Rigoletto

At Salzburg Festival, Cecilia Bartoli shines as Ariodante with her dazzling coloratura in a highly acclaimed new production by the German director Christoph Loy, who is known for his clever psychological stagings. Loy turns Handel's splendid baroque opera into an exciting and differentiated reflection on gender roles.

"Manon Lescaut is a heroine I believe in," wrote Giacomo Puccini to his publisher Giulio Ricordi. Experience Puccini's third opera and first big success in Götz Friedrich's landmark 1983 production at the Royal Opera House. The extraordinary Plácido Domingo and Kiri Te Kanawa take on the roles of the Chevalier Des Grieux and Manon Lescaut, accompanied by the Royal Opera House Choir and Orchestra under the direction of Giuseppe Sinopoli.

Xerxes is one of Handel’s latest and most frequently performed operas, famous for its marvelous opening aria ‘Ombra mai fu’. At the centre of the confusing tragicomedy, very loosely based upon the life of Xerxes I of Persia, is a powerful and lovesick royal eccentric, King Xerxes. Rising opera star Gaëlle Arquez in the title role of Xerxes ‘scintillates with her nimble, luminous mezzo-soprano’, singing ‘irresistibly beautiful, impassioned, furious – but never mean’ (Frankfurter Rundschau). Frankfurt’s excellent Opera and Museum Orchester contributes ‘all sorts of refinements’ to this ‘musical smash hit’ (Deutschlandfunk) and ‘In Frankfurt Tilman Köhler ensures a three-hour short abundant and furious banquett … a great evening of opera’ (Deutschlandfunk).

Philippe Jaroussky as Ruggiero is in thrall to Patricia Petibon as the sorceress Alcina in Katie Mitchell’s virtuosic production of Handel’s opera from the 2015 Aix-en-Provence Festival, described by Bachtrack as “a night of a thousand delights”. Conducted by Andrea Marcon, this was, in the words of Opera News, “musically … a performance of the highest festival level”. The production of Alcina, by the British director Katie Mitchell, was welcomed by the Financial Times as “meticulously executed …, rich in detail, consummately polished”. As the New York Times wrote: “It involves a huge sorcery machine for turning people into animals (or whatever). And Ms. Mitchell works magic of her own onstage, constantly showing the enchantresses Alcina and Morgana alternating between glamorous public personas and their ‘real life’, older, private selves …There are also bits of simulated sex, mingling genders and suggesting, among other things, inventive new ways to hit high notes.”

More than two centuries after its creation, the emotional pull of this supreme opera remains absolutely intact. Dmitri Tcherniakov duly revisits the myth and makes the seducer of Seville a ‘man without qualities’, a cipher whose words have a hypnotic power over women. His words will disrupt the proprieties ruling the Commandatore’s family. His words are also what makes Don Juan such a subversive figure and the embodiment of one of the most powerful modern European myths. Leading the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra is one of the best Mozart conductors, Louis Langrée. Bo Skovhus portrays a dispirited Don Giovanni, old playboy and anti-hero. Kyle Ketelsen is his servant Leporello, currently a shoe-in for this rôle. The superb female trio is composed of Marlis Petersen (Donna Anna), Kristine Opolais (Elvira) and Kerstin Avemo (Zerlina).

Franco Zeffirelli's magnificient staging of Puccini's final opera - a fairy tale set in a mythical China - is one of the most popular in the Met repertory. In this Live in HD production, Maria Guleghina takes on the title role and Marcello Giordani is Calaf, the unknown prince. Marina Poplavskaya and Samuel Ramey co-star, and Andris Nelsons conducts in his Met debut.

Documentary about opera production and the life of theatre stars.

Kazushi Ono and Laurent Pelly offer audiences an inspired and poetic interpretation of Ravel's classic children's opera, L'Enfant et les Sortilèges.

A collaboration between award-winning American filmmaker Sofia Coppola and Italia haute couture king Valentino comes in the form of a revival of Giuseppe Verdi's classic opera, La Traviata. Captured live from the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma.

Benjamin Britten's 1973 opera, performed in 2008 at the Liceu Opera in Barcelona, Spain.