Richard Jones perfectly captures the blend of tragedy and comedy in La bohème, and provides an acute analysis of Puccini’s young would-be artists and their lovers, the soulful Mimì and spirited Musetta. Spectacular designs by Stewart Laing evoke both the poverty of the bohemians’ attic home and the splendour of Paris’s shopping arcades on Christmas Eve.

Fifteen years after his death, a carousel barker is granted permission to return to Earth for one day to make amends to his widow and their daughter.

New York photographer Ronit Krushka flies to London after learning about the death of her estranged father. Ronit is returning to the same Orthodox Jewish community that shunned her decades earlier for her childhood attraction to Esti, a female friend. Their fortuitous and happy reunion soon reignites their burning passion as the two women explore boundaries of faith and sexuality. An understated yet profound examination of identity and self sacrifice by Chilean director Sebastian Leilo.

A young boy in Hitler's army finds out his mother is hiding a Jewish girl in their home.

Kinky Boots The Musical, filmed live at London’s Adelphi Theatre, is strutting onto the big screen! Charlie is a factory owner struggling to save his family business, and Lola is a fabulous entertainer with a wildly exciting idea. With a little compassion and a lot of understanding, this unexpected pair learn to embrace their differences and create a line of sturdy stilettos unlike any the world has ever seen!

A tribe of cats called the Jellicles must decide yearly which one will ascend to the Heaviside Layer and come back to a new Jellicle life.

Short Film Night featuring local filmmakers & local cast. Opportuniy to meet with local filmmakers with a Q&A

The masterful 19th-century choreography of Marius Petipa is combined with sections created for The Royal Ballet by Frederick Ashton, Anthony Dowell and Christopher Wheeldon. Together they create an enchanting sequence of gems in the ballet repertory – from the iconic Rose Adage, when Aurora meets her four royal suitors, and the lilting Garland Waltz to the Vision Pas de deux, as Florimund sees Aurora for the first time, and the celebratory divertissements and final pas de deux that bring the ballet to its glorious close. Throughout, Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky’s masterful score takes ballet music to a height of passion, sophistication and intensity that arguably has never been surpassed.

In a small seaside town in Fujian, south east China, when adopted son Xingxing runs away Yaojun and Liyun have flashbacks to their past when they were forced by a family planning cadre to abort a child. This cleverly constructed film by Wang Xiaoshuai looks at the lasting damage done by China’s one child policy. The sombre nature of the film rises to crescendo of hope and promise.

Cathy Marston is previously an Associate Artist of the Royal Opera House and Director of Bern Ballett, and much in demand internationally. The inspiration for her first work for The Royal Ballet Main Stage is the momentous life and career of the cellist Jacqueline du Pré. A new work by Liam Scarlett, The Royal Ballet’s Artist in Residence, provides the second part of the programme.

Lazarro, a good hearted young peasant and Tancredi, a young nobleman cursed by his imagination, form a life altering bond when Tancredi asks Lazarro to help him orchestrate his own kidnapping.

In this beguiling fable of a golden, rural Italy trampled by modernity, Cannes winner Alice Rohrwacher has produced a magic realist fable which doubles as an origin myth for a modern Italy subsumed by corruption and decline.

Madeline has become an integral part of a prestigious physical theatre troupe. When the workshop’s ambitious director pushes the teenager to weave her rich interior world and troubled history with her mother into their collective art, the lines between performance and reality begin to blur. The resulting battle between imagination and appropriation rips out of the rehearsal space and runs through all three women’s lives. Third feature from maverick American director Josephine Decker.

Beethoven’s only opera is a masterpiece, an uplifting story of risk and triumph. In this new production, conducted by Antonio Pappano, Jonas Kaufmann plays the political prisoner Florestan, and Lise Davidsen his wife Leonore (disguised as ‘Fidelio’) who daringly sets out to rescue him. Set in strong counterpoint are the ingredients of domestic intrigue, determined love and the cruelty of an oppressive regime. The music is transcendent throughout and includes the famous Act I Quartet, the Prisoners’ Chorus and Florestan’s impassioned Act II cry in the darkness and vision of hope. Tobias Kratzer’s new staging brings together the dark reality of the French Revolutionary ‘Terror’ and our own time to illuminate Fidelio’s inspiring message of shared humanity.

