Best Opera Blu-rays

Dec. 20, 2022

Opera has benefited hugely from Blu-ray technology. Below are lists of the best opera titles to come out in the last 12 years (since Blu-ray was invented). We haven't seen all the Blu-ray operas, so this list is incomplete. But read the reviews of the operas below and you can't go wrong. First, we list our favorite Blu-rays of (more or less) traditional operas. Then we provide another group of modern operas or older works that have been radically updated with modern themes and overlays.

A curious note. In the January 2023 Opera News there is a list of the 10 best best operas recordings for 2022. The good news is that only 3 of the 10 were CDs. This shows that video is taking over in the realm of opera recordings. The bad news is that the 7 best opera recordings are all called “DVDs.” This is absurd since any Blu-ray is better than any DVD of the same material. It seems the print critics are so poor that don’t even have HD TVs and Blu-ray players. They must be watching their stuff on old SD color TVs that people leave out on the street for scavengers.

We would welcome suggestions from readers about other titles that should be on this list. The 💓 designations here go to my personal super-favorites.

Traditional Operas

  1. Anna Bolena. Donizetti. Vienna State Opera. Anna Netrebko and Elīna Garanča. Modern sets with traditional-style costumes create jewel-like images of unbelievably beautiful-looking-and-sounding people in a bel canto universe. The end tears me up every time (double meaning for "tears").

  2. Ariodante. Handel. Salzburg Festival. Cecilia Bartoli, Kathryn Lewek, and Christophe Dumaux. Handel would be astonished and proud of this great show.

  3. Atys. Lully. Paris Opéra Comique. Stéphanie d’Oustrac and Les Arts Florissants. Maybe the best video ever of a baroque opera presented in historically accurate style. The favorite opera of Louis XIV, the Sun King.

  4. Barbiere di Siviglia. Rossini. Theatre Champs-Elysees. A traditional production in modern-style designs.

  5. La Bohème. Puccini. Madrid Teatro Real. Inva Mula and Laura Giordano. We still don't have the Bohème we deserve, but this one is best so far. Mula manages to really look like a pretty girl dying from a terrible disease. Laura Giordano is a fantastically beautiful Musette. Sad, sad ending.

  6. 💓 Carmen. Bizet. Royal Opera. Anna Caterina Antonacci and Jonas Kaufmann. Famous production has never been equaled in video.

  7. 💓 Così fan tutte. Mozart. Glyndebourne. Miah Persson and Anke Vondung. Beloved DVD translated well to Blu-ray. Immaculate confection puts you in a complete state of suspended disbelief.

  8. Dido and Aeneas. Purcell. Paris Opéra Comique. Malena Ernman and Christopher Maltman. Deborah Warner, William Christie, and François Roussillon come up with an impressively short, taut, zany, and admirable version of Virgil's Dido story.

  9. Don Pasquale. Donizetti. Ravenna Festival. Claudio Desderi and Laura Giordano. Giant-killing, best DP video ever was probably the cheapest to make. Laura Giordano is the closest thing to Venus to appear on earth since the death of Homer.

  10. Elektra. Richard Strauss. Baden-Baden. Linda Watson, Manuela Uhl, and Jane Henschel. Three vivid female characters and Christian Thielemann dominate one of the most extreme (but traditional) sets ever created in opera.

  11. L'elisir d'amore. Donizetti. Ekaterina Siurina and Peter Auty. Meticulous and masterful story-telling from Glyndebourne makes a marvelous ensemble from a group of not-so-famous singing actors.

  12. Falstaff. Verdi. Glyndebourne. Christopher Purves and Tassis Christoyannis. Is Purves the greatest English actor since Alec Guinness? And he can also sing. And make you laugh and laugh.

  13. Die Fledermaus. Strauss II. Glyndebourne. Pamela Armstrong and Thomas Allen. Scintillating production beyond any criticism.

  14. Gianni Schicchi by Puccini. The Miserly Knight by Rachmaninov. Glyndebourne again! Alessandro Corbelli, Felicity Palmer, Sergei Leiferkus and Richard Berkeley-Steele. Two one-act operas about inheriting stuff.

  15. Guillaume Tell. Rossini. Rossini Festival. Nicola Alaimo and Juan Diego Flórez. Commendable production of Rossini's greatest and final work that forms a bridge between the classical and romantic opera eras.

  16. Jenůfa. Janáček. Madrid Teatro Real. Amanda Roocroft and Deborah Polaski. Intense and absorbing drama about the unusual lives of ordinary people.

  17. Katia Kabanova. Janáček. Madrid Teatro Real. Oleg Bryjak and Miroslav Dvorský. This is the one with the stage covered with water. Are the Janáček operas the ancestors of what we now know as the American soap opera and the Mexican TV novela?

  18. Lohengrin. Wagner. Baden-Baden. Klaus Florian Vogt and Solveig Kringelborn. Impeccable production with an excellent cast. This is the source of the "Here comes the bride" wedding march music.

  19. 💓 Mireille. Gounod. Paris Opera Ballet. Simple but so-well-done story about a girl who is killed by the sun.

  20. 💓 Le nozze di Figaro. Mozart. Royal Opera. Erwin Schrott and Miah Persson. This is considered by many as the best opera video ever made.

  21. Porgy and Bess. Gershwin. San Francisco Opera. Eric Owens and Laquita Mitchell. American opera full of famous music about black life in the old South. Fine video of an excellent production. This work was created by white artists who thought it was valid; black audiences have rejected it as kitsch.

  22. I Puritani. Bellini. Met. Anna Netrebko and Eric Cutler. This is the one where Netrebko sings upside down hanging off the front of the stage.

