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- 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.
- Ferrando and Guglielmo boast about the beauty and virtue of their girls, the sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella. The cynical Don Alfonso proposes a wager. He will prove to them that the sisters are unfaithful, like all other women. Amused, the young men agree.
- "Bob Wilson's Life & Death of Marina Abramovic" follows the coming together of director Robert Wilson, performance artist Marina Abramovic, singer and composer Antony Hegarty and performer Willem Dafoe, to create the experimental opera based on Marina Abramovic's biography. Through rehearsal footage and interviews with the artists as they are making the piece, we get an insight into this unique collaboration: an intimate portrait that reveals the dynamics, excitement and insecurities of making such a poetic and visually stunning theatre work.
- Alfredo Germont has met his femme fatale in the body of the rich and famous courtesan Violetta. When he is invited to one of her parties he does not waste a second letting her know he loves her. Violetta initally sends him away, but is touched after all. After the party she dreams of a better life together with Alfredo. She decides to leave her past behind and to move to the French countryside together with her admirer. They are happy together, but Alfredo's father begs Violetta to break up this 'sinful' relationship because it is an obstacle to the marriage of Alfredo's sister. She eventually submits and writes a farewell letter. Alfredo is heartbroken and furious at this rejection. He returns to Paris and starts a fight with his former lover. Only when his father informs him about Violetta's sacrifice does he see how complex the story really is. He rushes over to Violetta to ask for her forgiveness, but it is too late: Violetta is incurably ill and dying.
- Stage director Emilio Sagi's production of the legendary Barber of Seville is enriched by a bright distribution. Maria Bayo returns to one of her signature role as Rosina, opposite Juan Diego Florez, the Rossini expert tenor. The title role is embodied by the Italian baritone Pietro Spagnoli, while Ruggero Raimondi and Bruno Pratico reconcile the audience with Don Basilio and Don Bartolo.
- Iolanta is one act lyric opera by Tchaikovsky, sung in Russian. Princess Iolanta is born blind; her father, King René, forbids anyone to talk of beauty, light or the natural world hoping that she will not recognize her affliction. For Tchaikovsky, a fairytale was not an escape from reality but an opportunity to speak of forbidden reality. His imaginary kingdom is a place of secret remorse and private hurt, redeemed by an African Sufi healer and torrential, relentless, unlikely love. The intimate final opera is a spiritually charged Mozartian journey through darkness into light. Perséphone is a three act melodrama by Stravinsky, sung in French. In André Gide's Homeric poem, Perséphone goes into the underworld of her own free will, moved by compassion for those who must live there, poignantly evoking Christian sacrifice, and poetically suggesting a dawning awareness of the Stalin Terror of mass collectivization. A ritual drawn from the earliest agricultural myths of Western civilization, for Stravinsky it became a second "Rite of the Spring", a dance of renewal to music of unexpected tenderness and grace. This regeneration is felt in the delicate choreography of Cambodian dancers from Amrita Performing Arts.
