Opéra National de Paris

A vengeful beauty foils the plans of the bloodthirsty Hun warrior to conquer Rome.

Screen adapatation of Mozart's greatest opera. Don Giovanni, the infamous womanizer, makes one conquest after another until the ghost of Donna Anna's father, the Commendatore, (whom Giovanni killed) makes his appearance. He offers Giovanni one last chance to repent for his multitudinious improprieties. He will not change his ways So, he is sucked down into hell by evil spirits. High drama, hysterical comedy, magnificent music!

An opera ballet that doesn't exist. A ghost-like piece, played in Opera Bastille and danced at Opera Garnier. An almost mystical link between both scenes. A musician is testing sounds in Bastille's pit. The choir are taking their place in the rehearsal studio. Both sides are fine tuning the work in progress of an opera ballet: Sarah Winchester, her grief, her madness, her home and her ghosts.

Jafar Panahi sets out to find a Kurdish young woman with a golden voice that has been forbidden to sing by her family.

"William Christie and Les Arts Florissants propel this exuberant production of Jean-Philippe Rameau's second opera to great heights. Andrei Serban's extravagant, highly baroque staging presents the four exotic love stories vibrantly. In 'Le Turc généreux' Osman sets free his captive, Emilie, whom he loves, so that she may be reunited with her former lover, Valère; 'Les Incas de Pérou' is all about the rivalry of the Inca Huascar and the Spaniard Don Carlos, both in pursuit of Princess Phani; 'Les Fleurs' offers a Persian love intrigue, as the Sultana Fatime tries to detect whether her husband Tacmas has his eye on the lovely Atalide; and 'Les Sauvages' takes us to North America, where a Spaniard and a Frenchman compete for the love of Zima, daughter of a native chief, who prefers one of her own people." — from the DVD cover

Abbado wholly vindicates Verdi’s intentions through his feeling for the shape of a whole scene, for the inherent subtleties of Verdi’s scoring and for certain rhythmic effects.

No one better described the half-starved, struggling artists than Murger in his Scènes de la Vie de Bohème: artists ready to burn a manuscript to try to keep warm yet,in an era of triumphant bourgeois materialism, dreaming of another existence. Taking up these scenes of Bohemian life, Puccini offers us a heart-breaking love story and some of the most beautiful music in the history of opera in the story of the poet Rodolfo and fragile Mimi. The staging of this new production has been entrusted to Claus Guth who sets the drama in a future devoid of hope in which love and art become the sole means of transcendence.

The Florentine sculptor and silversmith Benvenuto Cellini rapidly attained a degree of renown that went beyond the confines of Italy. Invariably embroiled in conspiracies, intrigues and quarrels, Cellini is commissioned by the Pope to cast a large sculpture of Perseus. He is loved by Teresa, but she is promised to Fieramosca, an academic artist who has not been favoured with a papal commission. Terry Gilliam’s exuberant production draws the protagonists into a delirious and joyful yet claustrophobic and megalomaniac world: a flaring up of contagious madness.

Moses und Aron is a three-act opera by Arnold Schoenberg with the third act unfinished. The 2015 Production was led by Romeo Castellucci in Paris. Moses und Aron was filmed for television by film director François-René Martin, in co-production with the Paris Opera, Bel air Media and Arte, with support from the CNC.

Sergei Prokofiev's setting of the fairy tale "Cinderella" premiered at Moscow's Bolshoi Theater in 1945. In 1986, Rudolf Nureyev, then ballet director of the Paris Opera, choreographed the ballet anew and transposed the story into a private cinema, with sets reminiscent of Fritz Lang's "Metropolis." ARTE shows the Paris Opera performance from December 31, 2018.

Recording of a performance by Ballet de l'Opéra national de Paris of the ballet on Music for 18 Musicians by Steve Reich, choreographed by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker.

In 2009, Frédéric Mistral’s tale of love and loss in Provence came to the Opéra de Paris with a new production of Gounod’s 1864 opera Mireille. Nicolas Joel’s naturalistic staging frames the accomplished performances of Albanian soprano Inva Mula as Mireille and American tenor Charles Castronovo as her ardent country lover Vincent.

Inspired by Pushkin's masterpiece of Russian literature, Tchaikovsky’s opera provides a sublime portrait – both ironic and sympathetic – of a character embittered by society life, rejecting love out of vanity, killing his friend the poet Lenski out of pride and spending the rest of his days in abject despair. A repertoire classic, Willy Decker’s streamlined production makes the Paris Opera echo once more to the strains of Russian romantic music. Edward Gardner conducts an exceptional cast including Peter Mattei in the title role and Anna Netrebko as Tatiana.

Motivated by the love that bound him to Mathilda Wesendonck, Richard Wagner’s composition of Tristan und Isolde goes far beyond any simple operatic gesture. Peter Sellars’ production pours oil onto this troubled sea of emotions in an almost dematerialised setting bared of all earthly contingencies whilst Bill Viola presents the lovers’ initiatory quest for nirvana in videos detached from the stage, suspended like altarpieces.

In Benoît Jacquot’s production, Manet’s Olympia dominates the stage of the Opéra Bastille. In 1863, the painting caused a scandal: the prostitute awaits her client, her expression proud, her demeanour assured. Is this Violetta? Like Olympia, Verdi’s most celebrated heroine surrenders to the spectator just as she surrenders to love, going so far as to die on stage, a woman’s ultimate sacrifice for her lover. Or might it be the spectator who strips her bare and intrudes upon her privacy, in the image of this milieu of social voyeurism? Whatever the case, these two women regard us with defiance and subjugate those who cannot help but look at them.

A documentary view of the galas of Paris’s Palais Garnier in the 1950s and ’60s.

Werther loves Charlotte, but she promised her mother on her deathbed that she would marry Albert. After the marriage Charlotte suggests that Werther should travel - but not forget her. In addition to the singing and orchestral accompaniment, the entire cast acts very convincingly. And, there's no backstage mugging, entrances and spoken nonsense to spoil the experience of the drama.

Once the show is over at Bastille Opera's 6th basement, Professor Turrel and his team open their shop. The service offers the opportunity for couples to say goodbye beautifully: recycling sets, performers and musicians. But tonight, we follow Thibaut's story: a man who couldn't say goodbye to his love.

Between dance and drawings, Arnaud des Pallières relates different moments of Degas’s life and unveils some of his darker sides.

Running through Bartók’s disenchanted tale, whose haunting music was initially condemned as unplayable, and the expression of despair in Poulenc’s monologue, the director Krzysztof Warlikowski perceives a shared dramatic thread, a shared feminine consciousness and a shared sense of imprisonment and suffocation: for the woman who penetrates the confines of Bluebeard’s castle and Elle, the woman who clings to a telephone conversation with a man as the only thing worth living for, are condemned to share the same fate. And this man she speaks to, does he really exist? Unless the director has interpreted Cocteau’s words to the letter and the telephone has become a “terrifying weapon that leaves no trace, makes no noise”…