Opera is about many things. However it is, first and foremost, an extended analysis of the nature of love. It examines why we love, and what love signifies in erotic, emotional and spiritual terms, its comic triumphs and its tragedies and failures - and it shows what happens when love comes into conflict with the forces of political reaction and religious orthodoxy, and how it turns sour when subject to abuse or obsession. We’ll be looking at variations on this immense theme in coming weeks. But by way of a prelude, here are five of the most iconic operatic love stories ever written.

Gluck: Orphée et Eurydice

Robert Wilson’s 1999 Paris production, conducted by John Eliot Gardiner

The Orpheus legend deals both with a love that transcends the grave and a singer whose music has the power to tame the forces of hell. Early opera composers such as Peri, Caccini and, above all, Monteverdi, took it as their starting point, though it’s Gluck’s version that remains, perhaps, the most potent and familiar. It was written in 1762 in Italian, as Orfeo ed Euridice, for a castrato Orpheus, then revised in French, in 1774, for a tenor, though we most frequently hear it now in an edition prepared by Berlioz for the mezzo soprano Pauline Viardot-Garcia in 1859. This was the version used by John Eliot Gardiner for Robert Wilson’s 1999 Paris production, in which Madgalena Kožená played Orpheus. Wilson’s stylised staging has some of the drastic simplicity of classical friezes, the androgynous costumes remind us that both love and music know no distinctions of gender or sexual orientation.

Wagner: Tristan und Isolde

Wieland Wagner’s 1962 production, recorded here in 1967, conducted by Pierre Boulez

In Tristan und Isolde (1865), Wagner portrays love as a consuming passion that can find neither emotional nor sexual satisfaction on earth and can only be released in the voluntary extinction of the self in the metaphysical flux that pervades the universe. The score, using harmonic suspensions to suggest psychological states between arousal and climax, caused one of the biggest revolutions in musical history. Stick with the murky black and white footage above, for a rare opportunity to watch Wieland Wagner’s epoch-making production, first seen at Bayreuth in 1962, but recorded here during the Osaka festival in 1967. There are three legends on stage – Brigit Nilsson and Wolfgang Windgassen as the adulterous lovers, and Hans Hotter as betrayed King Marke – and Pierre Boulez in the pit. It doesn’t get much better. For clearer visuals – though perhaps not quite so overwhelming an experience – try Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s Bayreuth early 80s production conducted by Daniel Barenboim: you can watch it here.

Verdi: La Traviata



Willy Decker’s 2005 Salzburg production, starring Anna Netrebko, Rolando Villazón and Thomas Hampson

La Traviata (1853) has become so familiar that we tend to forget that Verdi’s depiction of the open cohabitation between the courtesan Violetta and middle-class Alfredo caused outrage in its day. Willy Decker’s Salzburg production, updating the opera to the 1960s and rejecting theatrical naturalism in favour of a symbolic, intuitive approach, was not to everyone’s taste when it opened in 2005. But Decker is wonderfully perceptive in his understanding of how their affair brings the lovers into conflict not only with Alfredo’s bourgeois family, but also with Violetta’s demi-monde cronies. And vivid performances from Anna Netrebko (Violetta), Rolando Villazón and Thomas Hampson (Germont) make this production very powerful indeed.

Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin

Robert Carsen’s 2007 New York production, conducted by Valery Gergiev

Apart from the single act of violence at its centre, Eugene Onegin is among the most emotionally realistic of operas – a muted study of the consequences of one man’s arbitrary rejection of the woman who could have been the love of his life. It works best when least subject to directorial interference. Robert Carsen’s 2007 New York production plays it straight, but carefully uses the vast space of the Metropolitan Opera House’s stage to suggest the emotional abysses that open up between the characters. Handsome Dmitri Hvorostovsky is the ideal Onegin opposite Renee Fleming’s beautifully sung Tatiana. Valery Gergiev is on fine form in the pit. Though recorded in New York, the upload comes from Russian TV: there’s there’s some introductory material; the opera starts at 13:30. A fine alternative is Joseph Keilberth’s 1962 performance, in German, with the great Fritz Wunderlich as Lensky: you can watch it here.



Puccini: La Bohème

Zeffirelli’s 1967 made-for-television production, conducted by Herberg von Karajan.

Like La Traviata, La Bohème has become so familiar that we can easily forget how provocative it should be. A study of the impact on love of grinding poverty, it also examines what happens when what starts as a casual pick-up opens an emotional floodgate that neither of Puccini’s lovers is able to control. Choosing a single staging isn’t easy – there are plenty out there on YouTube – but I’ve opted for a 1967 television production, made for Unitel in Germany, using La Scala forces, and directed by Franco Zeffirelli, one of the great exponents of Italian neo-realist theatre and cinema. Musically it’s an absolute knockout. Few have ever conducted the work better than Herbert von Karajan, and you probably won’t hear a better Mimi than Mirella Freni – for many, the greatest Puccini soprano of them all.