Nina van Essen

Opera buffa in two acts (1790) New Production! A top-flight cast features in a new staging of Mozart and Da Ponte’s comic masterpiece of love, trust and the fickleness of human behaviour from acclaimed director Robert Carsen. As part of a bet with Don Alfonso (Gerald Finley), Ferrando and Guglielmo (Giovanni Sala and Luca Micheletti) must try to seduce each other’s fiancées, Fiordiligi and Dorabella (Elsa Dreisig and Nina van Essen). When both yield, and the ruse is revealed, all four must reckon with the fallout.

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When he sings, the animals stop and listen; Orpheus can literally melt stone. To find Eurydice, who disappears on their wedding day, this master of harmony must charm the underworld with his musical talent. Orpheus’s appeals convince Pluto to free Eurydice, under certain conditions. But when this gifted and infallible hero fails, he must live on with the consequences.

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A count has designs on his personal valet's fiancée and is determined to stop their wedding taking place. Meanwhile, the countess tries to regain her husband's love by any means necessary. Mozart's great comic opera is a tale of intrigue, misunderstanding and forgiveness. Director Lydia Steier teases out the touching melancholy of the characters with the mixture of opulence and black humour. Oper! magazine’s ‘Opera house of the year’ in 2020, Staatsoper Hannover is on an artistic high and happy to share this production worldwide via OperaVision.

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With equal parts danger and desire, Carmen is an intoxicating cocktail that never fails to excite the senses. Staatsoper Hannover offers this new staging by house director Barbora Horáková in an arrangement for chamber ensemble by Marius Felix Lange. It promises to tackle head on the topicality of Carmen who challenges stereotypical role models. Staatsoper Hannover makes no compromises with questions of freedom and OperaVision salutes their courage to create sensuality on stage and to offer us all a livestream in challenging times.

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In Handel's oratorio Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno (1707), the desire to live is at odds with the realisation of one's own mortality. In his early masterpiece, the composer was able to open up clear emotional spaces to the simultaneity of the incompatible. What does it mean to be alive - and what does it mean to demand to be fulfilled with this life? And who am I when the mirror only gazes at me in silence? In Handel's music the questions begin to float.

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Two young gentlemen living in 1890s England use the same pseudonym ('Ernest') on the sly, which is fine until they both fall in love with women using that name, which leads to a comedy of mistaken identities.

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