Phelim McDermott, whose productions include the hugely successful Satyagraha by Philip Glass, returns to the Met with a new staging of Glass’s Akhnaten, conducted by Karen Kamensek in her Met debut. Anthony Roth Costanzo sings the title role of the Egyptian pharaoh who attempted to inspire his people to adopt a new religion, abandoning the worship of the old gods for that of a single deity. In her Met debut, J’Nai Bridges sings the role of Nefertiti, Akhnaten’s bride, and Dísella Lárusdóttir is Queen Tye, the pharaoh’s mother. One of the staging’s distinctive visual features is provided by the Gandini Juggling Company, whose movements are perfectly choreographed with the orchestral score. This production of Akhnaten was originally created by LA Opera, Improbable, and English National Opera, where it premiered, winning the 2017 Olivier Award for Best New Opera Production.

Seen by over 120 million people worldwide, LES MISÉRABLES is undisputedly one of the world’s most popular musicals. Coinciding with its 35th triumphant year in London’s glittering West End, Cameron Mackintosh produced a spectacular sell-out staged concert version at the Gielgud Theatre featuring an all-star cast headed by Michael Ball, Alfie Boe, Carrie Hope Fletcher and Matt Lucas. Now cinema audiences can experience a live broadcast of the musical phenomenon for one night only on 2 December which broke box office records and sold out its entire 16-week season.

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House A classic returns to The Royal Ballet repertory with Ninette de Valois’ charming and funny Coppélia – a story of love, mischief and mechanical dolls. The intricate choreography is set to Delibes’ delightful score and shows off the technical precision and comedic timing of the whole Company. Osbert Lancaster’s designs bring a colourful storybook world to life in this Christmas treat for the whole family

André Rieu - 70 Years Young celebrates André's 70th birthday, looking back at this most spectacular performances throughout his career from all over the word - remastered exclusively for cinema audiences. This unique anniversary event will take audiences on an unbelievable journey around the world to André Rieu’s most amazing concert locations; such as Schönbrunn Vienna, Radio City Music Hall New York, Brazil, Mexico, the Coronation Concert in Amsterdam and Australia.

André Rieu - 70 Years Young celebrates André's 70th birthday, looking back at this most spectacular performances throughout his career from all over the word - remastered exclusively for cinema audiences. This unique anniversary event will take audiences on an unbelievable journey around the world to André Rieu’s most amazing concert locations; such as Schönbrunn Vienna, Radio City Music Hall New York, Brazil, Mexico, the Coronation Concert in Amsterdam and Australia.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts William Kentridge’s new production of Alban Berg’s expressionistic masterpiece Wozzeck, regarded for its intense emotional power and brilliant score as one of the most significant operas of the 20th century. Composed during and in the aftermath of World War I, Berg’s dark exploration of a soldier besieged by the evils of society, is staged by Kentridge in a ramshackle warren of stairs, ramps, discarded furniture, and debris. His own theatrically animated charcoal drawings, along with other projected drawings, maps, and film clips, evoke a nightmarish world of crashed planes, searchlights, ghostly gas masks, and battlefields. Peter Mattei makes his role debut as Wozzeck opposite Elza van den Heever as Marie, the mother of his child. Singing the roles of Wozzeck’s tormentors are Christopher Ventris as the Drum-Major, Gerhard Siegel as the Captain, and Christian Van Horn as the Doctor. Andrew Staples makes his Met debut as Andres. Kentridge, who previously directed Berg’s Lulu and Shostakovich’s The Nose at the Met, unveiled the new production at the 2017 Salzburg Festival, where it received critical acclaim. Kentridge’s production is a co-production of the Met, Canadian Opera Company, Opera Australia, and Salzburg Festival.

This production of The Sleeping Beauty has been delighting audiences in Covent Garden since 1946. A classic of Russian ballet, it established The Royal Ballet both in its new home after World War II and as a world-class company. Sixty years later, in 2006, the original staging was revived, returning Oliver Messel’s wonderful designs and glittering costumes to the stage. Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky’s enchanting score and Marius Petipa’s original choreography beautifully combine with sections created for The Royal Ballet by Frederick Ashton, Anthony Dowell and Christopher Wheeldon. This ballet is sure to cast its spell over anyone who sees it.

Puccini’s opera of young love in 19th-century Paris is packed with beautiful music, including lyrical arias, celebratory choruses for Act II’s evocation of Christmas Eve in the Latin Quarter and a poignant final scene over which the composer himself wept. Richard Jones’s character-led production perfectly captures La bohème’s mixture of comedy, romance and tragedy, with striking designs by Stewart Laing. The cast features some of the greatest interpreters of Puccini’s bohemian lovers performing today, as well as former members of The Royal Opera’s Jette Parker Young Artists Programme.

The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess returns to the Met for the first time since 1990, in a new production directed by James Robinson in his company debut. America’s “folk opera,” as the 1935 creators described it, tells the story of disabled beggar Porgy, sung by Eric Owens, and his love for the drug-addicted Bess, portrayed by Angel Blue. David Robertson conducts a stellar cast that also includes Donovan Singletary as fisherman Jake, Golda Schultz as his wife Clara, Latonia Moore as the bereaved widow Serena, Frederick Ballentine as drug dealer Sportin’ Life, Alfred Walker as the brutal stevedore Crown, and Denyce Graves as Maria, town matriarch and operator of the local cook-shop. Infused with the timeless melodies of the much-loved classics “Summertime,” “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” “Bess, You Is My Woman Now,” “I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin,” and “My Man’s Gone Now,” the new co-production with English National Opera and Dutch National Opera was hailed as a triumph at its premiere in London earlier this year.

