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LA DONNA DEL LAGO

Gioachino Rossini | Opera in two acts.
Sung in Italian | Running time: c. 3 hours 20 minutes (including one interval).

The ultimate bel canto cast is assembled for this important yet rarely performed masterpiece. Based on Sir Walter Scott's poem The Lady of the Lake, La Donna Del Lago is the most fully Romantic of Rossini's Italian operas. Expansive ensembles and shimmering orchestration generate an opulence seldom heard in the composer's comic works.

In Renaissance Scotland, King James V travels to the tribal Highlands, where he falls in love with Elena - the lady of the lake. Her father is fighting with the clans against the King's rule and has promised Elena's hand in marriage to a clan leader, Rodrigo. Meanwhile Elena herself is in love with the young romantic hero Malcolm. The plot inspired some truly galvanising scenes, most memorably the stunning confrontation between the tenors Uberto and Rodrigo.

John Fulljames's staging evokes the exoticised mystery of Rossini's Romantic landscape, and provides an insight into this rich but under-explored seam of operatic gold. In the hands of three of the leading bel canto voices of our time. Juan Diego Flórez, Joyce DiDonato, and Colin Lee, La Donna Del Lago promises to be a musical revelation.
 

National Theatre Live will broadcast the West End production of The Audience starring Helen Mirren to cinemas around the world on Thursday 13th June at 7pm - Tickets ON SALE NOW.

‘The Audience is going to be one of the theatrical highlights of 2013.' - Daily Mail.

Helen Mirren reprises her Academy Award winning role as Queen Elizabeth II in the highly-anticipated West End production of The Audience, broadcast as part of National Theatre Live.

For sixty years Elizabeth II has met each of her twelve Prime Ministers in a weekly audience at Buckingham Palace – a meeting like no other in British public life – it is private. Both parties have an unspoken agreement never to repeat what is said. Not even to their spouses.

The Audience breaks this contract of silence – and imagines a series of pivotal meetings between the Downing Street incumbents and their Queen. From Churchill to Cameron, each Prime Minister has used these private conversations as a sounding board and a confessional – sometimes intimate, sometimes explosive.

From young mother to grandmother, these private audiences chart the arc of the second Elizabethan Age. Politicians come and go through the revolving door of electoral politics, while she remains constant, waiting to welcome her next Prime Minister.

The Audience reunites writer Peter Morgan and Academy Award-winning actress Helen Mirren following their collaboration on the critically-acclaimed movie sensation The Queen.

The Audience is directed by Academy Award-nominated director Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot, The Hours) and presented in the West End by Matthew Byam Shaw for Playful Productions, Robert Fox and Andy Harries.

Filled with a cast of unforgettable characters, Twelfth Night is a moving comedy of loss and misplaced love and includes some of the most exquisite songs Shakespeare ever wrote.

The all-male Original Practices production, exploring clothing, music, dance and settings possible in the Globe around 1601, stars award-winning Mark Rylance and Stephen Fry. Twelfth Night’s sell-out performances led to a hit run in London’s West End.

Composed by: Claire van Kampen

Also Starring: Liam Brennan, Paul Chahidi, John Paul Connolly, Ian Drysdale, Johnny Flynn, James Garnon, Peter Hamilton Dyer, Colin Hurley, Roger Lloyd Pack, Jethro Skinner and Ben Thompson
 

The National Theatre presents a major new production of William Shakespeare’s celebrated play about the destructive power of jealousy.

Olivier Award-winning actor Adrian Lester (Henry V at the National Theatre, BBC’s Hustle) takes the title role. Playing opposite him as the duplicitous Iago is fellow Olivier Award-winner Rory Kinnear (The Last of the Haussmans, James Bond: Skyfall), who is reunited with director Nicholas Hytner (Timon of Athens, One Man, Two Guvnors) following their acclaimed collaboration on the National Theatre’s recent production of Hamlet.

Othello, newly married to Desdemona – who is half his age – is appointed leader of a major military operation. Iago, passed over for promotion by Othello in favour of the young Cassio, persuades Othello that Cassio and Desdemona are having an affair.