Ashley Riches

Recorded live at the Royal Opera House, December 2012. Daniel Oren conducting Royal Opera House Orchestra and Chorus. A grand opera that dominated the stages of Europe for most of the 19th century, Robert le diable is a masterpiece. Director Laurent Pelly breathes new life into Giacomo Meyerbeer's great spectacle and audaciously entertaining moral fable, in this colourful new staging for The Royal Opera.

At a glittering party in 18th-century Paris, the poet Andréa Chenier delivers an impassioned denunciation of Louis XVI. Five years later, the Revolution has given way to the Terror, transforming the power balance between Chénier, his beloved Maddalena, and Gérard, the man who could destroy him...

With her husband apparently drowned at sea, a scheming empress secures the throne for her son from another marriage. But the commander of the army has other ideas, and then the emperor returns, very much alive. The inspired vision of director Walter Sutcliffe and designer Jon Bausor brings to life the humour and egomania of one of opera’s most outrageous leading women. The youthful Handel packed Agrippina with the full range of his astonishing imagination, setting a libretto at once hilarious, moving and clever. Handel’s music is bursting with originality and fun, as well as carefully considered moments of eye-watering beauty.