‘A beautiful song – a shame that it shows such disrespect to the Mayor!’ This remark from the score of The Golden Cockerel highlights the delicious ambiguity of this work. Principally inspired by Washington Irving and Pushkin, Rimsky-Korsakov called on the talents of Vladimir Belsky, an author of other libretti of a fairy-tale, legendary nature and an expert on Russian folk literature. The composer, a genius at orchestration, has given us sparkling music, with oriental touches, that creates fully rounded characters. This is the perfect occasion for Alain Altinoglu to direct his first opera in his new role as Music Director of La Monnaie. After the success of his Don Quichotte and Cendrillon, Laurent Pelly returns to La Monnaie to stage this exuberant political satire, an adventure in unrestrained rhythm. More than a century has passed since its first performance, yet the opera has lost none of its boisterous sarcasm.

Götterdämmerung, the final instalment of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung, is a story of human passions...

In Siegfried, the “Second Day” or third evening of the Ring Cycle, we meet the pivotal hero of the e...

Imagine a window into the past. Imagine finally connecting singers' bodies to the voices you have al...

CARMEN is the classic tale of forbidden passion between a young man and a spoken-for woman, Carmen. ...

Just as a young woman is about to marry her sweetheart, she is discovered—by the entire village, to ...

The first-ever audio-visual recording of this opera – directed by Christof Loy, conducted by Marc Al...

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

Set in a South Bohemian village, this faithful film version of Smetana’s opera follows farmer Krušin...

Ten short pieces directed by ten different directors, including Ken Russell, Jean-Luc Godard, Robert...

A village hires a priestess to pray for the safety of their pearl fishermen, but long lost love gets...

José Cura sings and acts here with an inwardness and intensity which make a profound impression. So ...

Besides the landing on the moon by the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, Richard Nixon’s meeting with China...

Premiered in 1787, “Don Giovanni” exposes the timeless theme of a man hovering between vitality and ...

The stupendous climax to Wagner’s four-part Ring cycle is brilliantly realized by the Otto Schenk/Gü...

This superb 2006 production of the Los Angeles Opera's La Traviata stars Renée Fleming, who joins th...

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

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

Live performance from Zürich Opera House, 2001. “Vesselina Kasarova’s Rosina turned this Barber int...