Movies: Opera

When a passionate poet falls for a young woman, she is stirred by his ardent declaration of love. Yet she is promised to another and ends up rejecting him, prompting him to make a fatal gesture....

Part of the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the death of the Pesaro composer, Il Barbiere di Siviglia staged in Lugano, is the result of a virtuous collaboration that involved Swiss Radio and Television, LuganoInScena and LuganoMusica. The ...

Under the most complicated circumstances, when the world seems impossibly dark, a woman takes her life into her own hands. She risks everything to save her politically imprisoned husband - and sets herself free. The Birmingham Opera Company's produc...

Inspired by Beaumarchais' comedy, Rossini retains all the passion to create this bubbling opera buffa. A native of Venice, the cradle of the commedia dell’arte, Damiano Michieletto is sensitive to the burlesque vein of Rossinian music. He transposes ...

More than anything in the world, Rusalka, a mysterious and elusive water nymph, yearns to become human to win the heart of a young prince. But this metamorphosis comes at a price: she will lose her voice and be damned forever should their love story ...

Opera lies at the heart of Rimsky-Korsakov's colourful idiom, but performances are few and far between; this realisation of his penultimate and grandest stage work is a very rare and special experience. Kitezh is known as "the Russian Parsifal", whic...

An animated opera version of "Goldfish". In this modernised version of the fairy tale of the Goldilocks, everything is absurdly modern - turned upside down. It's the story of a man who lives underwater and a fish who lives above the water in the ai...

Set during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar (Nabucco), King of Babylon, the opera tells the tale of Nabucco's fictitious daughters, Abigaille and Fenena, who are rivals for the love of Ismaele, nephew of the King of Jerusalem....

Glyndebourne's wartime history as a home for evacuee children is the ingenious context for a new production of this unclassifiable entertainment in which low comedy and high tragedy compete for our attention, "borne aloft by Strauss's divine music an...

Based on a true story, the "Dialogues des Carmelites" sets the life of the Carmelites nuns at the dawn of the French Revolution. “Robert Carsen's production is effective in its simplicity, allowing the drama to speak for itself. Dagmar Schellenberge...

Turn of the century Paris provides the glittering setting for this light hearted tale of political and amorous intrigue amidst the gaiety of Parisian high society.. First performed in Vienna in 1905 and here performed in the English version by Chris...

This is the 2004 version of Kaija Saariaho's opera performed by the Finnish National Opera and conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen....

An anthology of four abbreviated operas: "William Tell" by Rossini, "The Marriage of Figaro" by Mozart, "Don Pasquale" by Donizetti, and "Carmen" by Bizet. Filmed in Italy with major opera stars, and accompanied by English narration....

Shortly before his death, Romitelli together with his friend Paolo Pachini and the poetess Kenka Lèkovich, resurrected the dream of a total scenic art (a furnace of sensations, they called it, an_ initiation rite_) in the manner of the Futurists: rhy...

A lonely mother and her son go to the opera where a performance of Cherubini’s opera Medea is given. It is the mother’s birthday and she wanted to surprise her son by inviting him to the opera. But, the son’s plan were different and he is quite upset...

The life and career of Puerto Rican tenor Antonio Paoli, also known as The King of Tenors and The Tenor of Kings....

Based on Gluck's masterpiece and performed entirely on location in and around the environs of the Baroque Theatre at the Cesky Krumlov Castle in the Czech Republic; it's an opera production designed specifically for the film with outstanding sets and...

Claudio Monteverdi's operatic adaptation of this story from Homer's The Odyssey receives a modern and distinctive staging in this 2002 production directed by Humphrey Burton for Les Arts Florissants. Penelope Marijana Mijanovic is left to her own dev...

Christian Thielemann conducts the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra in this production of Wagner's opera recorded in 2015. Starring Stephen Gould as Tristan and Evelyn Herlitzius as Isolde, the cast also includes Georg Zeppenfeld, Iain Paterson, Raimund No...

Short opera. A boy falls in love with a girl after an Appalachian prayer meeting, but her father wants her to go to the dance with a local shyster who the father thinks will bail him out of his money troubles instead....