Diana Damrau

Any new Met production of Verdi’s beloved tragedy La Traviata would be noteworthy, but Michael Mayer’s dazzling staging, which premiered during the 2018–19 season, was doubly significant as it marked Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s first performances as the Met’s Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer Music Director. On the podium for this Live in HD transmission, Nézet-Séguin leads a starry ensemble. As Violetta, the consumptive heroine fighting to find true happiness, soprano Diana Damrau delivers yet another compelling portrayal on the Met stage. Tenor Juan Diego Flórez sings his first Verdi role with the company, as Violetta’s ardent yet impetuous lover, Alfredo, and baritone Quinn Kelsey rounds out the principal cast as Giorgio Germont, Alfredo’s implacable father.

Michael Mayer’s acclaimed production, first seen in the 2012–13 season, sets the action of Verdi’s masterpiece in 1960 Las Vegas—a neon-lit world ruled by money and ruthless, powerful men. Piotr Beczała is the Duke, a popular entertainer and casino owner who will stop at nothing to get what he wants. Željko Lučić sings Rigoletto, his sidekick and comedian, and Diana Damrau is Rigoletto’s innocent daughter, Gilda. When she is seduced by the Duke, Rigoletto sets out on a tragic course of murderous revenge. Štefan Kocán is the assassin Sparafucile and Michele Mariotti conducts.

Barrie Kosky gives the “operetta of all operettas” a new look and devotes himself to its morbid side. The setting is Vienna, city of the golden operetta era, where Die Fledermaus premiered at the Theater an der Wien in 1874. The bat's revenge becomes a nightmare, and not just for Gabriel von Eisenstein. A society, an entire city dances towards the abyss. To take revenge on his friend Eisenstein, Dr. Falke, alias Die Fledermaus, stages a game of mistaken identity at Count Orlofsky's house. A marquis and a chevalier, a countess and budding artists meet there for a raucous party. Glasses clink, relationships are shaken, people love, lie and dance. The party lasts as long as it lasts, true to the motto: “Happy is he who forgets...”.

The Queen of the Night enlists a handsome prince named Tamino to rescue her beautiful kidnapped daughter, Princess Pamina. Aided by the lovelorn bird hunter Papageno and a magical flute that holds the power to change the hearts of men, young Tamino embarks on a quest for true love, leading to the evil Sarastro's temple where Pamina is held captive. The Pierre Audi production of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte was recorded live at the 2006 Salzburger Festpiele.

Intrigue, champagne, and irony: in a production directed by Barrie Kosky, the Bavarian State Opera presents a sparkling production of Johann Strauss II's Die Fledermaus.

Diana Damrau and Vittorio Grigolo are opera’s classic lovers in Gounod’s lush Shakespeare adaptation. Director Bartlett Sher’s “brilliant and inspired new production … is a revelation” (Huffington Post), and has already won acclaim for its vivid 18th-century milieu and stunning costumes during runs at Salzburg and La Scala. Emmanuel Villaume conducts the sumptuous score.

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.

Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro returned to Teatro alla Scala in 2016 in a new production directed by Frederic Wake-Walker and conducted by Franz Welser-Möst. Created to mark the 225th anniversary of Mozart’s death, the staging offers a fresh perspective on the composer’s celebrated comedy of love, deception and social hierarchy. Antony McDonald designed the sets and costumes, framing the intricate intrigues surrounding Figaro and Susanna’s wedding. The international cast features Markus Werba as Figaro, Golda Schultz as Susanna, Diana Damrau as the Countess, Marianne Crebassa as Cherubino, and Carlos Álvarez or Simon Keenlyside as Count Almaviva.