Teatro Real de Madrid

Who loves whom in Così fan tutte, Mozart’s and Da Ponte’s cruelly comic reflection on desire, fidelity and betrayal? Or have the confusions to which the main characters subject one another ensured that in spite of the heartfelt love duets and superficially fleetfooted comedy nothing will work any longer and that a sense of emotional erosion has replaced true feelings? Così fan tutte is a timeless work full of questions that affect us all. The Academy Award-winning director Michael Haneke once said that he was merely being precise and did not want to distort reality. In only his second opera production after Don Giovanni in 2006, he presents what ARTE described as a “disillusioned vision of love in an ice-cold, realistic interpretation”.

The production by Calixto Bieito extracts all the potential from this work in a most convincing and spine-chilling way. The action takes place in a closed society of the 1950s, taking this story of witchcraft, sex and religion to the realism of imitation leather sofas, crochet cardigans, medical abuse and child molestation.

This Wagner opera is rarely performed because of the scandals that engulfed the Magdeburg Theatre when it was performed in 1836 under the title The Novice of Palermo, and became known as a cursed opera from which the composer had to distance himself. Wagner's adaptation of the story reflects the rebellious mood of a Revolutionary Germany, vindicating sensual love and attack the fanatical repression of sexuality by a puritanical and hypocritical authority. As the prose says, "Shame to him whose cruel striking/Kills for faults of his own liking!". One of the most extraordinary musicals based on a text by Shakespeare, especially worthy of a new performance as it is four hundred years since the death of the Bard.

A tragic and secretive romance ensues over many years after two men meet while herding sheep on Brokeback Mountain in this opera based on Annie Proulx's short story and its subsequent Oscar-winning film adaptation.

A superb adaptation of Purcell's the Indian Queen, staged and directed by Peter Sellars and performed in 2013 at the Teatro Real in Madrid. Peters Sellars combines John Dryden and Robert Howard's libretto with a short-story written by the Nicaraguan writer Rosario Aguilar, La niña blanca y los pájaros sin pies.

Le Nozze di Figaro New Production Teatro Real in co-production with Bilbao’s ABAO and Las Palmas Teatro Pérez Galdós. From the opening notes of the overture to the final curtain, Emilio Sagi’s classic, triumphant production brings to life all the elegant wit and theatricality of Mozart’s comic masterpiece Le nozze di Figaro. Leading baritone Ludovic Tézier shines as the lustful Count Almaviva who attempts to obtain the favors of Figaro’s bride-to-be, Susanna (Isabel Rey), while Luca Pisaroni gives a feisty performance as Figaro. Conductor Jesús López Cobos masterfully captures the enchanting score. A witty yet profound tale of love, betrayal, and forgiveness.

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!

Britten's last opera, in two acts, presented by Teatro Real.

A hard-hitting new production of Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny by the Catalan collective La Fura dels Baus at the Teatro Real de Madrid. Composed in the 1930s by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, this is a mordant satire on capitalism and the inexorable industrialisation of a society in which the ultimate crime is not having money. In twenty scenes the authors tell the story of a city lost in the middle of a desert and run by three thugs; in Mahagonny food, sex, gambling and violence rule supreme.

Drama - This majestic production of Handel's vivid tragedy, TAMERLANO, stars a Lear-like Placido Domingo as the Turkish Sultan Bajazet, caught between pride, love, and loyalty. Displaying the uniquely heroic quality of his voice, Domingo heads a superb cast, including Sara Mingardo, Monica Bacelli, and Ingela Bohlin, all magnificently responsive to Paul McCreesh's authentic and luminous musical interpretation of the score. The stunning theatrical staging by Graham Vick provides a splendid setting for the characters and for designer Richard Hudson's extravagant Baroque-Islamic costumes, emphasizing the brilliance of one of Handel's finest dramatic achievements. - Monica Bacelli, Plácido Domingo, Ingela Bohlin

Opera fantastique in five acts (1881), new version by Sylvain Cambreling & Christoph Marthaler. With Eric Cutler and Anne Sofie Von Otter. Teatro Real, filmed on 05/2014

After twenty years of absence, Puccini’s Turandot was revived on the stage of the Teatro Real in a new production by American stage director Robert Wilson. One of the most important theatre and visual artist of our times, the director who gave life to Philip Glass’s Einstein of the Beach and who reinvented Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande hadn’t worked on a Puccini opera in twenty-five years, since his ground-breaking Madama Butterfly commissioned by the Paris Opera in 1993. This new encounter between his powerful visual universe and Puccini’s evocative music was bound to be an outstanding event. Carried out by a brilliant cast of singers, dominated by Irene Theorin as Turandot, Gregory Kunde as Calaf and Yolanda Auyanet as Liù, this magnificent production is conducted by the Teatro Real’s associate musical director Nicola Luisotti – and has been met with universal acclaim.

Documentary about an emblematic institution of the Spanish Arts, Madrid's Teatro Real, or Royal Theatre, released to celebrate it's 2nd centenary anniversary.

Based on a poem published in 1810 with more ethnographic than dramatic focus, Britten constructed a sombre parable about the conflict between the masses and the individual. The maritime atmosphere, the crudity of people’s lives and passions, and the complex, impenetrable personality of the protagonist come together in a tragedy which ferments and explodes in the din of silence and hearsay. New production of the Teatro Real, in co-production with the Royal Opera House Covent Garden of London, the Opéra national of Paris and the Teatro dell’Opera of Rome

In the last and most dramatic aria in Roberto Devereux , one of the four Tudor period operas composed by Donizetti in 1837 (along with Anna Bolena , Maria Stuarda and Il Castello di Kenilworth), the protagonist, Queen Elizabeth I of England, exclaims: "I do not reign, I do not live". This statement encapsulates great operatic themes, and it is the culmination of an opera that reveals the passions of characters who live among palace intrigues. Written in the mature period of the leader of Italian romanticism, the opera displays a great vocal virtuosity, and is an example of Donizetti prizing the voice above all in the genre. The staging, by South African director Alessandro Talevi, who has been very successful in great opera houses as well as with more experimental theatre, places the play in an undetermined period, focusing on the chiaroscuro. Bruno Campanella conducts.

Iolanta is a one act lyric opera, sung in Russian, by Tchaikovsky. Performed in the style of a nineteenth-century Italian melodrama, the scenes have a recitative introduction followed by a single arioso, aria, duet or chorus. Persephone is a three act melodrama, sung in French, by Stravinsky. It is a story of regeneration, symbolised in Sellars use of dancers from the Cambodian dance company, Amrita Performing Arts. Peter Sellars, one of the most innovative creators on today's stage, has linked these two productions by using the same stage setting, instantly archaic yet modern, and lit by rich colours to define the journey from darkness to light.

To elevate a jester to a tragic stature comparable to a Macbeth or a Lear is no easy feat. The dramatic essence of Shakespeare runs in the veins of this Rigoletto, although the story is based on the controversial Le roi s’amuse by Victor Hugo. While the play was prohibited in France for more than fifty years, Verdi himself fought with the censors who initially prevented the publication of his opera. Multi-faceted, perhaps more than any other opera by Verdi - tender, cruel, interspersed with remarkable strokes of black humour -, Rigoletto is also a heart-wrenching study about the love between a parent and a child. Given the helplessness of a woman in the face of a group of men, Teatro Real’s production, which is directed by Miguel del Arco, also considers society's concept of masculinity. Nicola Luisotti conducts some of the great voices of our day, including Javier Camarena, Ludovic Tézier, Marina Viotti and Adela Zaharia.