David Alden

Ethereal music, a fairytale plot, beguiling sets and spectacular special effects all these combined to make Rinaldo in every sense the Baroque multimedia event par excellence. (Letterboxd)

This work may not be among Handel’s greatest masterpieces, but the way it is presented and sung here makes it a thorough pleasure for the senses. (Letterboxd)

Semiramide is haunted by the ghosts of her past. Together with her lover Assur, she once murdered her husband King Nino; a deed which ever since has weighed heavily upon her. With her marriage to Arsace, she hopes her soul will at last find solace. Her love, however, is misplaced. Arsace not only loves another, he is also . . . the son Semiramide and Nino believed to be dead. He is faced with a decision: should he avenge the death of his father – and thus become his mother’s killer? (Letterboxd)

The English National Opera first mounted David Alden’s production of Ariodante, one of Handel’s greatest masterpieces, in 1993. It met with unanimous critical and popular acclaim, and this 1996 revival features many of the leading singers from the original production. Ariodante is Handel’s 1735 setting of an episode from Ariosto, in which the King of Scotland’s daughter is treacherously accused of infidelity to her promised husband. (Letterboxd)

A sly landlord rents a studio apartment by the hour, daytime to one man and nighttime to another. The guys meet and discover they are both engaged to the same girl. (imdb)

Combining a concert film with a making-of documentary, this presentation provides a dramatization of Franz Schubert’s famed song cycle along with a unique look at the collaborative process in bringing the production to the screen. Tenor Ian Bostridge vocalizes the part of the wanderer from Wilhelm Müller’s poems (on which the cycle is based), with Julius Drake accompanying him on piano and David Alden directing. (Letterboxd)