What's on

Puccini’s exhilarating drama of the Wild West returns in a new staging by Richard Jones, marking the company’s first new production of La Fanciulla del West in more than 30 years. Soprano Sondra Radvanovsky makes her role debut as Minnie, the tough tavern owner with a heart of gold who finds love when she least expects it. Tenor SeokJong Baek is the dashing bandit who rambles into the remote California mining town to steal her heart, opposite baritone Christopher Maltman as the lawman determined to deliver justice—and win Minnie for himself. Maestro Keri-Lynn Wilson takes the podium to conduct one of opera’s most action-packed adventures, live from the Met stage to cinemas worldwide.

3h 15m
Times
23 Jan
Shakespeare’s timeless tale of star-crossed lovers is transformed in Kenneth MacMillan’s mesmerising ballet. The flourishing of young love is just as present in Romeo and Juliet's meeting on the balcony as in their final moments when they desperately cling to life in the tomb. Prokofiev’s evocative music sets the scene for stolen romantic moments and deadly feuds and sweeps the ballet towards its inevitable and tragic conclusion.

2h 50m Inc Interval
Times
27 May
30 May
Floria Tosca and Mario Cavaradossi live for each other and for their art. But when Cavaradossi helps an escaped prisoner, the lovers make a deadly enemy in the form of Baron Scarpia, Chief of Police. At the mercy of Scarpia’s twisted desires, Tosca is forced to make a horrific bargain: sleeping with the man she hates, in order to save the man she loves. Can she find a way out?

Oliver Mears’s acclaimed production returns, setting Puccini’s operatic thriller in a contemporary, war-torn Rome. Daniel Oren conducts Aleksandra Kurzak, who returns to the title role, joined by Saimir Pirgu as Cavaradossi and Christopher Maltman as Baron Scarpia.

3h 15m Inc Interval
Times
06 May
09 May
Princess Odette is bound by a curse, turned into a swan by the evil sorcerer Von Rothbart. The spell can only be broken by a pledge of eternal love. When she meets Prince Siegfried, he is immediately enamoured by her fragile beauty and pledges to free her. But freedom is not promised for Odette as Von Rothbart conspires to thwart the lovers’ plans.

Liam Scarlett’s production for The Royal Ballet brings together Tchaikovsky’s towering score and John Macfarlane’s picturesque designs to create an enduring ballet spectacle of love, treachery and forgiveness. 

3h 25m Inc Interval
Times
22 Apr
25 Apr
At a garden party on a sunny afternoon, Alice is surprised to see her parents’ friend Lewis Carroll transform into a white rabbit. When she follows him down a rabbit hole, events become curiouser and curiouser…As Alice journeys through Wonderland, she encounters countless strange creatures. She’s swept off her feet by the charming Knave of Hearts, who’s on the run for stealing the tarts. Confusion piles upon confusion. Then Alice wakes with a start. Was it all a daydream?

Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland burst onto the stage in 2011 in an explosion of colour, stage magic and inventive, sophisticated choreography. Joby Talbot’s score combines contemporary soundworlds with sweeping melodies that gesture to ballet scores of the 19th century. Bob Crowley’s wildly imaginative, eye-popping designs draw on everything from puppetry to projections to make Wonderland wonderfully real. The result shows The Royal Ballet at its best, bringing together world-class dance with enchanting family entertainment and ingenious music and design.

2h 50m Inc Interval
Times
25 Mar
28 Mar
Spurred on by a bet, two young men hatch a plan to test the fidelity of their girlfriends. What follows is a slippery game of seduction and power, the four lovers plunging into a dizzying world of shifting reality, where truth becomes increasingly unstable.

Così fan tutte has lost none of its sting since it first scandalised audiences in 1790. In her Main Stage debut, Netia Jones, Associate Director of The Royal Opera, reimagines Mozart’s comedy of manners through a sharp contemporary lens, where 18th-century romantic trickery meets deeply satirical high-tech deceit. Taking on the roles of the lovers is an exciting young cast led by Louise Alder, Simone McIntosh, Mingjie Lei and Huw Montague Rendall, with Gerald Finley as their manipulative game-master Don Alfonso and Emily Pogorelc as Despina. Thomas Hengelbrock conducts, bringing out the exquisite melodies that underpin the provocative, and resolutely modern, themes at the heart of the opera.

3h 30m
Times
25 Feb