Choreographer Cathy Marston is previously an Associate Artist of the Royal Opera House and Director of Bern Ballett, and much in demand internationally. The inspiration for her first work for The Royal Ballet Main Stage is the momentous life and career of the cellist Jacqueline du Pré. A new work by Liam Scarlett, The Royal Ballet’s Artist in Residence, provides the second part of the programme.

In the Met’s first-ever performances of Agrippina, Handel’s satire of sex and power politics, Sir David McVicar reconceives a production he originally created for the Monnaie in Brussels in 2000, evoking a scandalous world in which the Roman Empire never fell but simply kept going right up to the present. Holding a distorted mirror to contemporary society (as Handel did when he staged this opera), the production presents the corrupt intrigues of the political classes, brought to life by Joyce DiDonato as the power-hungry empress Agrippina, Brenda Rae as the scheming, seductive Poppea, and Kate Lindsey as the feckless teenager Nerone. Iestyn Davies portrays the ambitious officer Ottone, and Matthew Rose is the emperor Claudius, on whose vacated throne Agrippina is determined to install her son. Renowned for his interpretations of the Baroque repertoire, Harry Bicket conducts.

François Girard, whose mystical, blood-drenched vision for Wagner’s Parsifal became one of the Met’s most intensely visceral highlights in recent seasons, turns to another Wagnerian masterpiece, Der Fliegende Holländer, conducted by Valery Gergiev. For the first time at the Met, Sir Bryn Terfel sings the role of the mysterious Dutchman, condemned to roam the seas for eternity, with Anja Kampe as the devoted Senta, whose love can set him free. In a nod to Senta’s obsession with a portrait of the legendary title seafarer, the Met stage is transformed into a colossal oil painting. Franz-Josef Selig portrays Senta’s father Daland, Sergey Skorokhodov takes on the role of the huntsman Erik, David Portillo sings the Steersman, and Mihoko Fujimura is Senta’s nurse Mary. Der Fliegende Holländer is a co-production with L’Opéra de Québec and Dutch National Opera, Amsterdam.

Royal Opera Chorus Orchestra of the Royal Opera House Beethoven’s only opera is a masterpiece, an uplifting story of risk and triumph. In this new production, conducted by Antonio Pappano, Jonas Kaufmann plays the political prisoner Florestan, and Lise Davidsen his wife Leonore (disguised as ‘Fidelio’) who daringly sets out to rescue him. Set in strong counterpoint are the ingredients of domestic intrigue, determined love and the cruelty of an oppressive regime. The music is transcendent throughout and includes the famous Act I Quartet, the Prisoners’ Chorus and Florestan’s impassioned Act II cry in the darkness and vision of hope. Tobias Kratzer’s new staging brings together the dark reality of the French Revolutionary ‘Terror’ and our own time to illuminate Fidelio’s inspiring message of shared humanity.

Sir David McVicar’s bold staging of Puccini’s operatic thriller returns to the Live in HD series after its acclaimed broadcast in 2017. This time, star soprano Anna Netrebko is the passionate title diva, opposite Brian Jagde as her lover, the idealistic painter Mario Cavaradossi. Michael Volle is the menacing Baron Scarpia, the evil chief of police. Bertrand de Billy conducts the electrifying score, which features some of Puccini’s most memorable melodies.

Two opera classics are drawn together in this wonderfully observed re-creation of life in a south Italian village as a travelling theatre visits and emotions erupt. The award-winning production by Damiano Michieletto presents vividly the fast-moving, shocking events brought about by secret love and uncontrollable jealousy. The music is full of Italianate melody in the great choruses that bring the villagers together in celebration and revelry, alongside the solo arias and tense confrontations that provoke violence and tragedy. With thrilling singing and intense drama, ‘Cav and Pag’ distils into one wonderful night out, the enduring appeal of Italian opera in its most familiar form.

Donizetti’s drama, focused on the political and personal rivalry between two queens, returns to the Met with Diana Damrau as the doomed Mary, Queen of Scots, and Jamie Barton as her rival, Queen Elizabeth I. Stephen Costello sings the role of Mary’s lover, Leicester; Andrzej Filończyk is the chancellor Cecil; and Michele Pertusi sings the Earl Talbot. Maurizio Benini conducts Sir David McVicar’s sweeping production.

Dante’s Divine Comedy is an epic journey through the afterlife: it encompasses the horrifying drama of Inferno and its damned, the lyrical mysticism of pilgrims on mount Purgatorio and the dazzling spheres of Paradiso with their endless configurations of light. The poem was inspired by the agony of Dante’s own exile, and traces his path from crisis to revelation guided by his literary hero Virgil and his lost love Beatrice. In this new work, The Royal Ballet’s trailblazing Resident Choreographer Wayne McGregor collaborates with an award-winning team – contemporary composer Thomas Adès, artist Tacita Dean, lighting designer Lucy Carter and dramaturg Uzma Hameed – to bring us closer to Dante and his extraordinary vision.

Royal Opera Chorus Orchestra of the Royal Opera House Strauss’s thrilling and audacious adaptation of Greek tragedy receives a new staging by the award-winning director Christof Loy. This uncompromising opera, about a daughter intent on bloody revenge and a mother driven to madness, has provoked critics to lively debate and both shocked and excited audiences since its 1909 premiere. Antonio Pappano conducts music that combines violence with moments of exquisite tenderness in his first Strauss interpretation for The Royal Opera since 2002. The outstanding cast includes Nina Stemme (Brünnhilde in last Season’s Der Ring des Nibelungen) in the title role, and Karita Mattila in her role debut as the haunted queen Klytämnestra.