This Wagner opera is rarely performed because of the scandals that engulfed the Magdeburg Theatre when it was performed in 1836 under the title The Novice of Palermo, and became known as a cursed opera from which the composer had to distance himself. Wagner's adaptation of the story reflects the rebellious mood of a Revolutionary Germany, vindicating sensual love and attack the fanatical repression of sexuality by a puritanical and hypocritical authority. As the prose says, "Shame to him whose cruel striking/Kills for faults of his own liking!". One of the most extraordinary musicals based on a text by Shakespeare, especially worthy of a new performance as it is four hundred years since the death of the Bard.

Set in a nightmarish Bardo, a place between death and rebirth, a tormented writer faces down demons ...

Wagner’s mystic masterpiece Parsifal at the Staatsoper Berlin, staged by Dmitri Tcherniakov and cond...

The soldier Wozzeck (Christian Gerhaher) flits through a world that he is unable to decipher. The do...

Running through Bartók’s disenchanted tale, whose haunting music was initially condemned as unplayab...

In the early 1960s two artistic giants, conductor Herbert von Karajan and director Franco Zeffirelli...

John Copley’s colorful production, with designs by Beni Montresor, was created around the beloved su...

The world’s only psychedelic children’s opera about an alien invasion.

Plácido Domingo, who just celebrated his 50th stage anniversary in Vienna - incredibly - continues t...

Alessandro Corbelli takes the title role in Annabel Arden's whirlwind production of Puccini's compac...

Halka lives with her godmother in a modest cottage in a small highland village. One day, young Janus...

Benjamin Britten's opera as performed by the English National Opera, with Philip Langridge in the ti...

This hard-edged postmodern production of Giuseppe Verdi's haunting masterpiece brings the story of S...

Third day of the trilogy "Der Ring des Nibelungen" by Richard Wagner, in the production by Peter Kon...

This beautiful production by renowned opera director Michael Hampe was recorded at the exquisite Roc...

Three colours, three moods, three registers. And yet Puccini conceived this triptych as a whole from...

This is an excerpt from the 60-minute film commissioned for Conrad Cummings's opera of the same titl...

Rigoletto is a jester in the court of the Duke of Mantua. He has a hunch-back and he's rather unattr...

The star singers in this revival of the 2006 production were Angela Gheorghiu, Jonas Kaufmann and Br...

With an illustrious career spanning five decades: over 150 stage roles, 11 Grammy Awards and his ico...

Verdi’s monumental music makes this historic epic an enduring favourite. Davide Livermore’s radiant ...