Five filmed operas available to buy and stream at home

Holiday weeks, when many opera houses are quiet, are a good time to turn to fully staged opera films online. Recent additions to the purchase-on-demand catalog — distributed through labels that make titles available via Amazon Prime Video — offer five recent stagings you can own digitally.

These filmed and subtitled productions are typically priced around $9.99 and sit alongside subscription options such as Medici.tv. The selections include Verdi’s La Traviata, captured in 2021 in Florence with Nadine Sierra and Francesco Meli in a modern-dress staging by Davide Livermore; Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto, Calixto Bieito’s 2023 Dutch National Opera production featuring Julie Fuchs and countertenor Christophe Dumaux; and Richard Strauss’s Arabella, Tobias Kratzer’s time‑traveling vision with Sara Jakubiak and Elena Tsallagova.

Also highlighted are Hans Werner Henze’s Der Prinz von Homburg in an abstract staging from Opera Stuttgart led by conductor Cornelius Meister and featuring soprano Vera-Lotte Böcker, and a Kratzer update of a Strauss comic opera (a work for which Strauss wrote his own libretto) that uses contemporary elements such as emails and projections and stars Maria Bengtsson as Christine.

The critic notes differences in approach — from Bieito’s insertion of sex and violence to mixed responses to the Stuttgart staging — and points out that some notable older productions remain difficult to find (a Munich staging is described as trapped on an out-of-print DVD).

Key Topics

Culture, La Traviata, Giulio Cesare, Arabella, Prinz Von Homburg, Medici.tv