LA PIETRA DEL PARAGONE (The Touchstone) concerns the Count Asdrubale who is wealthy and therefore of great interest to many women – notably Aspasia, Fulvia, and Clarice. Only Clarice, however, loves him for something other than his riches. There are also male hangers-on: the corrupt journalist Macrobio, the poetaster Pacuvio, and Giocondo, who is Asdrubale's true friend, but who has his own eyes on Clarice. To test his friends and would-be fiancées, Asdrubale pretends that he has been bankrupted. Sure enough, only Clarice and Giocondo stand by him, and when his fortune is "miraculously" saved, the three have the last laugh on everyone else... or do they? This production is set in what looks like the early 1960s. But the real innovation is the use of blue screen technology: using tiny cameras and sets, along gigantic screens hanging over the stage, a kind of video mixing makes the singers appear to inhabit any number of fanciful settings and perform a myriad of improbable actions.

Handel's 1724 opera Tamerlano followed the success of his previous year's Giulio Cesare with another...

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A production of Mozart's opera recorded live at Zurich Opera House in 2000. Cecilia Bartoli leads an...

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...

Frantisek Filip film version of the Smetana opera.

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Simon Rattle conducts the Berliner Philharmoniker in Stepháne Braunschweig's production of Richard W...

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

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

Donald Runnicles directs the San Francisco Opera in this lavish production of Giacomo Puccini’s fina...