Royal Opera House: Swan Lake (2018)

Phas Gaye Re Obama

Phase Gaye Re Obama is a comedy set against the backdrop of global recession/meltdown that originated in USA. The film traces the journey of OM Shashtri, an American citizen of Indian origin, who loses all his wealth overnight to the global recession & has been asked to vacate his home by the bank unless he pays up $100,000 (mortgaged amount) within 30 days. Seeing no other option Om comes to India to sell a small piece of an ancestral property. But within days of landing in India he is kidnapped by a 'recession-hit' underworld gang those who think that he is still a millionaire. What happens to Om, is he able to save his home, how did the 'poor' gangster cope with their 'poor' catch & what do small town Indian gangsters have to say to President Obama...is largely forms the rest of the story. The film, showcases how global recession/ meltdown impacted lives from an America based businessman to underworld dons in the dusty plains of small town India.

Child's Play 3

Eight years after seemingly destroying the killer doll, teen Andy Barclay is placed in a military school, and the spirit of Chucky returns to renew his quest and seek vengeance after being recreated from a mass of melted plastic.

The Hill

North Africa, World War II. British soldiers on the brink of collapse push beyond endurance to struggle up a brutal incline. It's not a military objective. It's The Hill, a manmade instrument of torture, a tower of sand seared by a white-hot sun. And the troops' tormentors are not the enemy, but their own comrades-at-arms.

Gamera 2: Attack of Legion

A strange meteor lands in Japan and unleashes hundreds of insect-like "Legion" creatures bent on colonizing the Earth. When the military fails to control the situation, Gamera shows up to deal with the ever-evolving space adversary. However the battle may result in Gamera losing his bond with both Asagi and humanity.

The Play House

Upon waking from the dream of a theater peopled entirely by numerous Buster Keatons, a lowly stage hand causes havoc everywhere he works.

A Better Tomorrow

A reforming ex-gangster tries to reconcile with his estranged policeman brother, but the ties to his former gang are difficult to break.

102 Dalmatians

Get ready for a howling good time as an all new assortment of irresistible animal heroes are unleashed in this great family tail! In an unlikely alliance, the outrageous Waddlesworth - a parrot who thinks he's a Rottweiler - teams up with Oddball - an un-marked Dalmatian puppy eager to earn her spots! Together they embark on a laugh-packed quest to outwit the ever-scheming Cruella De Vil.

Metalhead

A young girl in 1990s Iceland is caught between the life that took her brother and her own inability to strike out on her own. In her grief, she finds solace in metal and dreams of making her own music.

Humanité

In a quiet little French town, two detectives are tasked with investigating the brutal rape and murder of a preteen girl.

Sicko

A documentary about the corrupt health care system in The United States who's main goal is to make profit even if it means losing people’s lives. "The more people you deny health insurance the more money we make" is the business model for health care providers in America.

The Visitors II: The Corridors of Time

The sequel to The Visitors reunites us with those lovable ruffians from the French Medieval ages who - through magic - are transported into the present, with often drastic consequences. Godefroy de Montmirail travels to today to recover the missing family jewels and a sacred relic, guarantor of his wife-to-be's fertility. The confrontation between Godefroy's repellent servant Jack the Crack and his descendent, the effete Jacquart, present-day owner of the chateau, further complicates the matter.

Air Bud: Golden Receiver

Josh and Buddy move from basketball to football in this first of several sequels to the original Air Bud.

Import/Export

A nurse from Ukraine searches for a better life in the West, while an unemployed security guard from Austria heads East for the same reason. Both are looking for work, a new beginning, an existence, struggling to believe in themselves, to find a meaning in life...

Gisèle Kérozène

Three witches worship a bird statue in a postmodern city. When Gisèle Kerozene comes and steals it, the three witches jump on their brooms and initiate a hilarious chase.

Initiation Love

Set in Shizuoka and Tokyo, Japan in the late 1980's. Takkun is a university student in Shizuoka attempting to find a job. Mayu is a dental hygienist. They meet through a blind date and begin to date, but Takkun finds a job in Tokyo and goes there. They begin a long distance relationship, but their relationship breaks down.

Decalogue IX

Roman and Hanka have a loving marriage, but his impotence has led to her having an affair. The unbearable situation drives Roman to extreme measures both physically and mentally, testing their love and his own will to live.

