A new season for opera and ballet in Vilnius

Forty-two great productions and more than 200 performances are included in this year’s season at the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre, which is often considered the pride of the country. In its repertoire, it demonstrates quality, excellent technique, dedication and high-class professionalism of performances, which is the result of several centuries of continuous hard work and aspirations to achieve such standards. From September 25, 2009 to May 23, 2010 do not miss the opportunity to attend one of its excellent performances.
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New season at the Royal Danish Theatre

Nine premieres of entirely newly created musical drama, reaching from the spectacular to the intimate and from the classical to the avant-garde are on offer in this Royal Danish Opera 2009/10 season. The ballet menu for this season includes nine wide-ranging and sharply focused productions, embracing everything from grand historical masterpieces to pure abstract neo-classicism, from the lyrically romantic to the demandingly modern, from showbiz to artistic stringency. And there’s more… Eleven grand concerts at the Old Stage, the Takkelloftet and the Koncerthuset demand your attention!
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Red carpet treatment in Valletta

Reputed to be Europe's third-oldest working theatre -and the oldest in the Commonwealth of Nations- the Teatru Manoel on Valletta’s Old Theatre Street (Triq it-Teatru l-Antik) is now Malta's National Theatre and home to the National Orchestra of Malta. The new season in the small, 623-seat venue of lavish architectural majesty offers a variety of concerts and recitals, drama and dance performances, as well as musicals and pantomime shows, from October 23, 2009, to May 11, 2010.
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New York’s Met Opera in Riga

The New York Metropolitan Opera's experiment of merging film with live performance has created a new art form. The groundbreaking series of live, high-definition Saturday performance transmissions into movie theatres in more than 35 countries around the world has enjoyed box office success, reaching an estimated audience of more than 1.1 million viewers last year. In 2009-10, the Met offers its fourth season of international HD transmissions -this time with nine broadcasts. In Latvia, you can watch live Met’s thrilling, world-class opera at Riga’s Parex Plaza Cinema.
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Opera season opening in Bucharest

The 2009/2010 season at the National Opera House in Bucharest opened early this year together with the 19th edition of the annual George Enescu International Festival with four of last season’s best opera productions (Enescu’s Oedipus, Verdi’s Othello and Macbeth, and Puccini’s Manon Lescaut) and one ballet (Swan Lake) in its programme running until the end of September 2009. For the next two months, October and November, the repertoire is rich with past productions you should see if you missed them last year.
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A jubilee year for the Hungarian Opera

With about fifty opera and ballet productions–eight in premiere and 5 revivals- included in the programme of the 2009/2010 season the Hungarian State Opera House celebrates the 125th anniversary of its inauguration and promises many more exciting years to come. Running until the end of June 2010 the new season offers a wide repertoire that satisfies the most diverse demands with stage productions which cater for the tastes of different generations.
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An exciting new season at Teatr Wielki

For over 170 years the Teatr Wielki (Grand Theatre) has been hosting Poland's grandest opera and ballet theatre, which continues its more than 200-year tradition, producing works by Polish composers as well as world classics. Lead by its artistic director Mariusz Treliński, a great stage director whose opera productions constitute highlights of operatic repertoire in Warsaw and overseas, Teatr Wielki presents an exquisite programme for the 2009/2010 season with 21 operas, 18 ballet and dance performances and more than ten concerts and music productions.
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Opera evenings in Cyprus

If in Cyprus and Francis Poulenc is one of your opera favs, you don’t have to catch the next flight to Paris to attend the performance of his signature work La Voix Humaine exactly 50 years after its premiere in the French capital’s Opéra-Comique. The Cyprus Symphony Orchestra will be performing this intimate, intense and intriguing one-act opera by the end of September in Nicosia and Limassol as part of the Kypria Festival. Greek Cypriot soprano Katerina Miná will be the heart-broken Elle.
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New opera and ballet season in Sofia

