The opera was based on the play Le roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo and is perceived to be the first of Verdi’s great masterpieces of his mid-to-late career. This performance features a top-class cast, led by Nino Machaidze and Leo Nucci.
Nucci simply owns the role of Rigoletto…a master-class in vocal acting…Machaidze is the very embodiment of Gilda. Her characterization is simply marvellous…[she] has a lovely full tone - this is no canary Gilda - with 'Caro nome' poised and emotional…The supporting cast is excellent…I was highly impressed by Massino Zanetti's conducting. (International Record Review)

The Ukrainian soprano Olga Mykytenko has won numerous international awards, including the Grand Prix at the Maria Callas International Singing Contest in Athens. Her extraordinary musicality, solid vocal technique, easy coloraturas, and strong expression allow her to sing major roles, from Iolanta, Mimì, and Nedda to Gilda, Violetta, and Lucia. Engaged for many years as a soloist at the National Opera of Ukraine in Kiev, where she made her debut, Olga has performed in opera houses and concert halls around the world.

This staging of Nabucco, the first since 1960 at the MET, featuring the Russian soprano Maria Guleghina was given in the centenary year of Verdi’s death. The production by MET regular Elijah Moshinsky and the sheer power of Verdi’s score drives this opera and brings the drama and its characters to life. James Levine leads the MET Orchestra and the cast is rounded out by two familiar Verdi specialists Juan Pons and Samuel Ramey.

This is the Verdi opera that separates the casual admirer from the dyed-in-the-wool devotee. Once you put on this recording and listen half way through, you will feel that you have died and gone to Verdi Heaven, and you know what - for all intents and purposes, you have! A strong, strong story…a score that gets better by the minute…a cast and conductor to die for…it is truly a Masterpiece. This is It! This is Opera! Unfortunately, none of us in our lifetime will ever see on stage a company like this one. Cappuccilli, Mirella Freni, Ghiaurov, Jose Carreras…van Dam, Foiani, Savastano conducted by Claudio Abbado. Simply Awesome!

Operatic powerhouse Olga Peretyatko is accompanied by the Munchner Rundfunkorchester (Munich Radio Orchestra) conducted by Miguel Gomez-Martinez on this high-quality album of (coloratura) soprano favorites. With an able, keen orchestra behind her, Peretyatko is free to demonstrate her considerable talents. Two arias are by opera legend Rossini. One, his "Non si dà follia maggiore," begins the album, and Peretyatko interprets it in a way that leaves the listener entranced. Peretyatko's voice is clean, bright, and full of vibrato. Her interpretation is also highly dramatic.

Herbert von Karajan directed this film of Verdi's Shakespearean masterpiece as well as conducting the Berlin Philharmonic. As the tragic Moor of Venice, arguably his greatest role, Jon Vickers (in the words of critic David Cairns) "commands both the notes and the moral grandeur of the part… And he has the aura of greatness - greatness of heart, of bearing, of musical and dramatic conception". Mirella Freni is a heartbreakingly lovely and fragile Desdemona, while the fine English baritone Peter Glossop plays the villainous Jago.

In Traviata – You deserve a better future, the audience is invited into Violetta’s privacy to have a close look at the fire to which she abandons herself among the guests of this musical and phantasmagorical celebration that blends theatre and opera, voices that speak and sing, and where the phantoms of this Paris in full industrial boom whose future we are living at present, sing and die.

This selection of scenes and arias, all very familiar items, is distinguished by the imaginative accompaniments under Evelino Pidò. …here we have one of the great opera personalities of our time - it's a lovely voice, used with a formidable technique.

–Gramophone

Lovers of Il trovatore a work famous for its perennially popular cavatinas and cabalettas rightly expect the singers to be at the very top of their vocal game and particularly look forward to the top C at the end of Manrico s stretta, a true do di petto produced not from the head but from the chest. Yet the production of the work that was staged at the end of 2013 by the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin jointly run by Daniel Barenboim and Jürgen Flimm deliberately flouted these expectations and traded familiarity for astonishment. Such a reaction was due not only to the two most famous singers of our age, both of whom were appearing onstage for the first time in their respective roles, but also to the company s music director, who made it abundantly clear that he was concerned with more than just a feast for the ears and rousing rum-ti-tum rhythms.

Set against the magnificent backdrop of Lake Constance, every production at the Bregenz Festival faces strong natural competitors. But with this first-ever production of Verdi’s “Aida” (in an abridged version) on the lakeside stage, it is easy to overlook the beauty of the surrounding nature. Stage director Graham Vick and set designer Paul Brown conjure up an “open-air spectacle of superlatives” (Die Zeit) that throws a bridge between ancient Egypt and today’s U.S..

Once regarded as Verdi's lost opera because of early censorship and controversy, Stiffelio has now established its rightful place in Verdi's canon. In this 1993 recording from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, José Carreras, as the Protestant minister whose faith is shattered when he discovers his wife's adulterous liaison with a family friend, leads a fine cast that includes Catherine Malfitano, Gregory Yurisich, Gwynne Howell and Robin Leggate under the baton of Edward Downes.

This score undoubtedly marks an important turning point in Verdi's operatic writing, because it brings to the foreground the characters' introspective, psychological aspect, which would be the fundamental feature of most of the maestro's later creations. This recording documents the production staged at Novara's Teatro Coccia during the 2013-2014 season, with Dario Argento tackling for the rst time the direction of an opera. Verdi's masterpiece was not new to the director from Rome, who had used it as backdrop for his 1987 lm Opera, set at the Teatro Regio in Parma, indeed during a staging of Macbeth.

The Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg is one of the most prestigious opera and ballet venues in the world. Built in 1860 and named in honour of Maria Alexandrovna of Hesse-Darmstadt, wife of Czar Alexander II, it is home to the famous Mariinsky Ballet as well as numerous international stars and ensembles. After the turn of the millennium it was painstakingly restored; and since 2013, St. Petersburg's Theatre Square has been crowned with the "Mariinsky II" an imposing new arts and performance venue. At its inauguration on May 2, 2013, the highly gifted conductor Valery Gergiev led a veritable who's who of the classical music world.

This John Dexter production was premiered in 1975 and filmed in 1984. The incomparable Leontyne Price delivered a series of unforgettable performances as Leonora, imprinting the role with the uniqueness of her voice and her superlative acting. James Levine's conducting was hailed by The New York Times for being "full of drive and fire" with "the grandeur of the magnificent score coming through."

Herbert von Karajan was head of the Berliner Philharmoniker from 1956 until his death in 1989. In addition to countless orchestral recordings, he created some immortal opera recordings: '' Don Carlos '' is one of these opera recordings that have since become historically significant: In 1986, the Salzburg Easter Festival was staged by an internationally top-class soloist duo (José Carreras, Agnes Baltsa, Ferrucio Furlanetto and Piero Cappuccilli ) on legend Karajan with the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Salzburg Concert Choir.