"This is the story of a dying woman. It is written as such. This is what it tells. During the performance, this woman dies before your eyes, in what is practically a live event. There is no way to conjure the fact away. The main subject of this opera is death and there is no way to avoid that. Death with love. Love with death. One and the other, one in the other." (Peter Mussbach)

The start of another Hyperion Lieder series is always cause for celebration. In advance of his bicentenary in 2011, we turn to a composer whose songs, against the vast bulk of his compositions in larger genres, were considered insignificant for well over a century.

A red hot ticket at the Metropolitan Opera in 2010/2011 was Donizetti's comic gem, Don Pasquale, with Anna Netrebko reviving Norina, the part that made her a star in New York. Opera summed up the simple truth: ". . . everyone adored her". John Del Carlo's impressive singing and acting chops as the Don are given every boost by Otto Schenk's hilarious staging and James Levine's witty conducting. Leading this opera for the first time at the Met, the renowned maestro demonstrates that his gifts suit Donizetti as perfectly as Wagner. Mariusz Kwiecien and Matthew Polenzani scintillate as Malatesta and Ernesto.

The German stage director Jürgen Flimm – and his design team of Robert Israel and Florence von Gerkan – have set the opera in the second half of the 20th century and have costumed the action decidedly on the American side of the Atlantic Ocean. Such an approach follows the line of Flimm’s other contemporary opera successes – for example his current Bayreuth Ring (premiered in 2000) or his 2001 Otello at the Berlin Staatsoper. Modernising the period does not become updating for its own sake. Rather, the actions and behaviour of the characters cunningly align contemporary manners with the existing prescriptions of a “period” libretto.

A red hot ticket at the Metropolitan Opera in 2010/2011 was Donizetti’s comic gem, Don Pasquale, with Anna Netrebko reviving Norina, the part that made her a star in New York. Opera summed up the simple truth: “. . . everyone adored her”.

Wagner’s enchanting Nürnberg has perhaps never looked as marvelous as in this production by Otto Schenk, with sets designed by Günther Schneider-Siemssen. James Levine’s conducting is as authoritative as it is affectionate, and the orchestra, the chorus, and the all-star cast which could not be equaled anywhere else in the world—respond with a riveting performance. James Morris is a wise, avuncular Hans Sachs; Ben Heppner’s beautifully sung Walther is a perfect match for Karita Mattila’s radiant Eva; and René Pape and Thomas Allen turn in stellar performances.

The Metropolitan Opera give a live performance of Donizetti's work about Mary, Queen of Scots' final days in the lead up to her execution. Maurizio Benini conducts the Metropolitan Orchestra with Joyce DiDonato portraying the title role and Elza van den Heever as Queen Elizabeth I.

On New Year’s Eve 2012 Joyce DiDonato became the first singer to take the title role in Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. With her at its heart, the production became, in the words of Opera magazine, “a high point of the season and of the company’s performance history of bel canto operas”.

This was the groundbreaking broadcast that launched the Met’s heralded Live in HD series, seen by opera lovers in movie theaters around the world. Adults and children alike were enchanted by the whimsical humor and breathtaking puppetry of Julie Taymor’s hit production, presented in a shortened English-language version. Under the baton of Maestro James Levine, a winning ensemble cast – including Nathan Gunn, Ying Huang, Matthew Polenzani, Erika Miklosa, and René Pape – brings fresh life to Mozart's timeless fairy tale.

Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de perles, set in Sri Lanka, is known above all for its unforgettable duet for tenor and baritone, but it its score is full of delightful and dramatic music. When recently staged at the Metropolitan Opera in New York it proved a major success, both for the production by Penny Woolcock and the musical performance, conducted by Paolo Noseda, with (once again) Diana Damrau as the priestess Leïla and, as the two men competing for love, the tenor Matthew Polenzani (Nadir) and the baritone Mariusz Kwiecien (Zurga). Woolcock’s concept brought the production up to date, with photographic and video references to the 2004 tsunami, and offered a superb ‘aquatic’ spectacle during the overture: the whole stage appeared to be beneath the Indian Ocean and acrobatic divers ‘swam’ down from the surface (located in the flies of the theatre).

Recorded live in October 2016, this is the Bayerische Staatsoper’s first new production of Donizetti’s La Favorite in over a hundred years. Conducted by Karel Mark Chichon and stage directed by Amélie Niermeyer, it features role debuts for several stars, including DG's own Elina Garanca as Leonor de Guzman, Matthew Polenzani as Fernand, and Mariusz Kwiecien as Alphonse XI.

In the dense forest planted on the stage of the Haus für Mozart by director Claus Guth is the home of the rugged macho Don Giovanni. Assisted by his unsavory accomplice Leporello, he lures the ladies with the heady scent of danger. Christopher Maltman embodies Don Giovanni as an almost reluctant seducer - a man fated to bring misery to women and, ultimately, to himself. He heads an outstanding cast for a production that, by its very originality, demonstrates the strength of Mozart's original conception.