Singer

What happens when man’s best friend becomes head-of-state? Opera Rara and the Hallé team up once again to present Offenbach’s opera Barkouf, where a dog rules the day.

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Offenbach’s Barkouf

The Bridgewater Hall

In the 19th century, Penzance was one of the most idyllic and peaceful little towns on the British isle. Pirates... here?! The kings of English operetta, the writing duo Gilbert & Sullivan, had a knack for humorously subverting their audience’s expectations. With this satirical and subversive “recipe,” they created one hit after another.

The rather absurd plot of The Pirates of Penzance would have done proud even to the British humor of Monty Python back in the 19th century: A young man is not trained as a pilot, but instead apprenticed to the Pirates of Penzance because his hard-of-hearing governess confuses the words “pilot” and “pirate.” Upon turning 21, Frederic should have completed his apprenticeship—if only he hadn’t been born in a leap year! According to pirate logic, that makes him just five years old… From this existential dilemma unfolds a love story between the young pirate apprentice and Mabel, a young lady from the British military aristocracy..

The Pirates of Penzance

Volksoper Wien

Colin delights his friends with dishes prepared by his cook Nicolas, invents a pianocktail to match drinks to melodies, and dreams of true love. When Chloé enters his life, happiness seems complete. But a sinister water lily slowly grows in the young woman's lung.

Foam of the Daze

Opéra de Lille

“I was already warned that I would have to fear for my life,” Carmen declares—foreseeing her own doom—in the finale of Bizet’s “opera of all operas” (as Nietzsche once called it). A few minutes later, she is dead, stabbed by the man who was still her lover only moments before, the soldier Don José. The team behind Killing Carmen—Nils Strunk, Lukas Schrenk, and Gabriel Cazes—asked themselves from which perspective this opera, after its many adaptations (including pop-cultural ones) throughout the 20th century, could be retold once again. These three exceptional artists, who for years have devoted themselves to daring and high-energy reinterpretations of the classics, continue the opera’s story: What happened after Carmen’s murder? What void did she leave behind?

Killing Carmen

Liebestod , literally "death of love," refers to the famous finale of Richard Wagner's opera Tristan and Isolde . In this tragic scene, Isolde dies before Tristan's lifeless body. The term more broadly evokes the radical idea of ​​love made perfect by death.

Songs of love and death

Lille Opera

No other version of the popular story where a mermaid falls in love with a human man and has to give up her form and herself for the love she craves, tells so beautifully of the two parallel worlds as Antonín Dvořák's opera Rusalka. And no one knows this world so well as the dazzling drag performers with whom director Bastian Kraft doubles Dvořák's forest and water creatures. They are experts in transformation and beautiful appearances in the spotlight. Through lip-synching, the drag performers make the fairy tale of mermaid and prince their own. Alongside a top-class ensemble of singers, they are on a quest for a life in which who we love and who we are no longer determines whose existence takes place in the light and whose is forced to take place in the dark.

Rusalka

The Staatstheater Stuttgart

Eros cries and in the glitter of his tears the dark sides of love appear. For their brand new production Le lacrime di Eros, conductor Raphaël Pichon – with his ensemble and choir Pygmalion – and theater maker Romeo Castellucci go back to the roots of opera. Inspired by the creativity and experimental freedom that prevailed in Florence in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, they explore the subject that has been central to opera since the very beginning: love.

Le lacrime di Eros

National Opera & Ballet

At a glittering party in 18th-century Paris, the poet Andréa Chenier delivers an impassioned denunciation of Louis XVI. Five years later, the Revolution has given way to the Terror, transforming the power balance between Chénier, his beloved Maddalena, and Gérard, the man who could destroy him...

Andrea Chenier (12A) Royal Opera House Live 23-24

Barbican Centre

Following her Royal Opera House debut in Andrea Chénier conducted by Antonio Pappano, mezzo-soprano Katia Ledoux joins pianist Anna Tilbrook for a recital presented by Opera Rara and the Temple Music Foundation. Taking place within the Inner Temple Parliament Chamber, the programme centres on the Parisian salons of the 19th century. Featuring newly-restored, rarely – if ever – performed songs by Donizetti from his years in Paris, the programme is completed with selections by Donizetti’s contemporaries. Including several songs composed by women, Ledoux and Tilbrook recreate the experience of a musical soirée.

Mezzo-soprano

Katia Ledoux

Events

Past events

Oct 4, 2026

Offenbach’s Barkouf · Opera Rara

Mar 27 - May 2, 2026

The Pirates of Penzance · Volksoper Wien

Future and recently performed repertoire

Richard the Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance by Sullivan

Volksoper Wien

Ježibaba in Undine by Dvořák

Staatsoper Stuttgart

Carmen in Killing Carmen by Cazes

Volksoper Wien

Alise in L'écume des jours by Denisov

Opéra de Lille

Périzade in Barkouf by Offenbach

Opera Rara

About

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