Funny Farm

Sportswriter Andy Farmer moves with his schoolteacher wife Elizabeth to the country in order to write a novel in relative seclusion. Of course, seclusion is the last thing the Farmers find in the small, eccentric town, where disaster awaits them at every turn.

Strike

Workers in a factory in pre-revolutionary Russia go on strike and are met by violent suppression.

Hellraiser: Hellworld

When five hardcore Internet gamers are invited to a special party thrown by the website Hellworld, they endure a night of unspeakable terror.

Fando and Lis

Fando and his partially paralysed lover Lis search for the mythical city of Tar.

Life, and Nothing More…

After the earthquake of Guilan, a film director and his son travel to the devastated area to search for the actors from the movie the director made there a few years previously. In their search, they see how people who have lost everything in the earthquake still have hope and try to live life to the fullest.

Americana

When a rare Lakota Ghost Shirt falls into the black market in a small town in South Dakota, the lives of local outsiders and outcasts violently intertwine.

Matchmaker Santa

As a little girl, Melanie Hogan wished to find her own prince charming just like her parents found true love. Now an adult, Melanie is running her own bakery and dating a handsome CEO, Justin. Although things seem perfect when Justin asks Melanie to spend the holidays together at his beautiful lake house upstate—and meet his mother. Melanie finds herself spending more time with Justin’s best friend and loyal assistant, Dean, who just might be harboring a secret crush on her. When complications arise that throw Melanie and Dean together over the holiday, will the two realize they're meant to be?

Back to the Future Part III

The final installment finds Marty digging the trusty DeLorean out of a mineshaft and looking for Doc in the Wild West of 1885. But when their time machine breaks down, the travelers are stranded in a land of spurs. More problems arise when Doc falls for pretty schoolteacher Clara Clayton, and Marty tangles with Buford Tannen.

Walk Don't Run

During the housing shortage of the Summer Olympic Games in 1964, two men and a woman share a small apartment in Tokyo, and the older man soon starts playing Cupid to the younger pair.

White Hunter, Black Heart

Renowned filmmaker John Wilson travels to Africa to direct a new movie, but constantly leaves to hunt elephants and other game, to the dismay of his cast and crew. He eventually becomes obsessed with hunting down and killing one specific elephant.

In America

A family of Irish immigrants adjusts to life on the mean streets of Hell's Kitchen while also grieving the death of a child.

War and Peace, Part II: Natasha Rostova

As 1809 nears its end, Natasha attends her first ball, where Andrei falls in love with her with the intent of marriage. However, as her father demands they wait, the prince travels abroad, leaving Natasha in desperate longing. But she meets Anatol Kuragin and forgets Andrei. Part two of the four-part adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's 1869 novel.

The Station Agent

When his only friend dies, a man born with dwarfism moves to rural New Jersey to live a life of solitude, only to meet a chatty hot dog vendor and a woman dealing with her own personal loss.

Pretty Village, Pretty Flame

In the opening stages of the Bosnian War, a small group of Serbian soldiers are trapped in a tunnel by a Muslim force.

Suicide Club

When 54 high school girls throw themselves in front of a subway train it appears to be only the beginning of a string of suicides around the country. Detective Kuroda tries to find the answer to this mystery, which isn't as simple as he had hoped.

Cry Freedom

A dramatic story, based on actual events, about the friendship between two men struggling against apartheid in South Africa in the 1970s. Donald Woods is a white liberal journalist in South Africa who begins to follow the activities of Stephen Biko, a courageous and outspoken black anti-apartheid activist.

A Genius, Two Friends, and an Idiot

Expert conman Joe Thanks teams up with half-breed Bill and naive Lucy to steal $300,000 from the Indian-hating Major Cabot. Their elaborate plan is full of disguises, double-crosses, and chases, but Joe always seems to know what he's doing.

A Normal Family

Jae-wan, a successful lawyer, takes on the case of a rich executive's son, who has purposely run over and killed a man and left his daughter seriously injured. It's Jae-wan's job to defend a murderer, just another rung on his career's golden-stepped ladder. His younger brother, on the contrary, is a scrupulous and upstanding paediatrician, who always puts the health of his patients over profit and money, often contravening the rules of the private clinic where he works. The brothers meet once a month with their wives for fine dining in expensive restaurants, but when an unexpected situation involving their teenage kids arises, their consciences are questioned and their usual dinner conversation takes an unexpected turn.

