In celebration of Verdi's 200th birthday in 2013, the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence produced the composer's colorful masterpiece Rigoletto for the first time in its history. Verdi expert Gianandrea Noseda conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in a production that marked the return of the Canadian stage director Robert Carsen to the festival following a 17 year hiatus. Carsen sets his interpretation of this classic opera in the cutthroat world of the circus. Based on Victor Hugo's play Le roi s’amuse, Verdi's opera in three acts Rigoletto premiered in 1851. Similar to the play that inspired it, the opera faced censorship because of its controversial subject of libertinism at court. The opera’s tragic story revolves around the licentious Duke of Mantua, his hunchbacked court jester Rigoletto, and the jester’s beautiful daughter, Gilda.
For his first opera production, Dario Fo, the theatre director known for his brilliant wit, chose to stage Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia sung in Italian for the Netherlands Opera.
Salzburg Festival’s first-ever performance of Charles Gounod´s most famous and most performed opera! Internationally-acclaimed tenor Piotr Beczala triumphs in the title role as soul-selling philosopher Faust: “Piotr Beczala is a world-Faust” (Kurier) and “The well-deserved crown goes to a perfectly-cast Piotr Beczala” (Abendzeitung).
Recorded in 1992 at the Ludwigsburger Schlosstheater, this release from Art Haus Musik features a performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's two-act opera Die Zauberflote.
The production was the Vienna State Opera debut for the young Swiss conductor Philippe Jordan – the Argentinian tenor Marcelo Álvarez, took the title role.
The definitive version of this rare opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The costume and set design is truly visionary and other worldly and gives a convincing insight into what staged operas must have looked like during the Baroque and Rococo period.
I Vespri Siciliani must me Verdi's most underrated masterpiece. Most people are put off by the fact that it has 5 acts, therefore they conclude that it must be incredibly long.
A secret, passionate affair happens in the summer of 1969 between Colonel Jin Pyeong, trapped in a loveless marriage with Soo Jin, and Jong Ga Heun, the Chinese-Korean wife of Captain Kyung Woo Jin.
The Grand Budapest Hotel tells of a legendary concierge at a famous European hotel between the wars and his friendship with a young employee who becomes his trusted protégé.
With his wife's disappearance having become the focus of an intense media circus, a man sees the spotlight turned on him when it's suspected that he may not be innocent.
The adventures of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage.
William stands at the window telling Abigail his story of walking down 'the witches' path. The unseen spectral Abigail taunts William suggesting that he walked down the path hoping to see her.
The ultimate X-Men ensemble fights a war for the survival of the species across two time periods as they join forces with their younger selves in an epic battle that must change the past – to save our future.
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Have you watched Rigoletto - Festival d'Aix-en-Provence yet? What did you think about it?
