The creation of Daphne was not a simple affair, especially for what concerned the poetic text (due to the modest talent of the librettist Joseph Gregor), but on 15th October 1938 the opera was finally premièred at Dresden’s Staatstheater. On the podium was the young conductor Karl Böhm. Daphne is a masterpiece of early 20th-century vocal music. Structured in a single act, this opera is a solid work with a rich musical vein. Strauss’s orchestration appears, as always, remarkably refined. The vocal writing is demanding for all the main characters, but especially so for the protagonist, here interpreted by a magnificent June Anderson. Filmed in high definition at Venice’s La Fenice, the present production is directed by Paul Curran.

Donizetti's great tragedy is his undisputed masterpiece of melancholic romanticism, with the doomed love between Lucia and Edgardo retold from Sir Walter Scott's novel The Bride of Lammermoor. The 1992 production heightens the story’s powerful libretto with its dramatic visual design and first class musical performances.

World-renowned tenor Roberto Alagna stars in the most passionate of French operas, conveying the young poet’s journey from naïve hope to the agony of the much-loved aria ‘Pourquoi me réveiller?’ and the shattering final tragedy.
Massenet’s glorious opera, based on a novel by Goethe, is regularly performed all over the world and its central role is one in which Roberto Alagna has been celebrated for more than a decade. The role of Werther’s beloved Charlotte is sung by American mezzo Kate Aldrich (an acclaimed Carmen at ‘The Met’), who has sung the role to critical acclaim in Europe and Japan. Filmed live at the Teatro Regio in Turin, the powerful stage production is the work of another member of the Alagna family – the tenor’s younger brother, David.

Mozart's opera seria tells of the King of Crete who is saved from a terrible storm by promising the gods that he sacrifice the first person he meets when reaching land, only to be greeted by his beloved son Idamante. In this Salzburg staging under Sir Roger Norrington Mexican tenor Ramón Vargas sings the title role, with Czech mezzo Magdalena Kozena giving an acclaimed performance as Idamante. Salzburg favourite Anja Harteros is the jealous Elettra, with Ekaterina Siurina as Idamante's beloved Ilia.

Motezuma is Vivaldi’s only opera set in the New World. The manuscripts for this rarely performed and rarely heard opera were only rediscovered in 2002 and currently only one CD version exists recorded by Alan Curtis and Il Complesso Barocco. Of the CD recording, BBC Music Magazine wrote: “The instrumentalists of Il Complesso Barocco are on excellent form as indeed is Vivaldi himself in a rewarding score”.

It would be hard to imagine a better performance of Donizetti's comic masterpiece. If there was one role that ideally suited Luciano Pavarotti's voice and stage personality, it was Nemorino, the impoverished and not-very-bright peasant who worships the village's prettiest and richest young woman from a distance, is swindled by a traveling vendor of "miracle" medicines, but wins her hand by dumb luck. The story has comedy, pathos, and a put-down of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde (or at least the Tristan story) written long before Wagner composed it.

Filmed in 1983, this DVD captures the Metropolitan Opera’s sweeping sets, its army of authentically costumed singers, and a cast of glowing soloists led by Plácido Domingo, Mirella Freni, Grace Bumbry and Nicolai Ghiaurov. Verdi’s drama of private passions played out against a backdrop of intense political battles becomes extra vivid in this immense staging. This Met version, sung in Italian, includes the oft-omitted Fontainebleau scene, as well as the Prelude and Introduction.

This spectacular opera film was taped in 1967 and is based on the 1966 Salzburg Festival production directed by Herbert von Karajan himself, who also conducts the fabulous Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. The production features the three greatest exponents of their respective roles at the time: Grace Bumbry’s magnificently seductive-toned Carmen, Mirella Freni’s ineffably lovely, touching Micaëla and Jon Vickers’s thrillingly manic-depressive Don José.

Mozart’s darkest operatic masterpiece with a superb cast featuring Renée Fleming and Bryn Terfel, masterfully conducted by James Levine with Franco Zeffirelli’s beautiful staging.
Bryn Terfel, giving his first Don Giovanni at the MET, received rave reviews for both his singing and his dramatic performance – as the Los Angeles Times puts it: “Terfel is exquisite as the Don, raping and pillaging his way through Europe: His voice, diction and acting are perhaps the best in the role since Cesare Siepi.”

“This magnificent production is a complete and blissful success. Don’t miss it.” Those were the words of the French website Classique News when Leonardo Vinci’s rediscovered Artaserse was staged by Silviu Purcãrete at the Opéra National de Lorraine in Nancy. Complementing the CD version of the opera released in Autumn 2012, this DVD features no fewer than five of the world’s leading countertenors – assuming both male and female roles: Philippe Jaroussky, Max Emanuel Cencic, Franco Fagioli, Valer Barna-Sabadus and Yuriy Mynenko.

The exceptional nature and high artistic quality of this performance justify publication of this video even though the filming was done only to preserve the performance for Teatro Regio's archives and therefore offers few close-up shots and occasionally unclear lighting.

Staged and costumed by Laurent Pelly, with sets by Chantal Thomas and choreography by Laura Scozzi, this production of La Belle Hélène never forgets for one moment that Offenbach’s parody of the origins of the Trojan war -clearly recognisable in his day as a satire on the moral laxity of Second Empire high society- is, above all, a supreme manifestion of his comic genius. From start to finish it combines a musically superb performance with a stream of visual humour that flows from Pelly’s core idea that the action all takes place in the imagination of a sleeping, sex-starved, suburban housewife. Dame Felicity Lott is magnificent as the woman who gets into bed beside her somnolent old husband and dreams of being the most beautiful woman in the world, entangled in amorous adventures with the virile young Paris, tastily portrayed by Yann Beuron. And just as dreams do not respect the normal limitations of logic, time and place, so her nighttime fantasies combine the everyday with the mythical, and muddle up Greece, ancient and modern.

"A Showcase for and a love letter to a century of amazing music" is how the creator of The Enchanted Island, Jeremy Sams, described this spectacular operatic pasticcio of music by Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau, Purcell and others. Premiered at the Metropolitan in New York on New Year's Eve 2011, it stars Joyce DiDonato, David Daniels, Danielle de Niese and Placido Domingo, and is conducted by William Christie.

In the role of Eurydice, Natalie Dessay begins at once with a display of vocal and verbal pyrotechnics, which are then taken up by Yann Beuron as Orpheus. Together they give us an idea of the developments to follow. Dancers and singers melt into a unit. The stage setting and an unconventional choreography sparkle with inventiveness. When Pluto, for example, arrives on skis from the underworld onto Mt. Olympus and Offenbach quotes the famous can-can right in the middle of Pluto’s aria, it seems to be a parody of his own work. The production offers a wealth of material for modern interpretations of this operetta full to the brim with ironic sideswipes at morality and immorality.

In his 2003 production for the Maggio Musicale in Florence, director Jonathan Miller invested the complex relationships between the characters with countless tiny erotic charges and even obvious sexual symbols. The artistic director of the renowned Maggio Musicale festival Zubin Mehta brings out not only the tension and drive of the music but also its harmonic richness. The singers all belong to the international opera scene and not only provide excellent vocal quality but also strong acting skills, which help to tell the gripping story with its many disguises, mix-ups and discoveries: Russian soprano Eteri Gvazava internationally recognised since her sensational Traviata à Paris filming partnering José Cura is wonderful to watch and to hear in the role of the sad but contriving Countess Almaviva.