Mathias Vidal

Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Platée is a masterpiece of the French operatic repertoire and was highly regarded by critics during the composer’s lifetime. Composed for the marriage of the Dauphin Louis, son of Louis XV, to the Infanta Maria Teresa of Spain, it was first performed at Versailles in 1745 and became an instant hit. The plot revolves around the ugly and conceited frog Platée, the victim of a machination of the gods who make her believe that she is loved by Jupiter. Is this Rameau mocking Princess Maria Teresa of Spain – reputedly a woman of little beauty? Or the French court, which saw itself as a new Olympus? This classic production from the Opéra national de Paris by Marc Minkowski and Laurent Pelly returns to the stage with an entirely new cast, featuring Julie Fuchs, Mathias Vidal, Jean Teitgen and Lawrence Brownlee in the title-role.

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"The White Horse Inn" is the last Berlin operetta of the interwar period. It is a hybrd work that mixes Tyrolean folklore, Viennese operetta, Berlin cabaret tunes and dance hall numbers. The arrival of eccentric clients from the south of France breaks the serenity of a charming establishment in the Austrian Alps, and the once civilised party becomes a free-for-all.

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In this new "Marriage of Figaro", Jérémie Rhorer revisits this composer and US film director James Gray makes his first foray into opera. This opera is recorded for broadcast by Louise Narboni.

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Clément Cogitore adapts a short ballet excerpt from Jean-Philippe Rameau's Les Indes galantes, with the help of a group of Krump dancers and three choreographers on the 3rd Stage of the Paris Opera: Bintou Dembele, Igor Caruge, and Brahim Rachiki. Krump is a dance style that originated in the ghettos of Los Angeles in the 1990s. It emerged as a result of the riots and brutal police repression that followed the beating of Rodney King.

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L'Incoronazione di Poppea by Monteverdi is the last Opera of the Monteverdi trilogy filmed by the Italian label and producer Dynamic at the Teatro Real, Madrid, May 2010.

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Live performance by Les Arts Florissants at the Théâtre de Caen, recorded on 18 Octorber 2011. "One of the earliest operas deserving of the name, Didone is our first surviving musical version of the famous episode in Virgil's Aeneid where the Trojan Hero loves and then cruelly leaves the noble Dido." — from the DVD back cover

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Here is an irreverent take on the tragic story of the lovers Orpheus and Eurydice. With his librettists Hector Crémieux and Ludovic Halévy, Jacques Offenbach creates a wonderful array of characters from the heavens who find themselves caught up in domestic antics. In this enchanting production from the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence from 2009 with a young cast from the European Academy of Music, director Yves Beaunesne transposes the action to the 1940s and spreads it over the four floors of a bourgeois residence. From the kitchen (Orpheus' home) to the attic (the Underworld), via the dining room (Olympus) and the bedroom (Pluto's boudoir), he succeeds in teasing out all the humour and elegance of Offenbach’s satirical masterpiece.

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This comic opera, which made its debut in Paris in 1847, tells the story of a Venetian admiral, Loredan (Bruno Comparetti), his bitter rival Malipieri (Paul Medioni), who knows a secret from Loredan's past, and Haydee (Isabelle Philippe), the Cyprus prince's daughter who loves one but would marry the other to save his reputation.

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