Based on a Haruki Murakami short story, this mesmerising film by Lee Chang-dong slowly creeps up on the viewer. Suberbly shot, the story centres around the obsessive love of Jongsoo, a country boy from Paju, South Korea. An enigma – a vanishing – and pyromania serve as metaphors as characters appear and disappear with a beguiling effect on Jongsoo’s wounded love and damaged soul. A film which stays with the viewer for days and weeks.

Liam Scarlett’s glorious production of Swan Lake, new in 2018, returns for its first revival. While remaining faithful to the Marius Petipa/Lev Ivanov text, Scarlett’s additional choreography and John Macfarlane’s magnificent designs breathe new life into what is arguably the best-known and most-loved classical ballet. The entire Company shines in this eternal tale of doomed love, a masterpiece refreshed for a new generation. Tchaikovsky’s first score for ballet soars with its symphonic sweep and combines perfectly with exquisite choreography from the grand pas de deux of Prince Siegfried and Odile to the swans at the lakeside. An intoxicating mix of spectacle and intimate passion, the overall effect is irresistible.

Remi is a guitarist from the UK whose unique style draws inspiration from artists such as Django Reinhardt, Jimi Hendrix, Wes Montgomery and Led Zeppelin. He has performed at Montreal Jazz Festival, Buckingham Palace, BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall with Jamie Cullum, on BBC 4 Television and live on BBC Radio 2 & 3.

Light & Shade is Remi’s most diverse and eclectic show to date. It features music ranging from the acoustic jazz, swing and gypsy jazz of the 30s and 40s to the psychedelic rock and blues of the 60s and 70s. Featuring Remi on a variety of acoustic guitars, electric guitars and a ukulele; accompanied by double and electric bass, drum kit and percussion.  

Pietro Mascagni adapted Giovanni Verga’s play Cavalleria rusticana (Rustic Chivalry) for a competition held by the music publisher Edoardo Sonzogno. His opera, a verismo masterpiece, won the competition and became a tremendous success on its premiere on 17 May 1890, going on to inspire Ruggero Leoncavallo’s opera Pagliacci. Italian director Damiano Michieletto’s Olivier Award-winning production of both works for The Royal Opera updates them to southern Italy in the late 20th century, to a village in the grip of poverty and hypocrisy, where strong passions lurk in the dark.

Dante’s Divine Comedy is an epic journey through the afterlife: it encompasses the horrifying drama of Inferno and its damned, the lyrical mysticism of pilgrims on mount Purgatorio and the dazzling spheres of Paradiso with their endless configurations of light. The poem was inspired by the agony of Dante’s own exile, and traces his path from crisis to revelation guided by his literary hero Virgil and his lost love Beatrice. In his new work, The Royal Ballet’s trailblazing Resident Choreographer Wayne McGregor creates a world premiere in collaboration with an award-winning team – contemporary conductor-composer Thomas Adès, artist Tacita Dean, lighting designer Lucy Carter and dramaturg Uzma Hameed – to bring us closer to Dante and his extraordinary vision.

Strauss’s thrilling and audacious adaptation of Greek tragedy receives a new staging by the award-winning Christof Loy. This uncompromising opera, about a daughter intent on bloody revenge and a mother driven to madness, has provoked critics to lively debate and both shocked and excited audiences since its 1909 premiere. Antonio Pappano conducts music that combines violence with moments of exquisite tenderness in his first Strauss interpretation for The Royal Opera since 2002. The outstanding cast includes Nina Stemme (Brünnhilde in last Season’s Der Ring des Nibelungen) in the title role, and Karita Mattila in her role debut as the haunted queen Klytämnestra.