Opera in five acts composed by Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791-1864), Recorded at the Théâtre du Capitole de Toulouse

Stage Director : Stefano Vizioli
Conductor : Claus Peter Flor
Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse
Chœur et Maîtrise du Capitole, chef de chœur : Alfonso Caiani

The historic genre of the great French Opera, with its great topics, its sumptuous sets, its extravagant outlay of effects and costumes, was born in the end of the...

Opera in four acts; recorded at the Opera de Rennes
Stage Director Nicola Berloffa accepts the challenge of a piece that is dramatic and yet full of light and colors. To suppport this opera, you have to assume its parts of carefreeness and darkness, like the famous part of the card trio, and above all leave the music and songs spread at every moment.


Orchestre Symphonique de Bretagne
Choir of the Opéra de Rennes, Direction : Gildas Pungier
Julie...

Opera in 5 acts composed by Claudio Monteverdi
Recorded at the Théâtre de Caen

Paul Agnew – here both conductor and stage director – presents his intimate and ‘sacred’ version of Monteverdi’s first opera. In a fine collective spirit, the singers and instrumentalists of Les Arts Florissants participate in the drama on equal terms, mingling in a single set that gives increased prominence to the (masterly) lighting and to the protagonists (overwhelmingly moving in their...

In 2015, Limoges Opera initiated a participatory project aimed at taking a new look at the mythical character of Cinderella. Over a 2-year period, performing arts professionals intervened in classes to introduce children to writing, voice and movement.
A unique adventure for the hundreds of children who took part in this musical theatre creation on the theme of Cinderella.
The social and psychological problems of the story (the place of young women in society, stepfamilies, the...

Operatic Dramma Giocoso in 2 Acts by Gioachino Rossini;
Recorded at the Opéra de Lille

Stage Director : Jean Bellorini
Conductor : Antonello Allemandi
Orchestre de Picardie
Chœur de l’Opéra de Lille, chef de chœur : Yves Parmentier

"La Cenerentola", inspired by the fairy tale "Cinderella" and offers a cheerful music. Jean Bellorini sprinkles this opera by the sense of Italian Cinema of 1950-1960 for a marvellous show. "La Cenerentola"...

L’Orfeo, a musical fable written by Claudio Monteverdi in 1607, often considered the first real opera in history, is a musically intense work with a libretto directly inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The richness of the orchestration, the virtuosity of the choral pages and the precise characterisation of the various roles, make it a unique masterpiece.
While shepherds and nymphs sing of Orpheus and Eurydice’s love, Orpheus prays to the sun to bless his marriage. Blissfully happy, he...

Opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini
Libretto by Luigi Illica & Giuseppe Giacosa
Created at The Scala de Milan on February 1904

Hearing again and again Madame Butterfly, means to accept to play the game of emotion - In this case Puccini, fires straight and hits strongly -, means to take pleasure to be gut-wrenching with delight for this terrible love story, of expectation and treason between Butterfly, a young geisha and Pinkerton, an american officer.

Two works that have rarely seen the light of day. Setting them alongside Rameau’s tragédies lyriques one might be tempted to dismiss them as flimsy entertainments but they reveal a world full of charm, humanity, sensuality, and grace. These are not pieces written for the opera houses of Paris but for the private court at Fontainebleau. Away from the Paris critics, Rameau was able to experiment with more European styles and a great sense of freedom emanates from these scores – Rameau making his...

Opéra in three acts
Music & libretto by Richard Wagner - Paris version (1842)

Paris in summer 1841 : during a few weeks, richard Wagner influenced by Romantic Opera, composes Der fliegende Holländer, which he will consider as the first opera worthy of his quill. The version written in the French capital city - Wagner’s first version - was ordered by Paris Opera House, and finally refused by the director in those days. It was rarely played since. This almost original...

Opérette in 3 acts by Louis Varney
Libretto by Jules Prével & Paul Ferrier adapted by Jérôme Deschamps
based on a vaudeville by St-Hilaire and Dupont entitled "L'habit ne fait pas le moine"
Created in Paris, at the Bouffes-Parisiens, on March 1880

"Musketeers! In a convent!", Residents not that holy, quite wide-eyed nuns, a madcap abbot and a Governor off the wall, this is the setting of this operetta with a rock staging. Under the dynamic direction of...

Stemming from Greek mythology and Latin literature (The Aeneid), the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice is one of the incredibly beautiful and painful stories to have been retold over and over again throughout the history of music. From Monteverdi to Offenbach, through Gluck and Berlioz, the myth has gone through many adaptations and never fails to move.
It’s the original Viennese version, composed in 1762 by Christoph Willibald Gluck, that Laurence Equilbey has chosen to perform here in...