The 2009/2010 season for the National Opera and Ballet Theatre in Sofia kicks off in a promising and ambitious way with ten opera and six ballet productions occupying the daily calendar of the year’s last quarter. Having exported its best production -Léo Delibes’ Lakmé- to Cyprus in September 2009, Bulgaria’s first lyrical theatre presented the programme for October, November and December 2009, which includes both older productions and new premieres.
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Red Dragon roars in Europe

With 45 major art exhibitions and more than 60 concerts from traditional to modern music, and 75 performances of theatre, opera, dance, puppets and acrobatics onstage in 40 cities in Belgium (but also in the Netherlands, Germany, France and Luxembourg), europalia.china is definitely the biggest festival held in Europe to date. The festival runs over a period of more than 17 weeks -October 8, 2009, to February 14, 2010- but it is actually an eight-month marathon, since its events start as early as mid-September and some exhibitions run until the end of April 2010. Plenty of time for more than a million Europeans to get to know China’s millennia-old culture and traditions.
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Swedish opera nights

With a history of more than two centuries, the Kungliga Operan or Royal Opera is the national stage for opera in Sweden. This opera season you have twenty one reasons to go to the opera in Stockholm from August 22, 2009, to June 19, 2010: twelve operas, eight ballets and one concert of the Royal Court Orchestra!
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New opera season in Tallinn

The new season of the Estonian National Opera is definitely going to rejoice the visitors with its diverse repertoire and new productions. Fifteen opera productions, two operettas and one musical, eight ballet pieces, a show for the children, and many more delights expect those who will book in advance tickets for this 104th season, which opens September 4 and runs through the summer season in July 2010, with the traditional 3-week wrap-up presentation of the year.
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A little grand festival in the Grand Duchy

And then, just as you thought that the cultural extravaganza in Luxembourg is gone together with the Summer, you realize you’re wrong. The party continues into the Fall with a particularly attractive October and November, thanks to two of the Grand Duchy’s most distinguished cultural institutions, the Philharmonie and the Grand Théâtre de la Ville de Luxembourg, who jointly present the Luxembourg Festival with an artistic programme of the highest calibre.
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La Monnaie season’s ancient Greek scent

Fifteen first class opera productions, five dance performances, fifteen concerts and recitals and two theatre plays make the backbone of the 2009/10 season in Belgium’s most prestigious lyrical stage. Hot on the heels of Bozar, Belgium's National Opera, the Koninklijke Muntschouwburg (de Munt in Flemish), or le Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie (la Monnaie in French) -a reference to its location, the former site of the national Mint- is one of the few cultural institutions which receives financial support from the federal government of Belgium.
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LNO prelude for the 2009/10 season in Riga

With an impressive programme of opera and ballet productions, the Latvian National Opera kicks off the 2009/10 season, which includes some 32 productions for the months of October, November and December. The rest of the 10 season has not been announced yet, so stay tuned. The season opens in Riga on October 2 with a grand concert for the Latvijas Gāze Annual Award Ceremony, which will be conducted by Normunds Vaicis and Farhads Stade. And there’s more… Six operas and eleven ballet shows are on offer just before the twist of the year.
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Operosa charm by the Black Sea

Just eight kilometers NE off the beatiful seaside Bulgarian city of Varna, lies the Château Evxinograd, a former royal palace designed by Prince Regnant Alexander of Batenberg and finished in 1888 by Tsar Ferdinand. It is there, at the beautiful gardens of the château, where one of the Balkan’s most charming opera festivals takes place. The Operosa Festival is a brand new open-air prestigious event that has become a highlight of the cultural summer life in Bulgaria attracting an ever growing Bulgarian and international audience and media. In this year’s second edition, running through August 29-31, the audiences will enjoy Francis Poulenc’s one-act opera La Voix Humaine.
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An exciting new season at the Slovak National Theater

The excellent productions of opera, ballet and drama in Bratislava’s Slovak National Theatre have captivated not only the Slovak public but also the Viennese. It is no longer unusual to set out from Vienna to go to Bratislava and attend an opera. It takes about an hour to reach the Slovak National Theatre where people can enjoy performances of the highest quality at reasonable prices. In total, 71 productions go onstage during the 2009/10 season that closes in June.
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