Based on one of the best-loved stories by the Brothers Grimm, Hänsel und Gretel soon became one of the most-performed operas in the world and has remained enduringly popular with both children and adults ever since. This is the first production at…

On New Year’s Eve 2009 Havana’s legendary nightclub, Tropicana, celebrated its seventieth birthday with a colourful revue, and the evening’s special guest was the world-famous Omara Portuondo. Together with her five-man band, which ranges in style…

The Merry Widow (Die Lustige Witwe) had its premiere at Vienna's Theater an der Wien in 1905. The operetta, which tells the story of a wealthy widow in search of a new husband was a major success for its composer Franz Lehár (1870-1948) and quickly…

A Ghost Light – a single lamp that illuminates the stage when rehearsals or performances are finished – is part of a long theatrical tradition. Legend says that originally, the night light was for the ghosts of former artists so that they may cavort…

Franz Liszt described the art of conducting as less than a task to be in evidence but rather a feat in disappearing behind the function itself. Conductors are pilots, not servants. Looking back at the past two centuries, we have been blessed with the…

Composed when he was just twenty-four, Agrippina was Handel’s first theatrical success and is a sparkling example of his early work. It is full of his fresh, exuberantly inventive music and employs one of the finest librettos with which George…

In Spring 2019, the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists, led by John Eliot Gardiner, presented a critically-acclaimed European tour of Handel’s opera 'Semele', including Alexandra Palace Theatre in London, where this live recording took…

Requiring 38 soloists, chorus and large orchestra, Hans Pfitzner’s Palestrina is a challenging opera to stage. In Munich, the city in which it was given its world premiere in 1917, director Christian Stückl and the Bavarian State Opera met those…

Hans van Manen began his career in 1951. He was active as a dancer, choreographer and as artistic director both at the Nederlands Dans Theater and Het Nationale Ballet, where he was appointed Resident Choreographer in 2003. The DVD recordings are…