Flatfoot in Africa

Inspector Rizzo in Napoli gets a message from a policeman from South Africa who wants to meet him. Immediately before this meeting the South African policeman is killed. Dying he shows Rizzo a picture of his young son Bodo. Rizzo travels to Johannesburg to find out what the policeman was working on and to find Bodo.

Ratcatcher

James Gillespie is 12 years old. The world he knew is changing. Haunted by a secret, he has become a stranger in his own family. He is drawn to the canal where he creates a world of his own. He finds an awkward tenderness with Margaret Anne, a vulnerable 14 year old expressing a need for love in all the wrong ways, and befriends Kenny, who possesses an unusual innocence in spite of the harsh surroundings.

Zero Point

Sensitive and restless Johannes is accepted to an elite school in Tallinn and expects life to go uphill. Instead, he becomes the victim of mental abuse by his classmates. In search of recognition, he goes to his old Lasnamäe friends, who spend their time doing drugs, hanging around, and partying, rather than focusing on schoolwork. At home, Johannes must deal with his mother’s deteriorating mental health. As the tension grows, he finds himself at zero point, where he must completely reset his life to build it up from scratch.

Private Parts

The life and career of shock-jock superstar Howard Stern is recounted from his humble beginnings to his view from the top. Possessing a desire to be an on-air personality since childhood, Stern meanders through the radio world, always with his supportive wife, Alison, by his side. Landing a gig in Washington, D.C., Stern meets Robin Quivers, who will become his long-time partner in crime. When the two move to New York, they face the wrath of NBC executives.

Coppelia

When everyone in town falls under the spell of charismatic cosmetic surgeon Doctor Coppelius, feisty Swan must act to save her sweetheart Franz, before his heart is used to spark life into Coppelia – the ‘perfect’ robot-woman the Doctor has created.

Alban Berg - Wozzeck

The soldier Wozzeck (Christian Gerhaher) flits through a world that he is unable to decipher. The doctor torments him with absurd medical experiments; the captain humiliates and ridicules him. And Wozzeck’s lover, Marie (Gun-Brit Barkmin), with whom he has a child, cuckolds him with the drum major. Wozzeck becomes a murderer, stabbing Marie to death. Georg Büchner’s drama fragment, on which Alban Berg based his first opera, is an unflinching case study of social injustice and human suffering. But it is also a grotesque piece that thrives on exaggeration – and in which only a fine line separates the unfathomable from the ridiculous. Accordingly, director Andreas Homoki forgoes all realism.

Poulenc's The Human Voice / Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle

Running through Bartók’s disenchanted tale, whose haunting music was initially condemned as unplayable, and the expression of despair in Poulenc’s monologue, the director Krzysztof Warlikowski perceives a shared dramatic thread, a shared feminine consciousness and a shared sense of imprisonment and suffocation: for the woman who penetrates the confines of Bluebeard’s castle and Elle, the woman who clings to a telephone conversation with a man as the only thing worth living for, are condemned to share the same fate. And this man she speaks to, does he really exist? Unless the director has interpreted Cocteau’s words to the letter and the telephone has become a “terrifying weapon that leaves no trace, makes no noise”…

La Bohème

Giacomo Puccini's immortal opera, in a high budget feature-film version directed by Academy Award nominee Robert Dornhelm, stars opera's 'Golden Couple', Rolando Villazon and Anna Netrebko as the protagonists, Rodolfo and Mimi. The chemistry between them is electric, unrivalled in the theatre today. Russian soprano Anna Netrebko is not only beautiful but has a marvelous voice and technique; Mexican tenor Rolando Villazon, has a wonderful voice and an incredible charisma. The director not only wanted to remain steadfastly faithful to Puccini's design but also document two of the leading singers of the modern age rather than embarking on a 'trendy' contemporary re-creation.

Hunter's Bride

Inspired by Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz, the film opera Hunter's Bride traces the romantic rivalry between two veterans of the Napoleonic Wars who each vie for the heart of the same woman.

Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer

Tim Albery's Olivier-nominated production for The Royal Opera delves deep into the psychology of Wagner's cursed wanderer and his beloved Senta, detailing the monomania and uncompromising idealism that finally drives them apart. Michael Levine's elemental single set is dominated by a rolling metal hull that represents the Dutchman's phantom ship, the poverty of Senta's home and the treacherous sea.

U-Carmen eKhayelitsha

U-CARMEN is a feature film based on Georges Bizet's 19th-century opera that was filmed on location in a modern South African township setting. The energy, compassion, and heat of township life in all its elements create a constantly visually interesting and dynamic background for the unfolding of the story, which owes part of its huge popularity to the thrilling combination of a violent gangster tale with a passionate, almost supernatural love story. As it unfolds, it explores issues of fame and wealth, the position of a strong and independently minded woman in a very masculine society and, perhaps most importantly, the incomprehensible attraction between abuser and victim. Bizet's opera, based on Prosper Merimée's novel, premiered in Paris on March 3, 1875. Set in a poor area of Seville, the story of the magnetic woman who seduces, loves, and ultimately destroys her lover and herself...

Maytime

An aging opera singer looks back on her long life, including her relationships with her vocal teacher and a student.

This Time for Keeps

An ex-GI falls for a bathing beauty.

Der Fliegende Holländer

This vivid film of Wagner's romatic opera succeeds in conveying what has famously been called "the wind that blows out at you whenever you open the score", including Daland's boat anchoring against the Sandwike cliffs, the red-sailed phantom ship, and the ghost crew rising from the dead. "Scenes that recall classic horror films... Brilliantly successful" (Nürnberger Nachrichten), "Captures the works' essence" (Süddeutsche Zeitung). With a superb cast; conducted by Wagner authority Wolfgang Sawallisch.

The Metropolitan Opera: La Fille du Régiment

Madcap physical comedy and impeccable coloratura come together for Natalie Dessay’s indelible portrayal of the feisty tomboy raised by a regiment of French soldiers. Juan Diego Flórez is the young Swiss villager who conquers her heart—and a slew of high Cs. Also featuring uproarious performances by Felicity Palmer and Alessandro Corbelli, as well as a cameo by Tony Award winner Marian Seldes, this laugh-out-loud production was a runaway hit that left audiences exhilarated.

Love Me Forever

A man who loves an aspiring opera singer is prepared to sacrifice everything to help her with her career, even though he knows she doesn't love him.

Matthew Bourne's Romeo + Juliet

Matthew Bourne's Romeo and Juliet is a passionate and contemporary re-imagining of Shakespeare's classic love story. Bursting with youth, vitality and Matthew Bourne's trademark storytelling.

Sternenhoch

Trapped in an abusive marriage, a wealthy German prince desperately seeks a way out. But what appears to be the road to salvation soon turns into a highway to hell. The universal language of music meets the international language of Esperanto in this debut opera by Ivan Acher. The carpenter, forest worker, designer and composer has cleverly blended electro-acoustic and contemporary music to breathe life into Ladislav Klíma’s expressionist novel, The Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch.

Don Quixote

A film adaptation of the Ludwig Minkus ballet, completely re-orchestrated and with additional music by John Lanchbery.

Swan Lake

Ballerina Polina Semionova performs the mythic parts of Odette and Odile (white swan and black swan) with her great partner Stanislav Jermakov. The Zurich Opera House Orchestra is conducted by Russian musical director Vladimir Fedoseyev acclaimed in this repertoire.

The Firebird

Italian singer Mario Vanni visits the Royal Opera in Stockholm and fall in love with ballet dancer Linda Corina.

Massenet: Thaïs

When the most voluptuous, sought-after courtesan in the world meets an ascetic monk whose life is devoted to God, you know erotic sparks are going to fly. And when the clash takes place in a glorious, but rarely performed, opera by Massenet, it’s a delight to the ear just as much as to the eye. Renée Fleming is every inch the glamorous Thaïs, swathed in elegant gowns designed by Christian Lacroix. Thomas Hampson is Athanaël, the tortured man of God. This production by John Cox, which premiered in December 2008, brilliantly sets the stage for a confrontation as old as civilization itself.

