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!

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

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

Two bored extras from the ‘Tristan and Isolde’ opera roam the underground of the Garnier Palace.

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.

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

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.

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”…

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.

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.

"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

Verdi's Macbeth performed by Opéra National de Paris

Ballet en deux actes et treize tableaux du chorég. This is a live recording of a performance at Paris Garnier in 2007. Petit's earlier production for the Ballet de Marseille used more realistic stage sets, but the current Paris version has minimal stage sets. Also, the costumes were redesigned. Roland Petit created a ballet based on "In Search of Lost Time" for the Ballet de Marseille in the 1970s. Petit's intention was not to make a faithful adaptation of the novel, but to capture its flavour and convey, through a number of selected scenes, the narrator's incessant fluctuations between happiness and torment. The highlights are the series of poetical pas de deux.

The first words uttered by Carmen mark one of the greatest entrances in the history of opera and express all that need be said: “Love is a rebellious bird that no one can tame…” With a devilish sway of the hips and a hint of Andalusian flair, the beautiful cigar-maker sets her sights on a soldier: Don José. Fate will do the rest.

The ambiguities of Verdi’s theatre are particularly clear in his baritone roles, among which is that of Boccanegra, corsair turned doge of Genoa and the troubled observer of the conflicts that tore apart 14th century landowners and peasants. An eminently political opera in which power struggles are interwoven with family conflicts, Simon Boccanegra echoes the life of its composer – the man who championed the cause of Italian unification and overcame the loss of his wife and children. Calixto Bieito, that most Shakespearean of opera directors, brings humanism and truth to a work haunted by gleaming images of the sea.

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.

Recorded at the Paris Opera and co-produced with Siberia’s Novosibirsk Opera, this new Macbeth uses cutting-edge multimedia technology to give the viewer a fresh perspective on the work. Google Earth satellite images plunge us into the heart of the action: a gloomy square surrounded by soulless buildings, and the interior of an aristocratic residence.

A lonely mother and her son go to the opera where a performance of Cherubini’s opera Medea is given. It is the mother’s birthday and she wanted to surprise her son by inviting him to the opera. But, the son’s plan were different and he is quite upset about it. His mother tries to break the silent barrier behind which he hides. A semblance of discussion begins, not without humour. Tension is present but, as the performance goes on, both find themselves astounded, captured, alone in the opera house.