A Victor Hugo play, haunting and scandalous, provided the inspiration for Verdi’s mid-career masterpiece. A vengeful but misguided court jester strives to save his daughter from a duke’s licentious clutches, but can't part with the feeling that a curse looms over all of his actions. In Rigoletto, the composer introduces several of his most iconic arias and duets—as well as an 11th-hour quartet tha...

A stellar cast brings Puccini’s spellbinding opera to life, seizing every opportunity to thrill the audience. Luciano Pavarotti is Cavaradossi, the painter and political revolutionary in love with the beautiful and famous singer Tosca (the riveting Shirley Verrett). Rome’s diabolical chief of police, Baron Scarpia (Cornell MacNeil), wants Tosca for himself—but he underestimates the fury of a woman...

In ancient Babylon, SEMIRAMIDE (Anderson) encourages her lover Assur (Ramey) to murder her husband, King Ninus. Her son, Ninius, disappears, believed dead, and Semiramide rules in her own right. 15 years later, as the opera opens, she is about to announce the name of her successor. Idreno (Olsen) and Assur are the leading candidates for the throne and the hand of Princess Azema (Shin), but Semiram...

Don Carlo (1980) Metropolitan Opera. Verdi / italian. King Philip's court is plagued by rebels, family squabbles and intrigue. The Spanish Inquisition tries to exert its influence. The tension finally ignites at the King's coronation, where heretics are to be burned at the stake

It's hard to imagine confirmed Straussians not wanting this starry Metropolitan Opera performance of Elektra. Strauss and his librettist, Hugo von Hofmannstahl, transformed Sophocles' take on Homer's tale into a harrowing opera noir. Elektra lives for one reason, to kill her mother, Klytämnestra, and her stepfather, Aegisth, the murderers of her father, Agamemnon. In contrast to Elektra's vengeful...

The classic opera is brought to life by Beverly Sills.