- Filmed on December 17 and 19, 2014 at the Teatro Real, Madrid, Spain. A co-production by the Teatro Real and François Roussillon et Associés with the participation of France Télévisions and NHK with the support of the Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée. Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) considered turning Thomas Mann's 1912 novella Death in Venice into an opera for some time before the first notes were written. A decisive step was taken in September 1970 when he requested a libretto from Myfanwy Piper. She had already supplied the texts for two of the composer's previous operas, which were both based on Henry James novellas: The Turn of the Screw (1954) and Owen Wingrave (1970). Britten became aware that at the time he began work on his musico-theatrical treatment of Death in Venice, the director Luchino Visconti was in the process of adapting Mann's short story for the screen. Visconti's film, which uses the music of Gustav Mahler, was released in 1971 and garnered widespread publicity. Britten was always careful to point out, however, that he had been planning to adapt the same story as an operatic project for five or six years before the release of a film he never saw. During the next couple of years, at a time of deteriorating health, the composer took on a heavy workload, including several recording and performing commitments as well as creative projects. He managed to complete the score of Death in Venice before undergoing open-heart surgery in hospital in May 1973. The opera, which turned out to be Britten's last contribution to the medium made its debut on 16 June 1973 at The Maltings Concert Hall, Snape as part of the 28th Aldeburgh Festival. On account of the composer's delicate state of his health, there was no possibility of his attending the premiere, though he was able to listen to the live broadcast of the second performance six days later. Britten was anxious that the narrative should adhere closely to the original source and secured the support of Golo Mann, son of the author, for his project. The outline of the story is starkly simple. Gustav von Aschenbach, a famous, middle-aged novelist who is having a creative block, travels to Venice to restore his failing powers. While he is staying there, he becomes infatuated with the beauty of a young Polish boy, Tadzio, who is also visiting with his family. Aschenbach's increasing obsession coincides with a cholera epidemic in the city which the authorities attempt to conceal. As the Polish family are preparing to depart, Aschenbach sits on a beach, where, after witnessing the boy being humiliated in a rough game, he dies. One of the reasons Britten was so determined to complete Death in Venice was his desire to write a substantial leading role for his long-term personal and professional partner, the tenor Peter Pears (1910-1986), to whom the opera is dedicated. Pears had taken supporting parts rather than the lead in all Britten's major operatic works since Billy Budd (1951) but now he was presented with arguably his greatest role and one which tested fully his musical and interpretative powers. Aschenbach is a dominating presence throughout and his vocal contributions range from arias to declamatory recitatives. Mostly accompanied (or rather punctuated) by piano, these recitatives are conceived as interior monologues which allow the character to ruminate and soliloquise. Providing continuity between the opera's many short scenes, they are written in the free notation Britten had developed in his church parables Curlew River (1964), The Burning Fiery Furnace (1966) and The Prodigal Son (1968). The one exception to this is the opening soliloquy when Aschenbach declares he has come to a creative halt-'My mind beats on and no words come': in this instance, the notation is measured and the accompaniment orchestral. The other main part in the opera is the disquieting, mysterious Traveller encountered by Aschenbach in a Munich graveyard and who persuades the writer to go to Venice. This menacing figure turns out to be the master of Aschenbach's fate and recurs in various other guises, all of whom contribute to Aschenbach's downfall: the Elderly Fop, the Old Gondolier, the Hotel Manager, the Hotel Barber, the Leader of the Players and the Voice of Dionysus. This versatile role, a sort of malign variant on Alec Guinness's celebrated turn as multiple family members in the dark 1949 Ealing comedy film Kind Hearts and Coronets, was created for the bass-baritone John Shirley-Quirk, a singer Britten greatly admired for his acting prowess as well as his voice. Tadzio never speaks or sings, but the character and his family and friends all communicate through the medium of dance (choreographed by Sir Frederick Ashton for the initial performances). This suggests their remoteness to the tonguetied Aschenbach and also creates some youthful energy and movement in the opera as a counterpoint to the ailing writer's generally languid and introspective contributions. Chief among the shorter singing parts, the role of Apollo, who appears in Aschenbach's dreams, was created for countertenor James Bowman. There is also a chorus, who portray gondoliers, beggars, street vendors and tourists, and from which certain minor solo parts are taken, such as the Strawberry Seller and the Hotel Waiter. Britten's score has a chamber-like precision and clarity