Michael Beyer

Live performance, Bayerische Staatsoper, 2011. The Tales of Hoffmann (French: LES CONTES D'HOFFMANN) is an opéra fantastique by Jacques Offenbach that combines three short stories by E.T.A. Hoffmann into a haunting whole: a melancholy poet reflects on three women he loved and lost in the past: a mechanical performing doll, a Venetian courtesan, and the consumptive daughter of a celebrated composer. One of the questions this opera poses for any director is how to link the 'tales' of Hoffmann's three lost loves together and knit them satisfactorily into the Prologue and Epilogue. In this production, Richard Jones solves the puzzle by turning it into an autobiographical journey which ends with a grand meet-up of all the characters Hoffmann has encountered: for once, Hoffmann is not presented as a rollicking kind of drunken story-spinner, but rather a sad-eyed, sobered-up depressive, who reaches for the bottle only because his disastrous love life has gone wrong yet again.

German composer Richard Wagner wrote Parsifal, which is a three-act opera that tells the story of the title character's quest to save the Knights of the Holy Grail by returning the Holy Spear, healing King Amfortas, and carrying out the sacred ceremony of uncovering the Holy Grail.

Based on Alexander Pushkin’s dramatic verse novel "Eugen Onegin", the ballet tells the tragic love story of the world-weary aristocrat Onegin and the naïve country girl Tatiana. John Cranko’s Onegin holds a special place in the choreographic repertoire of the second half of the 20th century as one of the few original full-length ballets.

Written during the tumult of the Napoleonic Wars, Beethoven’s fifth and final piano concerto is both epic and moving. Young Austrian pianist Lukas Sternath is soloist with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, conducted by Constantinos Carydis performing from Pnyx Hill with a view of the ancient Acropolis as part of Europiano.

The famed Vienna Philharmonic rings in the New Year with its annual concert from Vienna's Musikverein conducted for the first time by Yannick Nézet-Séguin with performances by the Vienna State Ballet and location segments hosted by Hugh Bonneville.

In the second part of this magnificent concert celebrating music from across Europe, Lukas Sternath, Martha Argerich, Bruce Liu and Hayato Sumino perform the finest piano concertos by Beethoven, Schumann, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff.