one of the all-time operatic favorites.

Puccini’s Madama Butterfly is one of the best-known operas worldwide. The ROH stages this alluring Japanese tragedy, reminding us why it’s a favorite.

A modern opera adaptation by Charles Wuorinen based on Annie Proulx’s short story previously adapted by Ang Lee for the Oscar-winning film Brokeback Mountain. This marks Wuorinen’s return to the opera stage with one of the major works of his career, equally ambitious in its beauty and momentous tragedy. Brokeback is the story of ranch hand Ennis del Mar and rodeo cowboy Jack Twist, two young men who meet and fall in love on the fictional Brokeback Mountain in Wyoming in 1963. Wuorinen says “It’s a story of doomed love, in this case a complex homosexual relationship taking place in a very homophobic society."

A modern opera adaptation by Charles Wuorinen based on Annie Proulx’s short story.

Brokeback Mountain

Glyndebourne’s wartime history as a home for evacuee children is the ingenious context for a new production of this unclassifiable entertainment in which low comedy and high tragedy compete for our attention, ‘borne aloft by Strauss’s divine music and Hofmannsthal’s visionary poetry’. At the centre of this production from Katharina Thoma is the noble, tragic figure of the abandoned Ariadne herself, in a haunting performance from Soile Isokoski, ‘with brilliant support from the pit’ (The Independent).

Glyndebourne’s wartime history as a home for evacuee children is the ingenious context for a new production of this unclassifiable tale.

Ariadne auf Naxos

Adam’s Passion is the moving first collaboration between two “masters of slow motion who harmonize perfectly with each other” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung). In the spectacular setting of a former submarine factory, American director and universal artist Robert Wilson creates a poetic visual world in which the mystical musical language of the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt can cast its meditative spell. Three of Pärt’s major works – Adam’s Lament, Tabula rasa, and Miserere, as well as Sequentia, a new work composed especially for this production – are brought together here using light, space, and movement to create a tightly-woven Gesamtkunstwerk in which the artistic visions of these two great artists mirror each other.

Adam’s Passion is the moving first collaboration between Arvo Pärt and Philip Glass.

Adam's Passion

The Royal Opera House stages one of Verdi’s - and opera’s - most beloved productions, La Traviata.

The timeless tale follows the tragic love story of a courtesan, Violetta, who is prepared to sacrifice everything for the man she loves, Alfredo. Torn apart by society and class, Verdi’s dramatic masterpiece has been the inspiration behind modern Hollywood classics including Pretty Woman and Moulin Rouge. 

Experience Verdi’s La Traviata, the inspiration behind Moulin Rouge, lovingly staged at London’s Royal Opera House.

La Traviata

Deborah Warner’s beautiful and evocative production of Britten’s final operatic masterpiece has been acclaimed as an ‘exquisitely achieved marriage of music, drama and design’ (The Independent). In Britten’s luminous and compelling interpretation of Thomas Mann’s classic novella, the ageing writer Gustav von Aschenbach’s infatuation with the Polish boy Tadzio and his subsequent decline are portrayed in a ‘remarkable and harrowingly believable’ performance (The Guardian) by John Graham-Hall, who had already won golden opinions for singing the role of Aschenbach at La Scala. The superb ENO chorus and orchestra are conducted by Edward Gardner, a long-standing champion of Britten’s music.

Deborah Warner’s beautiful and evocative production of Britten’s final operatic masterpiece.

Death in Venice

Recommendations

Lee Reynolds conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra in an innovative new filmed production
of Ravel’s opera, L’enfant et les sortilèges, directed by Rachael Hewer. With an ensemble cast of over
80 singers, the opera tells the story of a child, being educated at home, who is punished for their
irascible behaviour by a variety of household objects and animals coming fantastically to life.
The brain-child of director Rachael Hewer, this new production was conceived as a response to
world events over the last few months. Each scene was filmed by the singers in their own homes,
and brought magically to life with costumes and set added in post-production through the aid of
green-screen technology.

Lee Reynolds conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra in an innovative new production
of Ravel’s opera, L’enfant et les sortilèges.

L’enfant et les sortilèges

Subscribe now to watch

Cast & Crew

Recommendations