The Gay Parisian

The Gay Parisian is an American short film produced in 1941 by Warner Bros. featuring the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo and directed by Jean Negulesco. The film is a screen adaptation, in Technicolor, of the 1938 ballet Gaîté Parisienne, choreographed by Léonide Massine to music by Jacques Offenbach. It was nominated for an Academy Award at the 14th Academy Awards for Best Short Subject (Two-Reel).

Die Walküre

The gorgeous and evocative Otto Schenk/Günther Schneider-Siemssen production continues with this second opera in Wagner’s Ring cycle. Hildegard Behrens brings deep empathy to Brünnhilde, the favorite daughter of the god Wotan (James Morris) who nevertheless defies him. Morris’s portrayal of Wotan is deservedly legendary, as is Christa Ludwig, as Fricka. Jessye Norman and Gary Lakes are Sieglinde and Siegmund, and Kurt Moll is the threatening Hunding. James Levine and the Met orchestra provide astonishing color and drama. (Performed April 8, 1989)

Siegfried

Siegfried is the third of the four operas that constitute Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), by Richard Wagner.

Eugene Onegin

A filmed version of Tchaikovsky's opera. Onegin visits a friend, his fiancee and her sister Tatiana, who believes Onegin is her fated love. She writes a note telling him so, but he rejects her. Years later he returns, finding her married, but now he's smitten with her.

Carmen

This all-star cast is framed by Peter Hall’s gritty, realistic production and conducted by James Levine, who brings out all the surging emotion and gripping drama in Bizet’s score. At the center of the story is Agnes Baltsa, whose smoky mezzo is tailor-made for the gypsy Carmen, an independent woman who glories in obeying only her own rules, but who is haunted by fate. Superstar tenor José Carreras is Don José, the solider from a small town who catches Carmen’s eye and is destroyed by his growing obsession with her. Samuel Ramey is the charismatic matador Escamillo, who lures Carmen away from Don José with tragic result. Leona Mitchell is Micaëla, the simple girl from Don José’s hometown who cannot save him. March 21, 1987 Matinee Broadcast.

Wagner: Siegfried

Robert Lepage’s remarkable Met Opera production of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, the 2013 Grammy Award Winner for Best Opera Recording, is now available as individual DVDs. Siegfried features Bryn Terfel, Jay Hunter Morris, and Deborah Voigt, with Fabio Luisi conducting.

Maria

Maria Callas, the world's greatest opera singer, lives the last days of her life in 1970s Paris, as she confronts her identity and life.

Verdi Otello

Desdemona in Verdi's Otello was a career role for soprano Renata Tebaldi, from her first operatic performance outside of Italy to her final appearance on the opera stage. Between those landmarks she performed the role nearly 100 times all over the world and made studio audio recordings that became reference recordings for the role. This 1962 production with the Deutsche Oper Berlin and Giuseppe Patane was planned as a media event from the outset and blessedly captures a consummate artist in a signature role at the peak of her gifts.

Mefistofele

1989 recording of the San Francisco Opera production of Mefistofele: Boito's retelling of Goethe's Faust

The Metropolitan Opera - Puccini: Manon Lescaut

Kristine Opolais is the young woman whose conflicting desires for love and luxury lead to her tragic end, and Roberto Alagna plays the man who falls for her in Puccini’s early hit. Richard Eyre’s elegant production, which sets the action in 1940s occupied France, was one of the highlights of the Met’s 2015–16 season. Massimo Cavalletti as Manon’s brother and Brindley Sherratt as her aging admirer co-star, and Principal Conductor Fabio Luisi is on the podium.

Prokofiev: Cinderella

Christopher Wheeldon's acclaimed new Cinderella for the Dutch National Ballet is an imaginative interpretation of a much-loved classic. Inspired by the original Brothers Grimm fairy tale, Wheeldon gives the characters renewed depth and complexity, complementing Prokofiev's celebrated and colorful score. With sets and costumes by the renowned designer Julian Crouch, supported by stunning stage effects, this world premiere production is a truly magical experience, bringing an age-old fairy tale into the 21st century.