La Belle Hélène is Offenbach’s most famous operetta. Performed around the world since its creation in 1864, this parody of Greco-Roman Antiquity (like Orpheus in the Underworld in 1855) takes a humorous, satirical and not uncritical look at the reign of Napoleon III.

For this new production, the Théâtre du Châtelet has reunited Pierrick Sorin and Giogio Barberio Corsetti, whose exuberant “The Touchstone” has entered the annals of history.
Who better than this pair to...

Comédie lyrique in three acts, Libretto from Federico Romero & Guillermo Fernandez-Shaw Based on Lope de Vega's play La Discreta enamorada , Music by Amadeo Vives
Created on October 1923 au Théâtre Apolo de Madrid

At the beginning of 1920, Doña Francisquita gave life back to the Zarzuela genre in Spain.
The libretto is about a young beautiful girl who tries to seduce the frivolous Fernando in love with an actress…

Amadeo Vives, a cultured musician,...

Combining different artistic disciplines for the first time, La Pellegrina marks the birth of the opera from the sixteenth century, twenty-eight years before Monteverdi’s Orfeo and Jacopo Peri’s Eurydice.
In the spring of 1589, to welcome Christine of Lorraine, who was coming to join her new husband the Grand Duke Ferdinand de Medici, the Tuscan city was adorned with a thousand splendours. The highpoint of the festivities was a performance in the great hall of the Uffizi Palace of the...

A dream cast for an exceptional concert recorded at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées: Rolando Villazon, Magdalena Kozena, Topi Lehtipuu, Katherine Watson, Lenneke Ruiten, Emiliano Gonzalez Toro, Pascal Bertin and Nahuel Di Pierro are all brought together to interpret Monteverdi’s greatest works. The adventure is led by conductor Emmanuelle Haïm and the musicians of the Le Concert d'Astree, which incorporates such rare instruments as the lute, lyrone, viola da gamba and cornetto.

The Magic Flute, is the struggle between two kingdoms, two powers, two sovereigns.
The Queen of the Night asks the young prince Tamino to rescue her daughter Pamina, kidnapped by Sarastro, who rules over a kingdom devoted to the sun and light.
Listening to this grieving mother, Tamino sets off with Papageno the bird catcher, a simple and joyful man.
In this perilous adventure, Papageno finds his Papagena, and Tamino faces the ordeals of fire and water. Thanks to the magic...

After the triumphal success in 1733 of Hippolyte et Aricie, his first great lyrical tragedy, Rameau composed Les Indes galantes, an opera-ballet on a great scale. A dazzling epic, exotically flavoured as was then the fashion, the partition reveals the scope of his exhilarating invention, of his sensuous and rythmical sense of bliss. The astute staging by Laura Scozzi supported by Christophe Rousset and his Talens Lyriques ensemble offers (following a manuscript kept in the Bibliothèque de...

This opera, composed in the last year of Mozart's life, was commisioned by the Emperor Léopold II, Marie-Antoinette‘s brother, to celebrate his coronation as King of Bohemia in September 1791.
The commission was for an opera seria, an italian genre whose ponderous rules were already out of date at the end of the XVIII°century.
Mozart could not turn down a proposition of the Imperial court and needed money. But after a serie of innovative and creative operas he had to settle to a...

Composed by Francis Poulenc and based on a play by Georges Bernanos, "Dialogues of the Carmelites" is one of the masterpieces of 20th century French opera. The originality of its historical context and its protagonists make it a wonderful parable about life, death, relationships, and of course God.
Recorded at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées, the music of Poulenc and Bernanos words are further enhanced by the staging of the iconoclast Olivier Py and talent of an exceptional cast.

During this special concert, recorded in the birthplace of the composer of "La Vie Parisienne", Les Musiciens du Louvre, conducted by Marc Minkowski, perform some of Jacques Offenbach’s greatest works, as well as extracts from the "The Rhine Nixies", an opera in German in which we already see the full force of the composer’s orchestration.
A "bilingual" concert, sparkling with joy and good humour.
Symphonic and operatic excerpts: The Rhine Nixies, La Belle Hélène, Fantasio, Grand...

The opera is inspired by the play "Turandot" by Count Carlo Gozzi. "Turandot, the Emperor’s daughter, challenges her suitors to solve three riddles. She will marry the one who succeeds, but those who fail will be executed. Kalaf, an exiled prince in disguise, takes up the challenge”. Busoni composed the music in 1907 and wrote the opera during the First World War. Rejecting psychology and naturalism, in 1917 Busoni, an unclassifiable composer straddling Italy and Germany, created what he called...