Famous Scenes from Pagliacci(1934)

MeTube 2: August Sings Carmina Burana(en)

The sequel to the 2013 short, August sings Carmen 'Habanera'. After Elfie and her nerdy son August successfully proved themselves on their home webcam in MeTube 1, the odd pair venture onto the street to present the biggest, boldest, and sexiest operatic flash mob the internet has ever witnessed!

Mozart: Così Fan Tutte(it)

Prompted by Don Alfonso, a cynical old philosopher, two young idealists decide to put their lovers’ fidelity to the test. But love will teach them a bitter lesson: those who believe themselves phoenixes and goddesses will discover the desires of the flesh… In 1790, one year after the French Revolution, in what would be their final collaboration, Mozart and Da Ponte conduct a scientific investigation of love. With six singers doubled by six dancers, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker depicts the desire which unites and separates human beings, like the interactions between atoms that, once broken, make new bonds possible

Puccini: La Bohème(it)

No one better described the half-starved, struggling artists than Murger in his Scènes de la Vie de Bohème: artists ready to burn a manuscript to try to keep warm yet,in an era of triumphant bourgeois materialism, dreaming of another existence. Taking up these scenes of Bohemian life, Puccini offers us a heart-breaking love story and some of the most beautiful music in the history of opera in the story of the poet Rodolfo and fragile Mimi. The staging of this new production has been entrusted to Claus Guth who sets the drama in a future devoid of hope in which love and art become the sole means of transcendence.

Benvenuto Cellini(en)

The Florentine sculptor and silversmith Benvenuto Cellini rapidly attained a degree of renown that went beyond the confines of Italy. Invariably embroiled in conspiracies, intrigues and quarrels, Cellini is commissioned by the Pope to cast a large sculpture of Perseus. He is loved by Teresa, but she is promised to Fieramosca, an academic artist who has not been favoured with a papal commission. Terry Gilliam’s exuberant production draws the protagonists into a delirious and joyful yet claustrophobic and megalomaniac world: a flaring up of contagious madness.

Mussorgsky: Boris Godunov(ru)

There are elements of Macbeth in this political fable, in which the ghost of the child that Boris has had killed in order to seize the throne appears as an impostor. Adapting Pushkin's epic poem, Mussorgsky composed a meditation on the solitude of power, a populist drama in which the real protagonist is the Russian people with its burden of eternal suffering. Ivo Van Hove is no stranger to grand political frescos. This is his first production for the Paris Opera.

Donizetti: Don Pasquale(it)

First performed in Paris in 1843, at the turning point of several eras, Don Pasquale, a composite and varied work, is the apotheosis of opera buffa. Performed for the first time at the Paris Opera, the production has been entrusted to the Italian director, Damiano Michieletto, who transports us directly to the sincerity and dramatic splendour at the heart of an apparently light‑hearted work.

Ravel: L'Heure espagnole(fr)

Spiced with Italian buffa, L’Heure espagnole transports us to Torquemada’s clock shop, the scene of his wife Concepcion’s infidelities.

Puccini: Gianni Schicchi(it)

Weary of tragic subjects, for the final part of Il Trittico Puccini composed a grand confidence trick orchestrated by a falsifier willing to do anything to gain wealth. Including bringing back the dead!

The Wing or the Thigh?(fr)

Charles Duchemin, a well-known gourmet and publisher of a famous restaurant guide, is waging a war against fast food entrepreneur Tri- catel to save the French art of cooking. After having agreed to appear on a talk show to show his skills in naming food and wine by taste, he is confronted with two disasters: his son wants to become a clown rather than a restaurant tester and he, the famous Charles Duchemin, has lost his taste!

Braindead(en)

When a Sumatran rat-monkey bites Lionel Cosgrove's mother, she's transformed into a zombie and begins killing (and transforming) the entire town while Lionel races to keep things under control.

The Cunning Little Vixen(en)

An adaptation of Leos Janacek's opera Prihody Lisky Bystrousky (1925), based on the novel Liska Bystrouska by Rudolf Tesnohlidek. It follows the life of Sharp-Ears, a fox who is captured by a forester as a cub and raised in his home prior to escaping back into the forest.

Verdi: Don Carlo(it)

Elizabeth of Valois is promised in marriage to Don Carlos of Spain, as part of a peace treaty between the two kingdoms. They meet and fall in love – but no sooner have they declared their love than news comes that the terms of the treaty have changed: Elizabeth is to marry Carlos’s father Philip instead. Politics and religion are dangerously entwined in Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlo. Performed on November 30th, 2016, at the Opéra national du Rhin, Strasbourg.

Tristan Und Isolde(de)

Christian Thielemann conducts the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra in this production of Wagner's opera recorded in 2015. Starring Stephen Gould as Tristan and Evelyn Herlitzius as Isolde, the cast also includes Georg Zeppenfeld, Iain Paterson, Raimund Nolte and Christa Mayer.

Carmen(fr)

High Definition recording June 2014, Arena di Verona. This opulent production was directed by Franco Zeffirelli and sung by an international cast of excellent singers: Russian mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Semenchuk, soprano Irina Lungu, tenor Carlo Ventre and Carlos Alvarez. The famous opera is staged as a colourful feast for the eyes, true to its source and convincingly acted by soloists, chorus and ballet alike. Conducted by Henrik Nánási it is a gloriously sung musical experience.

Portrait of a Knight(en)

Portrait of a Knight is a musical romance about the way in which historic ideals inform contemporary urban life. Rachel is a young archivist living and working in Wellington, New Zealand. Feeling alone and disconnected from life, she projects her romantic fantasies onto the paintings she loves, until one day her song brings Reginald - a Knight of the Realm - to life. His carefree innocence and zest for life begin to open Rachel up to the beauty around her, but the fates have a way of making trouble when miracles occur...

May Fools(fr)

An eccentric family is re-united during the 1968 general strike in France, after the death of the grandmother.

Un Ballo in Maschera (Verdi) - Arena di Verona(it)

Lohengrin(en)

‘In reality, this Lohengrin is an entirely new phenomenon for the modern consciousness!’ Richard Wagner himself understood the innovative character of his sixth piece of music theatre, completed in 1848, the year of revolutions. Although it is reckoned among his ‘romantic operas’, his new vision of musical drama is already clearly heralded in this work. In his hands, the mediaeval saga of the Knight of the Swan becomes a meditation on the true love that asks no questions. Alain Altinoglu, our Music Director, who has already conducted this work in Bayreuth, guarantees the quality of the music, while the director Olivier Py, known at La Monnaie for his brilliant productions of Les Huguenots and Hamlet, can be relied on not to downplay Wagner’s revolutionary political side. Wagner’s own opinion was that ‘one can only understand Lohengrin if one can liberate oneself from any modern-looking, generalising form of representation so as to see the phenomena of real life’. A challenge to us all?

Journeying(en)

A young man carrying the make-up of his past tries his hand at a new skill, enriching his present and starting him on a journey towards a better future.

Election(en)

Tracy Flick is running unopposed for this year’s high school student election. But Jim McAllister has a different plan. Partly to establish a more democratic election, and partly to satisfy some deep personal anger toward Tracy, Jim talks football player Paul Metzler to run for president as well.