This gripping and visually stunning film has been universally hailed as one of the most satisfying of all versions of opera on celluloid. Director Gianfranco de Bosio has given an extraordinary dimension of realism to this story of love, deception and murder by shooting it all in the original Roman location. Using diverse cinematic tricks and imaginative camerawork, this opera film is much more a visual interpretation of Puccini’s music than a theatre piece filmed in original settings.

Maria Guleghina impresses strongly. To my mind she is Puccini’s ideal ‘tart with a heart for gold’. She has control and sensitivity and she acts everybody off the stage. She’s coy (but with just a hint of being street-wise) in Act I, outrageously flighty and avaricious in Act II, and, at last, contrite in Act IV. Just watch her as she taunts Geronte di Ravoir (a far too gentlemanly Luigi Roni) in Act II and the way she disports herself on the floor of the stage to seduce Des Grieux back to her charms.

Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly – the composer’s selfproclaimed favourite work and certainly one of the most beloved operas in the repertoire – is brought to life at the world-famous Arena di Verona. This opulent production, directed by respected film and opera director Franco Zeffirelli, is sung by a cast of excellent singers. Fiorenza Cedolins is a sought after Butterfly singer and her Pinkerton is performed by the renowned tenor Marcello Giordani. The celebrated operatic baritone Juan Pons gives the principled United States consul Sharpless. The performance is lead by long-established Arena di Verona conductor Daniel Oren with all the splendour that a Puccini opera demands. The sum of all this is a gloriously sung musical experience.

A fake death, a perverse woman and a pure woman, a man torn between them, a murder: the story of Edgar, Giacomo Puccini’s second opera, is full of dramatic turns of events. Arthaus Musik presents this powerful and tragic opera now in a version which was count for lost for nearly 120 years. For the first time the original version in four acts of Edgar by Giacomo Puccini was staged at the Teatro Regio in Turin in 2008. Thanks to the rediscovery of the manuscript score, after 119 years since the first and only performance in Milan in 1889 and after numerous versions condensing the opera in three acts, it will be again possible to experience the original opera that Puccini wrote.

The charming story of Chinese princess Turandot who will only marry a suitor who can solve her riddles is presented in this adaptation of the opera by Giacomo Puccini.; Critically acclaimed filmmaker Chen Kaige directs this performance. The authenticity of this production is incredible, with its superb costumes and sets, all of which were designed in China.; Zubin Mehta conducts the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana, and Maria Guleghina is a remarkable Turandot. The performance offers “genuine fireworks of sound.” (Wiener Zeitung)

Tosca is a story of lust and crime, originally written for Sarah Bernhardt by the French playwright, Victorien Sardou. Puccini’s genius lay in his remarkable ability to transform such a tale into an opera of the highest drama and passion. Tosca was central to Puccini’s career and revealed a new refinement and fluency in his work. Through Tosca, a drama of idealistic young love, Puccini was bidding farewell to young manhood, with melodic style and rousing passion.This production of one of Puccini’s best-loved works from the magnificent Roman amphitheatre in Verona features the outstanding performances of Eva Marton in the title role, with Ingvar Wixell as a superbly wicked Scarpia and Giacomo Aragall as the ill-fated Cavaradossi.

Tosca was revived to great acclaim at La Scala in this 2000 production, which built on Luca Ronconi's 1996 version with musical direction from principal conductor Riccardo Muti and Lorenza Cantini's nightmarishly distorted set. Puccini's most recorded opera is loved and derided in equal measure for its high-octane dramatics, rich arias and the fire-spitting exchanges of the eponymous heroine and her wily tormentor Scarpia. Under Muti, the music takes precedence over the self-conscious theatricality of the book. As a result, some high dramatic points–the stabbing, always tricky, and Tosca's suicide, equally dicey–are underplayed here.

The legendary Franco Corelli, world-renowned for his portrayal of Calaf, here stars in a magical RAI television production of what many consider to be Puccini’s crowning achievement. Under the creative direction of Mario Lanfranchi, this Turandot resonates with elements of Kabuki. Corelli, at the peak of his vocal powers, finds his match in the fiery Turandot of Lucille Udovich. Among her many credits, Udovich sang opposite Corelli in the noted 1954 revival of Spontini’s Agnes di Hohenstaufen at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino; she also sang the role of of Elettra in the 1956 EMI studio recording of Mozart’s Idomeneo, under the direction of Sir John Pritchard.

This was the very first “Live from the Met” telecast, and its availability on DVD will no doubt give rise to intense nostalgia, as it did for me. (How young everyone looked!) There’s an authentic sense of occasion to this performance. It’s one thing to play to a packed house, another to play to a nationwide television audience, and with so many eyes upon them, everyone involved in this Bohème rose to the occasion. It’s by no means a perfect evening—what performance ever is?—but it’s a treasurable one for anyone who cares about this opera, the Met, or the principal singers.

The DVD version of Turandot is based on an outstanding MET production from 1988: “A straightforward, spectacular and star-cast staging by Franco Zeffirelli that comes over extremely well. At the heart of it is James Levine’s massive, stormy reading. The Met orchestra are in tremendous form; so is the chorus. Eva Marton sings with stinging power and passion; Plácido Domingo is a superb Calaf, Leona Mitchell is a silvery-voiced Liu. It is superbly directed and recorded…A clear first choice.” (The Classical Video Guide)

Opera composer Puccini was a young man when he crafted this splendid work. Its text is the old-fashioned Roman Catholic Latin Mass. The title of the work derives from its longest component, the "Gloria." Youthful exuberance and optimism underlie the work.

In 1994, the same Metropolitan Opera put two contrasting pieces of the verismo puzzle side by side—the belated verismo of Puccini’s Il Tabarro and the classic verismo of Leoncavallo’s I Pagliacci, which had reached the stage some twenty-six years earlier.

This famous production of Manon Lescaut from The Royal Opera, recorded in 1983, features two of the biggest stars in opera, Placido Domingo and Kiri Te Kanawa, in their vocal prime. Placido Domingo’s performance of Des Grieux is considered to be unsurpassed. Conductor Guiseppe Sinopoli made his British operatic debut with this production. Puccini’s first masterpiece was rapturously received on its first night. It has his hallmark sensuality and also a youthful freshness, its untamed outpouring of melody just as passionate as his more famous operas, La Boheme, Tosca and Madame Butterfly. The role of Des Grieux is one of the most taxing in the tenor repertoire and Domingo’s passionate portrayal is one of his greatest achievements.

In his sumptuous filming of Puccini's opera, directer Jean-Pierre Ponnelle uses an array of cinematic effects (including a memorable dream sequence) to evoke the protagonists' irreconcilably separate lives and worlds. As Butterfly, Mirella Freni is unbearably moving in one of the finest performances of her career, while Plácido Domingo makes Lt. Pinkerton a more sympathetic figure then usual.

Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna star in the 2009 Metropolitan Opera production of Puccini’s 'La Rondine'. This new production, directed by Nicholas Joël, was the company’s first staging in 70 years. This elegant romance is the least-known work of the mature Giacomo Puccini. The story concerns a kept woman who defies convention to chase a dream of romantic love with an earnest, if naïve, young man. This Met Opera production features the dynamic soprano Angela Gheorghiu and Frenchborn tenor Roberto Alagna performing the roles of Magda and Ruggero, it blooms into its rightful place in the glorious Puccini canon. 'La Rondine' was commissioned by Vienna’s Carltheater in 1913. Due to the impending outbreak of World War I, premiered in 1917, at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo with Gilda Dalla Rizza and Tito Schipa.