It was the most successful classical concert in history: Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and José Carreras performing together with Zubin Mehta for the first time as "3 Tenors" at the ancient Baths of Caracalla on the eve of the 1990 FIFA World Cup in Italy. A staggering 1.6 billion spectators...

It is an event that attracts thousands of music lovers to Verona every summer: the opera season in the ancient Roman Arena. Nearly 22,000 spectators regularly fill the amphitheater for the performances. The dream couple, Sonya Yoncheva and Vittorio Grigolo, returns to the breathtaking open-air st...

Puccini's bittersweet opera of high-spirited bohemians and the doomed love between Rodolfo, the idealistic poet and Mimi, the consumptive flower-maker, is a beautifully balanced series of tableaux depicting the infectious joie de vivre of youth and the tragic waste of disease and separation. The ...

L'equivoco stravagante (The Bizarre Misunderstanding) is one of Rossini's earliest operas, written in 1811 when he was only 19 years old. The title of Rossini's first dramma giocoso in two acts refers to a misunderstanding and false story spread by a scheming servant. He deceives the suitor, Bura...

To mark the 50th Anniversary of Plácido Domimgo's breathtaking debut at the Arena di Verona, the exquisite gala celebration includes elaborately staged excerpts from three Verdi operas with Plácido Domingo in the titles roles: Nabucco, Macbeth, and Simon Boccanegra. Domingo's versatility is more ...

Richard Strauss's last complete stage work is an opera about opera as an art form. It portrays the creation of a music drama, committing itself with wise merriment and full knowledge to this genre of theatre. Does speech contain song within it, or does the music only come to life when carried by ...

Set in medieval Italy, Rossini’s rarely performed Adelaide di Borgogna (Adelaide of Burgundy) first produced in 1817 at the Teatro Argentina, Roma is based on dramatic historical events that led to Otto the Great (Ottone) of Germany conquering the Kingdom of Italy. Despite its political and warli...

Il barbiere di Siviglia, an opera buffa in two acts, is one of the best known works composed by Gioachino Rossini. The Italian libretto by Cesare Sterbini is based on the French comedy The Barber of Seville (1775). Legendary director Pier Luigi Pizzi presents a triumph from the Rossini Opera Fest...

Vienna State Opera's stunning production of Puccini's masterpiece stars soprano Anna Netrbeko in the title role marking her company role debut, which premiered exclusively in North America on Stage Access. The appeal of Margarethe Wallmann's production has stood the test of time since 1958 with t...

David Hockney's lavish set designs and Ian Falconer's stunning costumes both use brilliant hues and abstracted decorative patterns to visually convey the majestic music and drama of Puccini's final masterpiece. Set in medieval Beijing, the beautiful and cruel princess Turandot, who doesn't want t...

Bizet’s masterpiece Carmen is performed at Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu with an outstanding quartet of lead vocalists and visually stimulating staging by Calixto Bieito. Conducted by Marc Piollet, the production features Béatrice Uria-Monzon as “a splendid and sensual” (El Periódico) Carmen,...

Rossini’s “Guillaume Tell” (1829) is an early example of romantic French Grand Opera and with its lavish musical writing and patriotic themes, the work itself set new musical and dramaturgical standards anticipating the music of Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi and even Wagner. At the renowned Rossini F...

Demetrio e Polibio was Rossini's very first opera. Written when he was a teenager, it premiered in Rome in 1812 and revived at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro in 2010. Director Davide Livermore turns the libretto into a ghost story, setting the action at night, behind the stage of an opera h...

Juan Diego Flórez returns to the opera few tenors dare sing in Mario Martone's production of Matilde di Shabran for the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro. Underpinned by a plot of "almost Shakespearean depth" (The Guardian), Rossini's melodramma giocoso features some of the most virtuosic vocal mu...

Written in French in 1828 for the Paris Opéra, Le Comte Ory has maintained its popularity and success to this day. Re-using some of the music from his Viaggio a Reims, Rossini turns the disguise-based libretto into a spirited play of erotic lightness by creating what one critic called “the most i...

Filmed by the great director Franco Zeffirelli and featuring stars of the opera world - Elena Obraztsova (Santuzza), Plácido Domingo (Turiddu), Fedora Barbieri (Lucia), Renato Bruson (Alfio), and Axelle Gall (Lola) - this grandiose 1982 production of Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana exemplifies th...

In Claus Guth's almost cinematic production of Don Giovanni, every character in Mozart's most realistic opera appears to be seeking either salvation or damnation in the woods--a compelling set concept that removes the opera from the traditional pseudo-Seville squares and places. In the dense fore...

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the premiere of Ricciardo e Zoraide, the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro staged the Rossini rarity in 2018 with an all-star cast. Juan Diego Flórez makes his debut as the crusader Ricciardo, giving a "masterclass in bel canto" (Bachtrack) and Pretty Yende is...

In 1902, the premiere of Pelléas et Mélisande at the Opéra-Comique in Paris made Claude Debussy famous. In 2012, the Paris Opera celebrated the composer's 150th birthday with avant-garde director Robert Wilson’s “wondrous” (Le Figaro) production featuring "bold and modern" (Los Angeles Times) ima...

This musical comedy based on Carlo Goldoni’s play Il matrimonio per concorso has lost none of its appeal almost two centuries after its 1816 premiere at the Teatro dei Fiorentini. In La Gazzetta, a newly-rich merchant places newspaper advertisements to find a suitable husband for his daughter, wh...

Rigoletto is a dramatic opera with a story that revolves around Rigoletto, a hunchbacked court jester for the Duke of Mantua - a morally corrupt ruler known for his womanizing ways. Rigoletto's life becomes complicated when his latest wisecrack starts a vendetta that is far from amusing, leaving ...

The Rossini Opera Festival 2020 brings a delightful new production of Rossini’s early work La cambiale di matrimonio (The Marriage Contract) to the stage. Particularly noteworthy is the excellent young cast, mainly singers from the Pesaro-based Accademia Rossiniana. Written in 1810, Rossini’s one...

For the first time Teatro alla Scala presents Mozart’s Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) in a production where orchestra, chorus, soloists, and even stagehands all consisted of students of the Academia Teatro alla Scala, the educational institution founded by the Teatro alla Scala in 2001. Accompanie...

Celebrated tenor Juan Diego Flórez stars in the first production of Rossini's Zelmira on film - a rarely performed opera regarded as one of Rossini's most musically complex works. Flórez is joined by a dazzling cast, headed by Kate Aldrich in the title role, Gregory Kunde (Antenore) and Alex Espo...