Italy! Like nowhere else on earth, its immortal music have a magical pull on people like no other culture – and Jonas Kaufmann feels this particularly keenly. In his “Dolce Vita” concert at Berlin’s Waldbühne he pays tribute to this culture, this way of life that has conceived one immortal melody after the other for the tenor voice and influenced him so much. This is a heartfelt tribute to Italian music including Caruso, Mattinata, Parla più piano (‘The Godfather’ theme), Core ‘ngrato, Volare and famous arias by Verdi, Puccini and more!

Daniel Barenboim leads the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in musical feast. When it comes to a composer regarded as a visionary who touched on the very limits of madness. Scriabin even saw himself as a kind of Prometheus and declared: “The world lives in my consciousness, as my act of creation.” Claude Debussy also experienced a mystical moment when he conceived his impressionist tone poem La Mer. With this music, he wished not to create a musical depiction of the roaring waves and sparkling water but rather to reflect the impression that the play of the waves awakened within him. Impressive in any case is how Lisa Batiashvili performs the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. According to the Guardian, she is a gifted storyteller.

In what is expected to be a Wagnerian event for the ages, soprano Christine Goerke plays Brunnhilde, Wotan’s willful warrior daughter, who loses her immortality in opera’s most famous act of filial defiance. Tenor Stuart Skelton and soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek play the incestuous twins Siegmund and Sieglinde. Greer Grimsley sings Wotan. Philippe Jordan conducts.

Tenor Javier Camarena and soprano Pretty Yende team up for a feast of bel canto vocal fireworks—including the show-stopping tenor aria “Ah! Mes amis,” with its nine high Cs. Maurizio Muraro is the comic Sergeant Sulpice, with mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe as the outlandish Marquise of Berkenfield. Enrique Mazzola conducts.

Mezzo-soprano Clémentine Margaine reprises her remarkable portrayal of opera’s ultimate seductress, a triumph in her 2017 debut performances, with impassioned tenor Roberto Alagna as her lover, Don José. Louis Langrée conducts for Sir Richard Eyre’s powerful production, a Met favorite since its 2009 premiere.

Soprano Anna Netrebko joins the ranks of Renata Tebaldi, Montserrat Caballé, and Renata Scotto, taking on—for the first time at the Met—the title role of the real-life French actress who dazzled 18th-century audiences with her on-and offstage passion. The soprano is joined by tenor Piotr Becza?a as Adriana's lover, Maurizio. The principal cast also features mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili and baritone Ambrogio Maestri. Gianandrea Noseda conducts. Sir David McVicar's staging, which sets the action in a working replica of a Baroque theater, premiered at the Royal Opera House in London, where the Guardian praised the "elegant production, sumptuously

Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts Michael Mayer’s richly textured new production, featuring a dazzling 18th-century setting that changes with the seasons. Soprano Diana Damrau plays the tragic heroine, Violetta, and tenor Juan Diego Flórez returns to the Met for the first time in five seasons to sing the role of Alfredo, Violetta’s hapless lover. Baritone Quinn Kelsey is Alfredo’s father, Germont, who destroys their love.