Chamber Music & Recitals

Weber's 'great heroic-romantic' opera Euryanthe premiered in Vienna in 1823. It concerns the wronged Euryanthe, victim of a plot to establish her unfaithfulness, but her love imbues her with colossal strength which Weber characterizes with acute...

Le Villi is an opera-ballet in two acts that marked Giacomo Puccini's debut in the world of opera. It was first staged at Teatro dal Verme in Milan in 1884. Librettist Ferdinando Fontana based the story on the ancient legend of the Willis, fantastic...

If the legend of the 'sermon to the birds' constitutes a magnificent example of narrative art on the piano, for this way of expressing extra-musical ideas solely with notes the three series of Ann?es de P?lerinage would seem to be a salient cycle in...

An op?ra-comique by an Italian composer? This was a rarity in it's day, but after the "barely averted disaster" of it's opening night, Donizetti's La Fille du r?giment became a popular success, not least for the high Cs demanded from Tonio in the famous...

Andr? Messager's Fortunio premiered in 1907 at the Op?ra Comique, where it received acclaim that was to last decades. One of the last composers to devote his entire career to opera and operetta, Messager exemplified in his music a feeling for dramatic...

Golden Cockerel DVD

Choreographer Jir? Buben?cek's Carmen celebrates the incredible inspiration of Bizet's timeless music in a completely new two-act ballet that also includes music by Alb?niz, Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Falla, orchestrated and adapted by Gabriele Bonolis. The...

Paired here are two of Rossini's best-loved operas in stunning Glyndebourne stagings showcasing the composer's threefold genius for comic storytelling, musical energy and vocal fireworks. Vladimir Jurowski and Sir Peter Hall unite for a fresh and vibrant...

An overpowering and paradoxical perfume of dream and reality floats around 'La Traviata', as if the life and death of this so-called "errant" woman seem more real and more elusive than those of other opera heroines. It is with this perfume, composed of...

Capped by one of the most famous speeches ever written, Shakespeare's Henry V recalls a truly great English victory. With comic sub-plots to be found among Henry's soldiers, the production boasts some terrific performances - including Sam Cox as the...

Pietro Antonio Cesti was one of the most outstanding champions of 17th-century Venetian opera, and La Dori was both his greatest success and a major influence on the genre in the expressiveness of it's arias and duets. The story is set in Babylon on the...

Resonating powerfully with Hans Werner Henze's pacifist perspective, Der Prinz von Homburg is based on a play by Heinrich von Kleist that opposes authority, celebrating a dreamer rather than a classical hero, and individualist freedom rather than...