Bolshoi Ballet: Jewels

George Balanchine's jewel-themed triptych, strikingly choreographed to the music of Faure, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky. This three act masterpiece is renowned as the world's first full-length abstract ballet. The Russian-born co-founder of the New York City Ballet, Balanchine was inspired by the artistry of jewellery designer Claude Arpels to create a trio of distinct movements revealing the essence of each precious stone. Each part also evokes three different cities: Paris, New York and St. Petersburg. 'Emeralds' was conceived as a tribute to the French romantic school, with music by Gabriel Faure. The fiery and energetic 'Rubies' taps into the rich tradition of Broadway musicals, with music by Stravinsky. 'Diamonds' honours the grandeur of Imperial Russia and the Maryinsky Theater, choreographed to the music of Tchaikovsky. With its jewel-like costumes, this is a celebration of the influences on the choreographer who was described as the father of American ballet.

Center Stage

A group of 12 teenagers from various backgrounds enroll at the American Ballet Academy in New York to make it as ballet dancers and each one deals with the problems and stress of training and getting ahead in the world of dance.

La Vie parisienne

La Vie parisienne (Parisian life) is an opéra bouffe, or operetta, composed by Jacques Offenbach in 1866, with a libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy. This work was Offenbach's first full-length piece to portray contemporary Parisian life, unlike his earlier period pieces and mythological subjects. It became one of Offenbach's most popular operettas.

Kaufmann's Otello at the Royal Opera House

On a June night in 2017, opera lovers thronged to the Royal Opera House in London to hear tenor Jonas Kaufmann, recently acclaimed by The Daily Telegraph as the world s greatest tenor, make his eagerly anticipated debut in the title role of Otello Verdi s greatest and most demanding role for tenor voice. As the New York Times wrote Mr. Kaufmann made his debut in the part, and he calmly, confidently sang it for the ages.

Cosi Fan Tutte

There are elements of Eurotrash in this outdoor Aix-en-Provence summer opera production. Nevertheless, the splendid singing and acting transform the story, normally treated as farce, into something considerably more serious. As many other critics have noted, the young lovers have not yet sorted everything out as this performance ends. Act One begins with the principal characters running around in the outdoor theater -- while the audience takes it in as if they had been advised to sit back and enjoy the novelty. Very likely they were also asked to refrain from applauding at the end of arias and ensemble pieces, in which the three-hour opera abounds.

Amadeus

Disciplined Italian composer Antonio Salieri becomes consumed by jealousy and resentment towards the hedonistic and remarkably talented young Salzburger composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

The Phantom of the Opera

The deformed Phantom who haunts the Paris Opera House causes murder and mayhem in an attempt to make the woman he loves a star.

The Metropolitan Opera: Norma

Deep in a forest where druids and warriors seek revenge against the conquering Romans, Norma is scorned by the Roman proconsul Pollione, with whom she has two children. Her kindness turns to fury when she discovers that Pollione has taken Adalgisa, a novice priestess, as his new lover. When Pollione loses his high rank in the army and is offered as a sacrifice, Norma promises him freedom under one condition.

The Metropolitan Opera: The Exterminating Angel

After the acclaimed Met premiere of Thomas Adès's "The Tempest" in 2012, the composer returned with another masterpiece, this time inspired by filmmaker Luis Buñuel's seminal surrealist classic "El Ángel Exterminador", during the 2017–18 season. As the opera opens, a group of elegant socialites gather for a lavish dinner party, but when it is time to leave for the night, no one is able to escape. Soon, their behavior becomes increasingly erratic and savage. The large ensemble cast tackles both the vocal and dramatic demands of Adès's opera with one riveting performance after another. Tom Cairns, who also penned the work's libretto, directs an engrossing and inventive production, using a towering wooden archway to trap the characters onstage. And Adès himself takes the podium to conduct the frenzied score, which features a host of unconventional instruments, including the eerie electronic ondes Martenot.

The Metropolitan Opera: Tosca

Sir David McVicar’s bold new staging of Tosca, Puccini’s operatic thriller of Napoleonic Rome, thrilled Met audiences when it rang in the New Year in 2018. Only weeks later, the production was seen by opera lovers worldwide as part of the Met’s Live in HD series of cinema presentations. In this performance, Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva is the passionate title diva, opposite charismatic tenor Vittorio Grigolo as her lover, the idealistic painter Mario Cavaradossi. Baritone Željko Lučić is the menacing Baron Scarpia, the evil chief of police who employs brutal tactics to ensnare both criminals and sexual conquests. On the podium, Emmanuel Villaume conducts the electrifying score, which features some of Puccini’s most memorable melodies.