Cut through the rumors and peel back the mysteries with our next streaming event, Gaetano Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia. Tenor Michael Fabiano stars as the handsome Gennaro, an orphan whose fate is ...

Lucrezia Borgia was a cold-hearted bitch, according to author John Faunce. The facts about Lucrezia’s scandalous life as the bastard daughter of Pope Alexander VI are well-documented. The details ...

When we think of opera's biggest stars and greatest hits, we tend to think of solo arias. But that overlooks another operatic goldmine: duets. Over the years, there have been plenty of classic duet ...

As the opera ends, Gennaro is dead and Lucrezia (soprano Renee Fleming) mourns with the moving aria "Era desso il figlio mio" -- "He was my son" -- leading directly to the bombastic finale. The ...

The very name Borgia brings to mind lurid imaginings. This powerful Sopranos-like Italian family dominated the Renaissance for many years. To maintain power, they ...

A cinema screen greets us. So either an unscheduled HD Opera Cast is in the offing or director Mike Figgis is making no pretence of flaunting his cinematic credentials. But Lucrezia Borgia – the movie ...

She was history's most notorious femme fatale, with three husbands, numerous lovers, and a rumoured penchant for poisoning men of whom she grew tired. Yet not a single portrait survives of Lucrezia ...

This story appears in the January/February 2017 issue of National Geographic History magazine. On a spring day in 1480, Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia ordered various astrologers to his home in Rome to tell ...

Making his opera helming debut, Mike Figgis is clearly not short of ideas about "Lucrezia Borgia." Filled with lustful looks and heaving bosoms plus gratuitous nudity (female, of course), Figgis’ ...

Notwithstanding its many faults, it felt like the silver screen's Ring cycle. Last night saw Figgis try his hand at a real Gesamtkunstwerk, Donizetti's rarely heard Lucrezia Borgia (1833). Could he ...