"Am I dreaming this is real?"13 December 2016Music118 mins
‘A beautiful song – a shame that it shows such disrespect to the Mayor!’ This remark from the score of The Golden Cockerel highlights the delicious ambiguity of this work. Principally inspired by Washington Irving and Pushkin, Rimsky-Korsakov called on the talents of Vladimir Belsky, an author of other libretti of a fairy-tale, legendary nature and an expert on Russian folk literature. The composer, a genius at orchestration, has given us sparkling music, with oriental touches, that creates fully rounded characters. This is the perfect occasion for Alain Altinoglu to direct his first opera in his new role as Music Director of La Monnaie. After the success of his Don Quichotte and Cendrillon, Laurent Pelly returns to La Monnaie to stage this exuberant political satire, an adventure in unrestrained rhythm. More than a century has passed since its first performance, yet the opera has lost none of its boisterous sarcasm.
When a sharp-tongued court jester Rigoletto is cursed for his spiteful words, he is forced to hide his unworldly daughter Gilda from his own licentious master the Duke.
Desdemona in Verdi's Otello was a career role for soprano Renata Tebaldi, from her first operatic performance outside of Italy to her final appearance on the opera stage.
"Die tote Stadt" is a psychologically layered drama with Hitchcock-like features, about Paul who, after the loss of his beloved Marie, slowly but surely becomes entangled in a dream world of obsessions and delusions.
A tragic and secretive romance ensues over many years after two men meet while herding sheep on Brokeback Mountain in this opera based on Annie Proulx's short story and its subsequent Oscar-winning film adaptation.
The great singing actress Nina Stemme gives a heart-wrenching performance in the title role of Strauss’s blazing one-act drama, adapted from the ancient Greek myth.
1966, United States of America: Kennedy is unable to prevent the Cuban Missile crisis in 1962, creating a nuclear winter throughout the country that seems to have no end.
1930s Korea, in the period of Japanese occupation, a new girl, Sook-hee, is hired as a handmaiden to a Japanese heiress, Hideko, who lives a secluded life on a large countryside estate with her domineering Uncle Kouzuki.
From award winning director Naeem Mahmood, comes Brash Young Turks, a bold debut feature telling a fast paced struggle of love, crime and power, against all odds.
Sarah, Gerda and Leonie know each other from the chat room. They meet in a small village and walk together into the woods to commit suicide in a small tent.
Atlantis is known across the world as a myth. But is this really the truth? No matter what cultural history we explore, we discover a story very similar to the one we know about Atlantis.
