Met performances of Strauss’s white-hot one-act tragedy, which receives its first new production at the company in 20 years. Claus Guth, one of Europe’s leading opera directors, gives the biblical story—already filtered through the beautiful and strange imagination of Oscar Wilde’s play—a psychologically perceptive Victorian-era setting rich in symbolism and subtle shades of darkness and light.

Antonio Pappano conducts a stellar cast of singers in favourite arias, duets and choruses from operas by Rossini, Donizetti and Puccini, along with the thrilling finale of Bizet’s Carmen. Italian baritone Vito Priante offers haircuts as the Barber of Seville, and Lisette Oropesa dazzles with her flawless soprano coloratura before being joined by American tenor Charles Castronovo for some heartwarm...

When Rosina falls in love with mysterious young suitor Lindoro, she must use all her cunning – and a little help from her local barber – to outwit her calculating guardian Dr Bartolo. Expect heart-melting serenades, ridiculous disguises and a fairytale ending waiting just out of reach. From the barber’s opening number ‘Largo al factotum,’ with its cry of ‘Figaro!,’ to Rosina’s feisty aria ‘Una vo...

Director Carrie Cracknell makes her Met debut, reinvigorating the classic story with a staging that moves the action to the modern day, in a contemporary American industrial town.

Norma is a woman torn between two systems. As a chaste druid priestess, she decides on war and peace in an occupied land; secretly, she’s the lover of Roman commander Pollione and mother of his two children. Her double life unravels when Pollione plans to leave her for the younger priestess Adalgisa. Caught between love and vengeance, faith and reason, tradition and empire, Norma nearly kills her ...

This ever-popular opera is given a fresh point of view in Barrie Kosky’s highly physical production, originally created for Frankfurt Opera. The Australian director is one of the world’s most sought-after opera directors, whose Royal Opera debut with Shostakovich’s The Nose in 2016 was greeted with delight. For Carmen he has devised a far-from-traditional version, incorporating music written by Bi...