Jon Plazaola

José Ramón, victim of a serious accident, receives the visit of Agustín, who takes the opportunity to talk about old times.

The discovery of the tomb of William Tell’s son in a town in the Basque Country spurs the village's cantankerous citizens to lobby for Swiss annexation.

Villaviciosa de al Lado is a peaceful town stuck in time, living exclusively of the fame of a 200 years-old spa. Therefore, city hall's debts threatens to close the spa and ruin all town. Their salvation becomes when suddenly mayor Anselmo and the rest of members of city hall realize that they won the Christmas Lottery. But their happiness turns in horror after to discover that the prize belongs to a serial number distributed by the town's brothel, causing the suspicion of the wives and fear of the husbands after a TV interview where Mari, brothel's owner, claims that the almost men of the town will have prize from the lottery. Wanting a way to charge the prize to save the town without having to suffer the anger of their respective women, Anselmo, Ricardo, César, Juandi and Paco plots a plan in order to steal the money from the brothel, meanwhile Mari tries reconcile her stranded life and restore the memory of her deceased father, a former mayor.

Obsessive in gambling and in love, the soldier Hermann is the protagonist of Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame, based on a story by Pushkin. He is smitten with the aristocratic Lisa and fixated on learning the winning secret of ‘the three cards’ from her grandmother, the Countess, played by iconic contralto Ewa Podles. This opulent production from Barcelona’s Liceu captures St Petersburg in the era of Catherine the Great, while the house’s Music Director Michael Boder conducts a large and impressive cast. Recorded at the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona, 30th June & 1st July 2010.

NORMA tells the tragic story of a supposedly chaste druidic priestess, who is driven to murderous jealousy by her lover's inconstancy. But she forgoes vengeance, protects innocence, and sees to it that the guilty atone for their crimes. Fiorenza Cedolins, Sonia Ganassi, Vincenzo La Scola, and Andrea Papi star in this 2007 Gran Theatre Del Liceu/Grand Theatre de Geneve co-production of the Bellini opera.

In Rigoletto, the deformed figure of the hunchbacked jester at the Mantuan court acts as a foil to his cynical and powerful master, an unscrupulous philanderer contrasted with his cruel and unforgiving fool. Rigoletto encourages and welcomes the Duke's conquests, pitilessly mocking his victims until he discovers that the Duke has abducted the one person he genuinely loves, his own daughter. As a result, the character of the court jester is transformed into a tragic figure who, in spite of his evident immorality and malice, allows us to sense the devotion he feels for his daughter and his horror at being destroyed by the same despotic world as that which he himself has helped to create.