When the most voluptuous, sought-after courtesan in the world meets an ascetic monk whose life is devoted to God, you know erotic sparks are going to fly. And when the clash takes place in a glorious, but rarely performed, opera by Massenet, it’s a delight to the ear just as much as to the eye. Renée Fleming is every inch the glamorous Thaïs, swathed in elegant gowns designed by Christian Lacroix. Thomas Hampson is Athanaël, the tortured man of God. This production by John Cox, which premiered in December 2008, brilliantly sets the stage for a confrontation as old as civilization itself.

Gustav Von Aschenbach, a passionate composer, arrives in Venice as a result of wanderlust and there ...

Jules Massanet's lyrical opera is transformed into a superb film production by Petr Weigl, shot on l...

Jean-Marie Villegier's modern interpretation of Handel's "Rodelinda" – filmed live at the world-reno...

A musical drama based on Giuseppe Verdi's opera Rigoletto.

The deformed Phantom who haunts the Paris Opera House causes murder and mayhem in an attempt to make...

This is the 2004 version of Kaija Saariaho's opera performed by the Finnish National Opera and condu...

Carlos Álvarez takes the title role in the first of Verdi's Shakespearean operas, with Maria Guleghi...

The production was the Vienna State Opera debut for the young Swiss conductor Philippe Jordan – the ...

Emmanuelle Haïm has established herself as one of the world’s leading performers, conductors and int...

A 2002 live performance of Mikel Rouse's Dennis Cleveland, a multimedia opera set entirely on a tele...

Pious restraint comes face to face with sensuous hedonism in Camille Saint-Saëns’s grand-opera retel...

I Vespri Siciliani must me Verdi's most underrated masterpiece. Most people are put off by the fact ...

The 2021 production by the Dutch National Opera of the work by German composer Rudi Stephan (1887–19...

This set has Edita Gruberova singing in top form, all her scooping cast aside, which one finds in ab...

This May 2010 production of Massenet's 1910 opera "Don Quichotte" marked the opera's centenary and a...

The Semperoper caused a sensation in November 2007 when it visited Japan for the first time in twent...