Antonello Manacorda

Having disposed of his enemies, Lucio Silla is now all-powerful. He wants to marry Giunia, but underestimates how much she hates him. After all, he has not only had her father murdered, but has also banished her beloved, Cecilio. At first, Giunia is misled into thinking that Cecilio is dead; with the help of Cinna, however, the lovers manage to meet up again. The power of love and Cinna’s machinations finally persuade Silla to relinquish his power.

Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland — her name will be linked in perpetuity with another name: Elizabeth I of England. Mary and Elizabeth: two queens, two adversaries, two women in the middle of the 16th century. Although ‘sisters and cousins’, they never actually encountered each other in the flesh — contrary to the fictional conceit.

The Belgian dancer and choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui interprets Glucks late Baroque opera Alceste as an impressive symbiosis between dance and music. The opera can be experienced here in all its existential power. (SZ) It is here performed in the revised Paris version from 1776 where Gluck has revalued especially the ballet music. Cherkaoui director of the Royal Ballet of Flanders has worked with top artists across disciplines like superstar Beyoncé. The superb dancers of the Belgian Compagnie Eastman, Antwerp perform Glucks score physically, creating a fine and stringent aesthetics of beautiful images (Opernwelt). Dorothea Röschmann with her inimitable charisma (Financial Times) and Charles Castronovo deliver a brilliant performance in the roles of the self-sacrificing royal couple. Musically impressive.

In Wajdi Mouawad's "brilliantly involving" new Paris Opera production of Debussy's only opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, French soprano Sabine Devieilhe is "as near to perfection as one might wish for: a voice of exquisite beauty and sung as if the role [of Mélisande] had been written especially for her" (Opera Today) and Huw Montague Rendall, as Pelléas, projects a "faultless French phrasing, endowing [Pelléas] with the perfect blend of freshness and candor" (Bachtrack). Based on the classic symbolist play by Maurice Maeterlinck that the composer found to contain "far more humanity" than realism, Pelléas et Mélisande sets a tragic love triangle against some of Debussy's most soaringly dramatic music, all its Wagnerian flourishes brought out by Antonello Manacorda and the Paris Opera Orchestra.

Berlioz’s whimsical and nostalgic take on Shakespeare’s great comedy Much Ado About Nothing graces the stage of Glyndebourne in Laurent Pelly’s astute 2016 production. Italian maestro Antonello Manacorda leads the London Philharmonic in Berlioz’s brilliant score.

Die Zauberflöte is one of Mozart’s most famous works and one of the most beloved of the entire operatic repertoire. Generations of spectators have been fascinated by the melodies and adventures of Papageno, the Queen of the Night, Tamino, and Pamina, the ordeals faced by the young lovers, and the work’s inexhaustible allegorical depth. The director Romeo Castellucci has deliberately stepped back from the narrative dimension of the opera in order to explore its raw emotion and its philosophical heart. For his part, the conductor Antonello Manacorda brings Mozart’s immortal music to life with the help of an outstanding cast that includes Sabine Devieilhe, one of today’s finest interpreters of the Queen of the Night.

The Magic Flute by Mozart at La Monnaie.