Bass René Pape, the world’s reigning Boris, reprises his overwhelming portrayal of the tortured tsar caught between grasping ambition and crippling paranoia, kicking off the Live in HD season on October 9, 2021. Conductor Sebastian Weigle leads Mussorgsky’s masterwork, a pillar of the Russian repertoire, in its original 1869 version. Stephen Wadsworth’s affecting production poignantly captures the hope and suffering of the Russian people as well as the tsar himself. This live cinema transmission is part of the Met’s award-winning Live in HD series, bringing opera to movie theaters across the globe.

When the mysterious captain of a phantom ship is cast ashore in a storm, he tries to escape eternal damnation through the love of a faithful woman.

What is this flame that compels Don Giovanni to seduce, subjugate and conquer women one after the other, with the fervour and cold indifference of a predator securing his prey; to pursue through his conquests some obscure and ever‑elusive objective? For his second collaboration with Da Ponte, Mozart was to brand the history of opera with a hot iron and forever haunt European culture. In this Libertine Punished, Kierkegaard invites us to hear “the whisperings of temptation, the whirlwind of seduction, the silence of the moment”. The Mozart-Da Ponte cycle continues with a Don Giovanni entrusted to director Ivo Van Hove. In the wake of Boris Godunov, the director, accustomed to examining the political meaning of works, presents his second production for the Paris Opera.

Antonio Pappano conducts a full performance of the second opera in Richard Wagner’s epic Der Ring des Nibelungen. During a storm, Sieglinde gives shelter to a wounded stranger. They find themselves drawn to each other. He is Siegmund, the twin from whom Sieglinde was separated in childhood. Unknown to them, their father is Wotan, the most powerful of the gods. Through Siegmund, Wotan hopes to retrieve a gold ring of ultimate power that he cannot take himself.

It is love at first sight when the knight Walther von Stolzing first meets the goldsmith’s daughter, Eva. But tradition trumps love in 19th-century Nuremberg. Her father has decreed there’s only one way to win Eva’s hand in marriage, and that’s to join Nuremberg’s guild of competitive singers—and beat them all in song.

The 2016 Don Carlo production at the Vienna State Opera, directed by Daniele Abbado, offered a modern, minimalist take on Verdi's masterpiece. Abbado emphasized the psychological and political tensions within the story, employing stark sets and subdued colors to evoke a timeless, oppressive atmosphere. Lighting played a crucial role, intensifying the focus on the characters' inner struggles and conflicts. The cast featured René Pape as a commanding and deeply nuanced Philip II, alongside Ramón Vargas as Don Carlo and Anja Harteros, who delivered a luminous and emotionally charged portrayal of Elisabetta.

Mussorgsky was inspired to compose his masterpiece Boris Godunov after reading Pushkin’s Shakespeare-inspired play of the same name. It features one of the most dramatically rewarding bass-baritone roles: a noble ruler who loves his children and his people, but whose thirst for power has led him to commit a terrible crime. Bryn Terfel is “a powerful new Boris” (The Observer) in Richard Jones’ new production of the original 1869 score. Antonio Pappano conducts an outstanding cast that also includes John Graham-Hall as the crafty Prince Shuisky and John Tomlinson as the vagabond monk Varlaam.