Anna Pirozzi's inexhaustible forza and accuracy, stylistic appropriateness and the beauty of her singing were the main reasons for the success of the premiere of La Forza del destino at Liceu. Nicola Luisotti's great musical direction and the magnificent singing of Brian Jagde and Artur Ruciński were also very important, but it was the Neapolitan soprano's performance that brought the audience to its feet at the end. With three highly demanding arias, a duet with the tenor...

Béla Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, with a libretto by Béla Balázs, is a one act Symbolist opera, based on the French folk legend as told by Charles Perrault. Bartók originally composed it in 1911, but made quite a few modifications before it premiered at the Royal Hungarian Opera House in Budapest on 24 May 1918. Lasting around an hour, and involving just two singing characters, it tells the story of when Bluebeard brings his new wife...

Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlo, which premiered in 1867 in Paris as Don Carlos, exists in several versions, and, depending on which is performed, is either his longest or one of his longest operas. Although the first performance was in French, Nicholas Hytner’s 2008 production for the Royal Opera, which represents a co-production with the Metropolitan Opera, New York and the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, employs the Modena version of 1886. This is one of several to...

Das Rheingold, performed here in English as The Rhinegold, is the first opera in Richard Wagner’s tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen or Ring Cycle. It sets in motion the story that plays out across the four operas, and establishes the central theme of power versus love. It sees the dwarf, or Nibelung, Alberich steal the gold that is guarded by the Rhinemaidens and forge it into a ring that makes the bearer all powerful. He is only able to do so, however, by renouncing love, which in...