TDK presents a production of Rossinis LItaliana in Algeri by renowned opera stage director Andrei Serban and conducted by Bruno Campanella from the prestigious Opéra National de Paris. The excellent cast of singer-actors was led by international mezzo- star Jennifer Larmore who, with her unaffected contact with the audience, beautiful voice and excellent acting, is central to this staging. The American singer has acquired a reputation as a Rossini specialist, and is no stranger to inventive stagings of the composers comedies. However, the work may be named after the Italian girl, but her adversary Mustafà is just as dominant, and this production has one of the leading exponents of this gleeful role, the buffo bass Simone Alaimo.

During the 1750s Niccolo Piccinni was one of the most popular opera composers at the major houses in Rome and Naples - but of the more than one hundred works he wrote for stage, most have fallen into oblivion. His greatest enduring success was the buffo opera La Cecchina, which enjoyed its premiere performance in Rome in 1760. The libretto was written by the Venetian poet Carlo Goldoni, based on the Samuel Richardson novel Pamela published in 1740. Piccinni's opera was pioneering in terms of style and helped establish his fame far beyond Italy's borders. Although the composer stayed true to the traditional form, he replaced the caricaturing and parodying depiction of the characters with an affectionate, sensitive and very human interpretation.

This production of Rossinis Il Barbiere di Siviglia, staged by Coline Serreau, was presented at the Opera Bastille for the first time in 2002. It was the successful film directors second opera project. The international cast features one of the leading lyric mezzos working in the Rossini repertoire American Joyce DiDonato sings Rosina. German-Italian star tenor Roberto Saccà takes the role of her seducer, Count Almaviva and Czech baritone Dalibor Jenis, currently one of the best Figaros available, completes the leading trio. Delicate Spanish bass baritone Carlos Chausson playing Bartolo, Rosinas guardian, and Icelandic bass Kristinn Sigmundsson as the curious music teacher Basilio provide suitable buffo material for the operas various comic scenes.

Cecilia Bartoli both thrills the senses and touches the heart in Rossini's sparkling comedy, her feisty Cinderella combining rebelliousness with pathos, vocal beauty with stunning virtuosity. She and a star cast of Italian principals captivate the Houston audience in this exuberant Bologna production, recorded live in November 1995.

La fille du régiment (The Daughter of the Regiment) is an opéra comique in two acts by Gaetano Donizetti, set to a French libretto by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges and Jean-François Bayard. It was first performed on 11 February 1840 by the Paris Opéra-Comique at the Salle de la Bourse.