Barrie Kosky

Royal Ballet & Opera 2024/25: Die Walküre (2025)

On a stormy night, fate brings two strangers together, unleashing a love that has the power to destroy entire worlds. Meanwhile, in the realm of the gods, an epic battle erupts between the ruler Wotan and his rebellious daughter Brünnhilde. ...

Royal Opera House 2023/24: Das Rheingold (2023)

When a precious hoard of gold is stolen from the river Rhine, it unleashes a chain of destructive events, pitting gods and mortals against one another for generations. Wagner's Ring cycle boasts some of the greatest music ever written for the opera stage. ...

Tosca (2023)

Tosca is a melodrama of love, betrayal and death set in the revolutionary unrest of 1800. The story concerns the opera singer Floria Tosca who tries to save her lover, the painter Mario Cavaradossi, from the brutal chief of police, Scarpia. Through-compose ...

Tosca (2023)

Tosca is a melodrama of love, betrayal and death set in the revolutionary unrest of 1800. The story concerns the opera singer Floria Tosca who tries to save her lover, the painter Mario Cavaradossi, from the brutal chief of police, Scarpia. Through-compose ...

Leos Janácek - Kát'a Kabanová (2022)

Janáček's three-act opera Katya Kabanova, staged by Barrie Kosky and staged at the Felsenreitschule by Czech conductor Jakub Hrůša with an international cast of soloists, was performed on August 7 at the 2022 Salzburg Festival. The opera is based on th ...

Don Giovanni - Aus der Wiener Staatsoper, Dezember 2021 (2021)

Le Coq d'Or - Opéra National de Lyon (2021)

Lying in bed, Tsar Dodon dreams of retirement. The problem is, people keep invading his country. His astrologer offers him a golden cockerel with magical powers, a weather vane which indicates from which direction danger will come. In his case, it will be ...

Rimsky-Korsakov: The Golden Cockerel (2021)

Pushkin folk tale as comedic opera whose sultry elements expand an Oriental influence. Korsakov portrays the story of Tsar Nicholas II, punished for his cowardice and despotism, using satire to condemn Russia's autocratic ruler. ...

Orphée aux Enfers - Salzburger Festspiele 2019 (2020)

Offenbach's mockery of bourgeois ideals, the sublimity of music and the institution of marriage ensures that the moralistic sermonizing of 'Public Opinion' falls on deaf ears. The mysterious figure of John Styx tells the story of behind-the-times Orpheus ...

Pelléas et Mélisande - KOB (2020)

Barrie Kosky peers into the abyss of the human soul and tackles one of the most important Symbolist masterpieces in the operatic repertoire. ...

Royal Opera House: Carmen (2019)

Bizet's greatest opera tells the story of the enigmatic and seductive Carmen and the dangerous passions of Don José. Live stream performance from The Royal Opera House in July 2019. ...

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: Bayreuther Festspiele (2018)

The high-point of the 2017 Bayreuth Festival, Barrie Kosky's astonishingly entertaining and convincing new Meistersinger is a triumph: a production of enormous insight and great quality... that plumbs the depths of both the opera and its composer. ...

Semele (2018)

Semele was written in 1743, by an already mature Handel, after his opera serias were becoming less well received than they had once been. The big novelty of the time was that Semele was composed entirely in English and is surely the closest that any of his ...

Royal Opera House: Carmen (2018)

This ever-popular opera is given a fresh point of view in Barrie Kosky's highly physical production, originally created for Frankfurt Opera. The Australian director is one of the world's most sought-after opera directors, whose Royal Opera debut with Shost ...

Mussorgsky: Sorochintsy Fair (Komische Oper Berlin) (2017)

A devil is at work in the Ukrainian village of Sorochintsy, terrifying residents and travellers alike. Among them a farmer whose daughter is not allowed to marry her lover because her quarrelsome stepmother is against it. ...

The Tales of Hoffmann (2016)

In a poet's feverish imagination, the staging of Don Giovanni sets him off on a frenzied journey into nightmarish worlds. Can Mozart himself offer him salvation as he loses himself in his fearful dreams? Barrie Kosky tells Offenbach's fantastic story as a ...

Saul (2016)

Glyndebourne's Saul stole the summer and had critics raving. The Guardian (****) applauded virtuoso stagecraft from director Barrie Kosky in his debut production there, calling the show a theatrical and musical feast of energetic choruses, surreal choreogr ...

The Fiery Angel - Bayerische Staatsoper (2015)

A couple and their hallucinatory journey to the dark side of passion. Renata is driven by a longing for the consummate sexual encounter. Since her youth she has had a vision of an ecstatic conjugation with a shining angel. Ruprecht falls for Renata and fol ...

Moses und Aron - KOB (2015)

Moses relies on his eloquent brother's help to translate the abstract idea of God into understandable images. But don't his persuasive words mar the pure idea that Moses finds so impossible to put into words? In Schönberg's unfinished opus magnum, Barrie ...

Kiss Me, Kate (2011)

The story involves the production of a musical version of William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew and the conflict on and off-stage between Fred Graham, the show's director, producer, and star, and his leading lady, his ex-wife Lilli Vanessi. A secon ...

Der Jahrhundertring 1976 - Sternstunden der Musik (2021)

Offenbach, compositeur de génie (2019)