  23. Ring des Nibelungen. Wagner. Met. Stephanie Blythe, Jonas Kaufmann, Hans-Peter König, Jay Hunter Morris, Eric Owens, Gerhard Siegel, Bryn Terfel, Deborah Voigt, and Eva-Maria Westbroek. This box with the complete four-opera cycle is in a class of one as the best recording ever of the Ring.

  24. Salome. Richard Strauss. Dutch National Opera and Royal Concertgebouw. Malin Byström. The best Salome recording ever. Replaces the older Royal Opera House version here.

  25. Tosca. Puccini. Royal Opera. Angela Gheorghiu, Roberto Alagna, and Ruggero Raimondi. A motion-picture version by director Benoît Jacquot.

  26. 💓 Werther. Massenet. Paris Opéra. Jonas Kaufmann and Sophie Koch. The opera stage is used like a movie set for a show that's quite different from what the audience saw. The result in the home theater is an intensely gripping drama.

  27. Die Zauberflöte. Mozart. Royal Opera. Will Hartmann and Dorothea Röschmann. Diana Damrau comes up with the most famous Queen of the Night ever. Although it was filmed in 2003, nobody has been able to top this version.

Modern Operas and Radical Revisions

  1. 💓 Ariadne auf Naxos. Richard Strauss. Glyndebourne. Laura Claycomb and Soile Isokoski. Director Katharina Thoma comes up with a truly coherent AaN (hard to do). Sly shoplifter Laura Claycomb stuffs the whole show in her tote bag and takes it home (looks easy). So clever and funny!

  2. Beggar’s Opera. John Gay. Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord. Les Arts Florissants and director Robert Carsen. Hugely funny update of the most disreputable “opera” ever presented—in a venue so dilapidated that you risk your life walking in the door. You get to see it in the safety of your home theater.

  3. I Capuleti e i Montecchi. Bellini. San Francisco Opera. Joyce DiDonato and Nicole Cabell. Hi-style, fashion, and fidelity (96kHz/24-bit) update aims the bel canto cannon at the future, not the past (pun intended).

  4. Carmen. Bizet. Liceu. Béatrice Uria-Monzon and Roberto Algana. A nasty Carmen gets what she deserves.

  5. Les contes d'Hoffmann. Offenbach. Madrid Teatro Real. Eric Cutler and Anne Sofie Von Otter. Spooky, surreal version of the Romantic warhorse.

  6. 💓 Dialogues des carmélites. Poulenc. Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. Patricia Petibon and Sophie Koch. The best recording ever of what is probably the last opera (1957) to enjoy widespread popularity. The product of a true story reworked by 4 geniuses, our review includes a fabulous masters degree thesis from Gail Elizabeth Lowther that explains it all.

  7. Einstein on the Beach. Glass. Théâtre du Châtelet. Splendid rendition of the avant-garde classic in a package that may become a collectors' treasure.

  8. Experimentum Mundi (Experience the World). Battistelli. Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome. Nicola Raffone and Peppe Servillo. One of the oddest of operas is played using instruments like metal grinders, shovels, sledgehammers, and cobblers' tools. Enjoy the music while you learn how to make a barrel.

  9. The Gambler. Prokofiev. Berlin State Opera. Vladimir Ognovenko and Kristine Opolais. Did you know the great Dostoevsky suffered from addiction to gambling? He even wrote a somewhat autobiographical book about the illness. Prokofiev used the book as the basis for this opera, which is skillfully rendered by wild-man director Dmitri Tcherniakov with Barenboim in the pit.

  10. Hansel und Gretel. Humperdinck. Theater Dessau. Ludmil Kuntschew and Alexandra Petersamer. Allegorical presentation in obscure Dessau venue towers over big-deal productions from London and Vienna.

  11. Der Messias. Handel, Mozart, and Robert Wilson—three geniuses for the price of one. This is the German language version of Messiah. I know, Messiah is an oratorio. But Mozart and Wilson turn it into opera. (This is where I attempt to explain in my review what Robert Wilson is up to.)

  12. The Pearl Fishers. Bizet. Met. Diana Damrau, Mariusz Kwiecien, and Matthew Polenzani in the Woolcock version intended to be gritty instead of pretty.

  13. Rigoletto. Verdi. Met. Piotr Beczala, Željka Lučić, and Diana Damrau. Works better in Las Vegas than in old Italy!

  14. Rusalka. Dvořák. Bavarian State Opera. Kristīne Opolais and Klaus Florian Vogt. The water spirits become trafficked girls in Martin Kušej's powerful overlay. We will never forget the image of Opolais getting relief by wallowing in the aquarium.

  15. Snow Maiden. Rimsky-Korsakov. Paris Opera. Aida Garifullina in beautiful Tcherniakov concoction.

  16. 💓 La Sonnambula. Bellini. Stuttgart. Ana Durlovski and Luciano Botelho. We have 3 beautiful versions of La Sonnambula, and this is the most modern one with tensions and emotions that seem very real today. Got an Opera of the Year award from Opernwelt magazine.

  17. The Tsar's Bride. Rimsky-Korsakov. Berlin State Opera. Anatoli Kotscherga and Olga Peretyatko. Everybody is crazy about this spectacular update, again from Dmitri Tcherniakov with Barenboim.

  18. Turandot. Stefano Poda's hardball interpretation teaches the lesson that even if audacity results in astonishing success, the price may still be too high.

  19. Written on Skin. Benjamin. Christopher Purves and Barbara Hannigan. Royal Opera. Splendid video of what has been one of the best received new opera of recent years. Has nothing to do with tattoos.

  20. 💓 Zazà. Leoncavallo. Svetlana Aksenova and Christopher Maltman. Christof Loy at the Theater an der Wien. My favorite verismo opera tells a pungent story with an edifying ending!