“Falstaff”, Verdi’s last opera, blends comedy and melancholy in a manner rarely found in an opera before or after it. With the complex interplay of many characters, it presents a challenge to every director. In this production from the Teatro Filarmonico di Verona, Oscar- and Golden Globe-nominated film director Luca Guadagnino (“I am Love”) finds an ideal solution by bringing out the individuality of each figure through unmistakable traits. The performance features a strong cast of chiefly young Italian musicians, with the Orchestra dell’Arena di Verona under the spirited direction of Daniele Rustioni.
La Traviata
A live performance recording held together with incredible skill by Riccardo Muti, and wonderfully sung by high-class cast. Highly acclaimed both by audience and critics: Tiziana Fabbricini as Violetta.
Carmen
“A ‘Carmen’ dominated by emotionality”, wrote the press about this unforgettable interpretation of Georges Bizet’s masterpiece from Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu with an outstanding quartet of lead vocalists and a visually stimulating staging by Calixto Bieito. Conducted by Marc Piollet, the production features Béatrice Uria-Monzon as “a splendid and sensual” (elPeriódico) Carmen, Roberto Alagna as Don José, Marina Poplavskaya as Micaela and Erwin Schrott as Escamillo. Stage director Calixto Bieito conjures up a sensual, realistic atmosphere with sparse but powerfully symbolic props.
Elektra
Swedish soprano Iréne Theorin gives an impressive role debut as Elektra, just as Wagner singer Waltraud Meier as Klytämnestra. They are complemented by Eva-Maria Westbroek’s Chrysothemis and René Pape’s Orest. In his interpretation of Strauss’ one-act masterpiece, conductor Daniele Gatti explores the radical side of the Expressionist score, while not neglecting the late 19th-century lyricism either. His musical vision harmonizes perfectly with the forbidding atmosphere conveyed by director Nikolaus Lehnhoff and his set designer.
Macbeth
From the Deutsche Oper Berlin 1987: This live recording stars the great baritone Renato Bruson and soprano Mara Zampieri as the murderous couple in Verdi’s opera, based on Shakespeare’s tragedy. Luca Ronconi’s production won huge critical acclaim at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, in particular for the conductor, Giuseppe Sinopoli, whose individual virtuosity brought fresh colour to the dramatic score. The cast also features David Griffith as Malcolm, James Morris as Banquo and Dennis O’Neill as Macduff. (Sung in Italian)
Manon
From “dream team” of the opera stage to “dream team” of classic and pop – Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazón have long since conquered the entire world of music. Yet while their CD “Duets” ranked third on the pop charts, the opera stage remains their preferred venue. And in Jules Massenet’s “Manon,” they have found a drama worthy of their combined talents. Manon, the tragic heroine of Massenet’s work, is torn between flirtatiousness and profound love, between frivolity and deep commitment. Netrebko seems predestined for this role, with her body language alternating between girlish, introspective and carefree, and her voice radiating brilliance, warmth, mystery and longing. As the impoverished young nobleman Des Grieux, Rolando Villazón compellingly depicts the burning passion of an ultimately doomed lover with his glowing, supple, slender tenor voice.
Das Rheingold
It began with a scandal, became the object of heated discussions, turned into a sensational success and finally blossomed into a legendary, standard setting production: Pierre Boulez’ and Patrice Chéreau’s epoch-making “Ring” cycle in Bayreuth, the “Centennial Ring”. When the production was premiered in 1976, there were brawls in the venerable Festspielhaus, with the audience divided into one mob roaring in favor and one screaming against. The main reason for the protests was Chéreau, who set the work in the time in which it was written and focused on the all-too-human passions that motivate gods and men alike. The grimy industrial era with its robber barons and suffering masses supplied the ideological underpinnings of Chéreau’s concept. Musical conservatives felt betrayed and cheapened by this association. The tide began to turn in 1977. Certain features were altered and the production began to have a more homogeneous feel. Finally, in 1980, its last year, the Ring concluded with a 90-minute ovation and 110 curtain calls. By the time Philips released the complete recording of this production in 1992, its legendary status had already begun to take shape: “Patrice Chéreau and Pierre Boulez not only wrote a major new chapter in Wagner interpretation with their Ring, but also carried out a revolution that affected all of musical theater. Since then, no production of the Ring has been able to come near to the concept put forward by Chéreau and Boulez.” (FonoForum) Unitel’s production, the first complete recording on film of Wagner’s Ring, marked the beginning of Unitel’s exclusive association with the Bayreuth Festival.
Così fan tutte
Barrie Kosky concludes his Da Ponte cycle at the Wiener Staatsoper with Mozart’s Così fan tutte, creating “a world sensation in the opera universe” (Klassik-Begeistert). Christopher Maltman’s Don Alfonso becomes a director rehearsing a play with two young couples – Federica Lombardi and Peter Kellner (Fiordiligi and Guglielmo), Emily D’Angelo and Filipe Manu (Dorabella and Ferrando) – and, with Kate Lindsey’s Despina, sets out to prove women’s infidelity. “The individual voices are outstanding, and the ensemble homogeneity even more so” (Frankfurter Rundschau). Philippe Jordan conducts from the fortepiano, balancing “classical beauty and vibrancy” (Kleine Zeitung).
Bayreuth Festival 2025: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
The Bayreuth Festival’s annual new production is one of the most eagerly awaited events of the operatic calendar, and in 2025 Matthias Davids brings his experience as a multi-award-winning director of musical theatre to Wagner’s only mature comedy, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. This highly anticipated staging is matched by a superb musical line-up, with Daniele Gatti conducting an international cast including Georg Zeppenfeld as Hans Sachs, Michael Spyres as Walther von Stolzing and the young Swedish soprano Christina Nilsson as Eva. All in all, it promises to be a fresh and revitalizing take on this most inspiring of Wagner’s works, which asks fundamental questions about art, inspiration and what it means to be truly creative.
Die Zauberflöte
Mozart meets Hitchcock in this spooky interpretation of The Magic Flute in Vienna. With the aid of projections and stage elements by Falko Herold, director Barbora Horáková dreams up a cinematic, eerie setting full of references to famous horror flicks, creating “great suspense” (Kronenzeitung). At the podium, conductor Bertrand de Billy coaxes the most wonderful Mozart sounds from his musicians: “The orchestra manages something with Mozart that actually seems contradictory: the sound is both lush and wonderfully airy, however that works (…). The transparency and compelling tonal beauty alone make the visit worthwhile” (Kurier). The ensemble of singers leaves little to be desired, with Georg Zeppenfeld “reliably great” (Salzburger Nachrichten) as Sarastro, Ludwig Mittelhammer lending Papageno his “lovely baritone voice” (Kronenzeitung), Ilia Staple “witty” and “perfectly cast” as Papagena and Serena Saénz mastering her coloraturas as the Queen of the Night “with bravura” (News). Nevertheless, Slávka Zámecníková manages to excel above all: “The evening’s crowning glory was Slávka Zámecníková, who sang with her heart as she sang her Pamina: her soprano voice is full and refined, her phrasing beautiful and her expression undisguised” (Die Presse).