Bluray Bdmv

With Anna Caterina Antonacci and Jonas Kaufmann bringing rare erotic intensity to the drama of Carmen and Don Jose, this Royal Opera production is a darkly passionate reading of one of the world's favourite operas. Under the baton of Music Director Antonio Pappano, Bizet's irresistible score drives the tragedy forward - powering a landmark staging of a musical masterpiece.

Opera lies at the heart of Rimsky-Korsakov’s colourful idiom, but performances are few and far between; this realisation of his penultimate and grandest stage work is a very rare and special experience. Kitezh is known as ‘the Russian Parsifal’, which encapsulates its mystical flavour and steady unfolding of a legend of redemption. A largely Russian cast (headed by the stunning Svetlana Ignatovich) and production team works within a set that moves from opulent naturalistic scenery to some startling theatrical coups worthy of Rimsky’s underrated dramatic instincts.

Filmed at The Mariinsky Theatre St.Petersburg, where it was first performed in 1892, comes this adult version of the Nutcracker. Worlds away from the traditional and warm versions popular at Christmas, this unconventional production, reinterpreted by Russian emigre and world-renowned avant-garde artist Mikhail Shemiakin, is a surreal, and at times disturbing, piece. Two of the Mariinsky's young stars, Leonid Sarafanov and Irina Golub, dance the main roles, and Valery Gergiev conducts.

Double Tony Award winning stage director Desmond McAnuff’s production, hailed by the New York Times as “rich with ideas and theatrically daring”, presents Faust as an atomic scientist inhabiting a dark world shot through with Cold War resonances. Alongside Kaufmann, a typically gold-standard Met cast includes the “phenomenal” Rene Pape as Mephistopheles and the “ideally-suited” Marina Poplavskaya as Marguerite. Star conductor Yannick Nezet-Seguin draws an “elegant, darkly textured performance” from the Metropolitan Opera orchestra.

Ever since it’s triumphant premiere in January 1960, Frederick Ashton's La fille mal gardée has been esteemed as one of his happiest creations. This is a charming piece, elegantly performed, a village love affair set in the idyllic Constable landscape of Ashton's imagination. Marianela Nuñez and Carlos Acosta would be show-stoppers in almost any suitable role, but as Lise and Colas they are superb. William Tuckett and Jonathan Howells, in the comic roles of Simone and Alain respectively, are every bit as arresting, both displaying a certain genius for knockabout. The luminously colourful Osbert Lancaster designs, together with the vitality of The Royal Ballet’s dancing and vibrant playing from the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House under the baton of Anthony Twiner, serve to augment the harmless good fun at which Ashton excels.

Les vêpres siciliennes, like the similarly epic Don Carlos, was conceived as a grand opéra for Paris and is driven by the tensions between private passions and public politics. Originally set during Sicily’s 13th-century uprising against French rule, in Christof Loy’s staging for the Netherlands Opera the action is transposed to a 1940s world of sudden violence and shadowy double-dealing. Imaginatively cast and idiomatically conducted, the performance presents this magnificent score in its entirety, including the allegorical ballet The Four Seasons.

Richard Jones's radical new production of Lohengrin was the talk of the 2009 Munich Festival. It was also a triumph for Jonas Kaufmann in the title role. Die Welt added that they "could not think of any cast more perfectly matched, so youthfully enthralling, in short: so wonderful … ". With striking costumes and designs by Ultz - and directed by Maestro Kent Nagano - it represents a bold new Lohengrin for today's world.

Miyako Yoshida dances the title role originally created for Margot Fonteyn in the hauntingly beautiful underwater world of Ondine, vividly brought to life by The Royal Ballet. Frederick Ashton's shimmering choreography, Lila de Nobili's impressionistic designs and Hans Werner Henze's specially commissioned, vibrant and inventive score, memorably combine to evoke the many moods and colours of the sea.

The world's greatest male dancer, Carlos Acosta, dances the greatest male ballet lead Spartacus, in Grigorovich's famous Soviet ballet, created for the Bolshoi to Khachaturian's famous score. Following sensational performances in Moscow and London in 2007, the Bolshoi's production was re-staged and filmed in January 2008 in the Paris Opera's Palais Garnier, especially for Carlos.

François Girard‘s stunning post-apocalyptic production of Parsifal at The Metropolitan Opera trail-blazed the way for Wagner’s centennial year celebrations last year. Wagner's last and most intriguing opera, Parsifal centers on a young hero’s search for compassion, redemption, and acceptance in a world dominated by rules and fanaticism.