In Rigoletto, the deformed figure of the hunchbacked jester at the Mantuan court acts as a foil to his cynical and powerful master, an unscrupulous philanderer contrasted with his cruel and unforgiving fool. Rigoletto encourages and welcomes the Duke's conquests, pitilessly mocking his victims until he discovers that the Duke has abducted the one person he genuinely loves, his own daughter. As a result, the character of the court jester is transformed into a tragic figure who, in spite of his evident immorality and malice, allows us to sense the devotion he feels for his daughter and his horror at being destroyed by the same despotic world as that which he himself has helped to create.
37-year-old Italian-American widow Loretta Castorini believes she is unlucky in love, and so accepts...
Simon Keenlyside smolders dangerously in the title role of Mozart’s version of the legend of Don Jua...
Franco Zeffirelli's magnificient staging of Puccini's final opera - a fairy tale set in a mythical C...
Richard Jones’ “La bohème” is an important weapon in the Royal Opera’s commercial arsenal. This is i...
Beethoven’s only opera is a masterpiece, an uplifting story of risk and triumph. In this new product...
Mozart’s early masterpiece returned to the Met for the first time in more than a decade with Music D...
Tchaikovsky’s setting of Pushkin’s timeless verse novel is presented on the Met stage in Deborah War...
In his new production, Robert Carsen places the action at the end of the Habsburg Empire, underscori...
Non-musical account of Puccini's opera: Tosca and Cavaradossi are in love, but the tyrant Scarpia de...
Between two Thanksgivings, Hannah's husband falls in love with her sister Lee, while her hypochondri...
Prince Abesalom runs into an orphaned Eteri while hunting, falls for her and brings the woman to his...
A Ukrainian comic opera with spoken dialogue in three acts with music and libretto by the composer S...
Adapted from the opera written by the composer Semen Hulak-Artemovsky.
Opera lies at the heart of Rimsky-Korsakov's colourful idiom, but performances are few and far betwe...
The water fairy Rusalka falls in love with an earthly prince. In vain, Father Aquarius warns her. He...
Julie Taymor’s kaleidoscopic production returns to select cinemas this holiday season in an encore p...
As the imperious title empress, mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato leads the Met premiere of Handel’s tale...
An interesting look at love destroyed by the demon of drugs, which uses opera singing instead of spo...
This DVD of a live 2005 performance from the Zürich Opera under the musical direction of Franz Welse...