Queen Semiramide is haunted by the ghosts of her past. Together with her lover Assur, she once murdered her husband King Nino; a deed which ever since has weighed heavily upon her. With her marriage to Arsace, she hopes her soul will at last find solace. Her love, however, is misplaced. Arsace not only loves another, he is also, as is later revealed, the son Semiramide and Nino believed to be dead. He is faced with a decision: should he avenge the death of his father – and thus become his mother's killer?

At the Teatro Real in Madrid, director Laurent Pelly and conductor Giacomo Sagripanti get to grips with Gioachino Rossini’s Il Turco in Italia (The Turk in Italy) – a delightful opera buffa teeming with colourful characters!

A striking interpretation of Mozart's opera that became a sensation at the 2008 Salzburg Festival. This is not only a rethinking of the place and time of the opera, but also a deep disclosure of the characters' characters, their ambiguous inner world. A simple, at first glance, plot is turned by the creators of the play into a dynamic psychological thriller.

Wolf-Ferrari’s comic opera La vedova scaltra (The Cunning Widow), is among the works he based on plays by Goldoni. It matches closely the conventions of 18th-century opera buffa in its witty if sceptical look at the mechanisms governing the interplay of human relations. Four hopeful suitors, English, French, Spanish and Italian, vie for the hand of Rosaura, the cunning widow of the title, who disguises herself to meet each wooer, eventually choosing the only one who can demonstrate his sincerity. This production, filmed live at the Teatro La Fenice in February 2007 in celebration of the 300th anniversary of the birth of Goldoni in Venice in 1707, is the first to appear on DVD.

The Vienna State Opera is staging Otto Schenk's production of Gaetano Donizetti's "L'elisir d'amore" (The Elixir of Love), which combines humor and drama with a happy ending. Maria Nazarova sings the role of Adina and Bogdan Volkov sings the role of Nemorino. Already extremely popular during Donizetti's lifetime, this opera buffa tells the story of the young farmer Nemorino, who is in love with the wealthy landowner Adina. With the help of a love potion from the charlatan Doctor Dulcamara, he hopes to win her heart.

An esoteric fairy-tale, a mystical-dreamlike tale, and a symbolic-Masonic course: No matter which perspective you consider it from, The Magic Flute will always be one of Mozart’s undisputed masterpieces. Amidst exotic, fanciful settings and cruel trials to conquer knowledge, amidst musical enchantment and threatening hostile forces, is the final victory of good over evil and love over hate. Singspiel in two acts to a libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder, the Zauberflöte is one of the Salzburg genius’ last masterpieces, which he probably began composing in May 1791, not even six months before his death. The opera had its debut in Vienna on 30 September 1791, conducted by the composer himself and with Schikaneder as Papageno.

The impulsive and charismatic Don Giovanni travels through Europe seducing women, accompanied by his long-suffering servant Leporello. But when Don Giovanni commits murder, he unleashes a dark power beyond his control. Kasper Holten’s production is rich in both colourful comedy and exhilarating drama. Set designs by Es Devlin (Les Troyens) and costume designs by Anja Vang Kragh (Stella McCartney, John Galliano for Christian Dior), with video projections by Luke Halls and choreography by Signe Fabricius, portray the visually entrancing world of Don Giovanni. At the heart of the production are the beauty and invention of Mozart’s dazzling score, which ranges from gorgeous arias and dramatic duets to the brilliant layering of dance melodies that bring Act I to a virtuoso close.

This new Dynamic opera was performed in Donizetti's native city of Bergamo, during the most important world festival dedicated to the Italian composer. The opera is set in a rural environment and the action takes place in a country farm. It is a brilliant comedy with many points of contact with semi-serious operas. The choice of this subject must have been strongly influenced by the successes of Vincenzo Bellini's La Sonnambula. The music is folksy and the melodic writing frank and straightforward with a broad variety of passages of high technical content and more elegiac in character; such is the case of the most famous piece in the whole opera, the aria "Una furtiva lagrima", which is also the leitmotiv of the soundtrack of the 2005 film Match Point, directed by Woody Allen.