Mozart's famous Singspiel after Christoph Friedrich Bretzner's work "Belmonte und Konstanze", DIE ENTFÜHRUNG AUS DEM SERAIL comes to life in the sumptuous setting of Topkapi, the Ottoman sultans' own Istanbul seraglio (palace harem). Belmonte finds his fiancée Konstanze and her English maid Blondchen, who were captured and sold by pirates, in the Mediterranean seraglio of the Ottoman pasha Selim. Belmonte's servant Pedrillo gets him engaged as builder. After Selim tried to enforce himself upon Konstanze, Pedrillo and Blondchen, his own sweetheart, prepare their flight, managing to get Osmin, the pasha's overseer, drunk. Yet Osmin and Selim's guard still capture them, already in the garden; however the touching display of true love melts the pasha's heart, so he lets them go.
Giancarlo Del Monaco's passionate and intelligent production of Jacques Offenbach's magnum opus crea...
Two men separated by 100 years are united in their search for freedom. In 1856 a slave, Samuel Woodw...
Renée Fleming stars in the title role of one of Handel’s greatest dramas, seen in Stephen Wadsworth’...
The stupendous climax to Wagner’s four-part Ring cycle is brilliantly realized by the Otto Schenk/Gü...
"Manon", wrote Puccini to his publisher Giulio Ricordi in 1889, "is a heroine I believe in and there...
Opera in three acts, a prologue and an epilogue, by Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880), with a libretto i...
Robert Lepage’s dreamlike production, with its thousands of twinkling LED lights stretching across t...
The Semperoper caused a sensation in November 2007 when it visited Japan for the first time in twent...
Jean-Marie Villegier's modern interpretation of Handel's "Rodelinda" – filmed live at the world-reno...
After the acclaimed Met premiere of Thomas Adès's "The Tempest" in 2012, the composer returned with ...
Sir David McVicar’s bold new staging of Tosca, Puccini’s operatic thriller of Napoleonic Rome, thril...
Premiered immediately before the enduring masterpieces Rigoletto, Il Trovatore, and La Traviata, Lui...
The complete version of Verdi's Otello performed by Placido Domingo and Kiri Te Kanawa, at the Royal...
This is a joy from beginning to end. Although there are many tricks and ideas from Laurent Pelly, as...
Among DVDs of "Hoffmann" currently available, this is the only one that even begins to stand compari...
A wily slave must unite a virgin courtesan and his young smitten master to earn his freedom.
Richard Strauss's opera, from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
Live performance from the Opéra National de Paris, 2003.