with some of the richer orchestral passages reserved for evocations of Venice itself, which emerges as grand and imposing and at the same time shadowy and sinister. The forces required are modest and traditional (double woodwind and brass, tuba, timpani, harp, piano and a reduced string section) with the exception of the percussion department which demands five players. Their pitched and non-pitched instruments form a unique version of gamelan music that is a development of Britten's earlier exploration of oriental material in his ballet The Prince of the Pagodas (1956). Here, the percussion is used to suggest the 'other' as represented by the exotic and inaccessible world of Tadzio and his family as seen through the eyes of Aschenbach. The most commonly used instrument to portray the young boy is the vibraphone and its enigmatic, equivocal quality seems entirely apt. Conventional instruments are also used in a highly personal way. Serpentine woodwind and baleful tuba are the principal conduits of disease and infestation. In contrast, the strings are often bright and invigorating, depicting Aschenbach's desire to travel to the South and conveying the illimitable vistas of the open sea and sky on his journey. Structurally, Death in Venice is built on a series of intricate motivic interrelationships and thematic cross-references. Britten generates intensity and a growing sense of unease and obsession by constantly refashioning a number of carefully selected ideas. The tiny motif originally encountered in Act I, Scene 1, in the first line of the Traveller's solo, 'Marvels unfold', as he seductively persuades Aschenbach to journey to the South, sows a seed that will gradually infest and undermine the whole score. The motif becomes associated with the plague, most often heard on the tuba and it can even be traced in the outline of the writer's impassioned outburst of 'I love you' at the end of Act I. The Republic's title 'La Serenissima' also haunts the opera as a leitmotif. It is first encountered in brazen form sung by youths who, with an Elderly Fop repugnant to Aschenbach, are the writer's fellow-travellers on the voyage to Venice. It forms the substance of the picturesque Overture which is placed after the prologue and is then transfigured into a barcarolle accompanying Aschenbach's frequent gondola journeys. The opera concludes with an orchestral epilogue consisting of a poignant dialogue between Tadzio's dispassionate tuned percussion theme and an eloquent melody on strings representing Aschenbach. This is the only time these two distinct musics have been heard together in the score, a long-delayed unison which comes too late for the main protagonist. While they remain separate and unmixed, they glimmer into silence together. These closing moments of the opera have undeniable dramatic power yet one of the most significant musical episodes takes place slightly earlier when the writer sings the Hymn to Beauty based on Socrates's dialogue with Phaedrus: 'But this is beauty, Phaedrus, discovered through the senses, and senses lead to passion, Phaedrus, and passion to the abyss.' This, the last of many great lyrical ariosos which Britten wrote for Pears, is perhaps the expressive peak of this deft and elusive masterpiece.
- A walking girl innocently observes the evolution of humankind alongside her own. Learning, real understanding, war, poverty, mass media, and what the future has in store for us. These are some of the issues she reflects upon with the experienced help in the form of insights provided by: philosophers (Rafael Argullol), doctors (Sir John Woodhall), writers (Amin Maalouf), musicians (Trilok Gurtu), professors (Ramón Tamames, Federico Mayor Zaragoza), social workers (Bani Dugal, Linda Kavelin-Popov, Gustavo Correa, Alberto Pérez), promoters of new economic systems (Muhammad Yunus, Jean Ziegler). She finally arrives at the conclusion that "the future, contrary to certain theories, does not write itself. We write the future."
- The Mantua Orfeo is the culmination of a long process that saw the gradual acceptance of pastoral fables, comedies, and tragedies in imitation of classical models, offering special musical elements to delight the listener. The novelty lay not only in the type of drama involved, but also in the manner of song, which favoured the accompanied monody. Solo voice singing, so extolled and theorized within the intense conceptual debates of Giovanni Bardi's Florentine academy, likely derives from a yearning for classicism, and for a recovery of Greek theatre - but is made contemporary through the principle of the comprehensibility of speech, which had many advocates. The "Tale of Orpheus" was written as a musical opera; the libretto by Alessandro Striggio assumes a knowledge of Rinuccini's tale. Whether openly or in more concealed fashion, Monteverdi makes use of topoi or practices in common use during his day: trumpet flourishes as signals, a narrative in dactylic rhythm, and dissonant intervals to emphasize struggle or grief. These are immediately recognizable even to a "common" public. At the same time though, he introduces complete innovations not only in the expository elements of profane song, but also in its other aspects: the exhaustive attention given to the collocation of words, the vibrant quality of the rhythmic pulse, bold dissonances, the harmonies chosen, and the wavelike melodic line.
