Set in Venice during the Renaissance, the drama centres on Bassanio, a young nobleman who would like to court the beautiful Portia but doesn‘t have the money to travel to her country estate, so he asks the merchant Antonio for help. Antonio‘s wealth is tied up in maritime trade but he offers to procure the sum Bassanio needs from the Jewish money lender Shylock. Shylock hates Antonio for being so contemptuous in his treatment of Jews, and therefore stipulates that if the debt is not repaid within three months, the penalty will be a pound of Antonio‘s own flesh...

This filmed version of Strauss' shocker features Teresa Stratas as opera's most depraved teenager, a...

A lonely mother and her son go to the opera where a performance of Cherubini’s opera Medea is given....

Diana Damrau and Vittorio Grigolo are opera’s classic lovers in Gounod’s lush Shakespeare adaptation...

Disciplined Italian composer Antonio Salieri becomes consumed by jealousy and resentment towards the...

37-year-old Italian-American widow Loretta Castorini believes she is unlucky in love, and so accepts...

In Rigoletto, the deformed figure of the hunchbacked jester at the Mantuan court acts as a foil to h...

A Ukrainian comic opera with spoken dialogue in three acts with music and libretto by the composer S...

The oratorio concerns the Christian martyr Theodora and her Christian-converted Roman lover, Didymus...

All the throbbing eroticism—and ultimate heartbreak—of Puccini’s youthful score is unleashed by Jame...

The grand scale and magnificent acoustics of the Roman arena in Verona are ideally suited to the pag...

Deep in a forest where druids and warriors seek revenge against the conquering Romans, Norma is scor...

Sir David McVicar’s bold new staging of Tosca, Puccini’s operatic thriller of Napoleonic Rome, thril...

When Sir John Falstaff decides that he wants to have a little fun he writes two letters to a pair of...

Trapped in an abusive marriage, a wealthy German prince desperately seeks a way out. But what appear...

Between two Thanksgivings, Hannah's husband falls in love with her sister Lee, while her hypochondri...

Based on Ruggero Leoncavallo's opera Pagliacci. The film recounts the tragedy of Canio, the lead clo...

A musician is offered a job in Vienna as stage director, but his disagreements with the aristocratic...

This telecast offers a rare opportunity to see the legendary Joan Sutherland in the role that first ...

When a beautiful young woman in rural Moravia becomes unexpectedly pregnant, she learns that love is...

Drama lyrique in five acts, after the play by Maruice Maeterlink