In his position as the king’s composer, Jean Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) created the opera Persée for Louis XIV. The opera was considered the crowning achievement of 17th century French music theatre and was widely recognized as Lully’s greatest work…

Bizet’s passionate tale of the self-willed gypsy woman Carmen is certainly one of the most popular works in the history of opera. It shows how a cigar factory worker in Seville enchants and bewitches the men around her. Melodies like Carmen’s…

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…

Il matrimonio segreto is Cimarosa's most famous opera buffa and it is one of the few comic operas to have maintained its place in the repertoire until today. At its first performance in 1792, Austrian emperor Leopold II is reputed to have liked this…

This beautiful production by renowned opera director Michael Hampe was recorded at the exquisite Rococo Theatre in Schwetzingen Palace in May 1990. La scala di seta is one of the five one-act operas - farsa giocosa - in which the young Rossini first…

Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio) is one of Mozart’s five great repertoire operas alongside Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Cosi fan tutte and Die Zauberflöte. A typical ‘Singspiel’, a form in which all the dialogue is…

L´occasione fa il ladro is one of the five one-act operas - farsa giocosa - in which the teenage Rossini first demonstrated his operatic genius. This farce about arranged marriages, role reversals and other amorous confusions is, in musical terms, by…

The press enthusiastically declared this Barber of Seville a “firework display of exhilarating comedy” and praised the "unforced liveliness" of the cast. EuroArts releases this highly acclaimed staging of one of the most popular operas ever written…

First staged at the Weimar Court Theatre under the baton of Richard Strauss in 1893, who hailed it as “a masterpiece of the highest quality”, Humperdinck's debut opera Hänsel und Gretel has remained a solid favourite since its 1893 première…

Peter Konwitschny’s celebrated and innovative staging of Wagner’s Lohengrin was recorded at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona in 2006, where it was revived as an unconventional and spectacular view on the piece. Originally staged in Hamburg in…