- As Aragon descends into unrest, a count jealously fights for a noble lady's heart. But she has already given it to a passionate troubadour whose mother holds a terrible secret. This Verdi masterpiece overflows with dramatic tension and musical geniality, resulting in a story that increases in intensity throughout. Maria Agresta plays the unfortunate Leonora alongside Ludovic Tézier and Francesco Meli as her rival admirers in this new production at the Teatro Real.
- Composed in the 1930s by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, this is a mordant satire on capitalism and the inexorable industrialization of a society in which the ultimate crime is not having money.
- Il Burbero di buon cuore is a dramma giocoso in two acts composed by Vicente Martín y Soler to a libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte, based on one of the most popular and amusing French comedies by Carlo Goldoni, Le bourru bienfaisant. The opera was premièred to a triumphant success in Vienna's Burgtheater on 4th January 1786. The gruff Ferramondo must deal with a nephew who has been ruined by his spendthrift wife, and who would like to have his sister sent to a convent so that he can get his hands on her dowry. The girl, of course, has other plans. A brilliant libretto, music that can be both graceful and captivating, and a first rate cast make of this opera a welcome rediscovery. Vicente Martín Y Soler was known in Europe during his lifetime as Vincenzo Martini,an Italian name that appears at the time to have been considered an advantage in the operatic world. When he met Lorenzo Da Ponte in 1785, Vicente Martín Y Soler, born in Valencia in 1754 already had to his credit a dozen operas, but decisive leap to his career was due to the collaboration with Da Ponte who wrote the librettos for: Il burbero di buon cuore (1786), Una cosa rara (1786) and L'arbore di Diana (1787). These were operas which shared the favour of the public in the imperial capital with Mozart's masterpieces, likewise on librettos by Da Ponte, Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni , and Così fan tutte. When Il Burbero di buon cuore was first staged in Vienna in 1786 it was warmly received by the audience. The music is simple, charming, orchestrated tastefully and with a wealth of colours. The handling of the situations is impeccable and the mechanism works perfectly, with suitable theatrical timings, so that the scenes follow one another with an urgent rhythm, giving the development of the plot a sensation of fresh naturalness up to the final dénouement. The Da Ponte - Martín Y Soler partnership collaborated again on the opera, Una cosa rara, ossia bellezza e onestà.
- A postulant nun leaves her convent with a romantic adventurer, and while she is gone, a miracle takes place in the chapel of the convent.
- A Musical Theatre by Alain Platel. For years, the tension between the group and the individual has been the central theme in Platel's performances. In C(H)OEURS, so far his biggest project, he examines - together with his dancers and the Teatro Real choir - how 'dangerously beautiful' a group can be. What is the relation between the progressive 19th-century nationalism of Verdi and Wagner and the increasing current tendency of nations to cut themselves off? Platel questions the emotions originated by the assemblage of individuals and groups, he reflects about the dynamic of collective movements and about the public and the individual dimensions. Platel creates an opera with magnificent choral scenes featuring more than 80 singers, dancers and musicians. It was premiered on March, the 12th 2012 at the Teatro Real Madrid.
- Documentary about an emblematic institution of the Spanish Arts, Madrid's Teatro Real, or Royal Theatre, released to celebrate it's 2nd centenary anniversary.
- Madrid's legendary Teatro Real staged this production of Giacomo Puccini's seminal opera La Bohème, starring Inva Mula, Aquiles Machado and Jesús López Cobos in the principal roles. Giancarlo del Monaco directed for the stage, Michael Scott designed the sets and costumes, and The Chorus and Orchestra of the Teatro Real provide musical accompaniment.