The Royal Opera presents Verdi's grand opera LES VEPRES SICILIENNES for the very first time. Antonio Pappano conducts a star cast that includes Bryan Hymel, Marina Poplavskaya, Erwin Schrott and Michael Volle. The opera ballet plays a significant role too, with dancers from The Royal Ballet and Royal Danish Ballet also performing. The Paris, 1855-set opera features impassioned and dramatic music, rich in showpiece arias and ensembles and with striking choruses. This monumental operatic work takes over the threshold from the reality of the opera house into the dreamlike stories of the operas they present. 

David Tennant stars in the Royal Shakespeare Company's blockbuster production of RICHARD II, captured live from Stratford-upon-Avon and launching an exciting new season of cinema broadcasts from the stage of the RSC. A story of power and plotting, RICHARD II is the first of Shakespeare's four plays about the House of Lancaster. Richard is King, ordained by God to lead his people. But he is also a man of very human weakness. A man whose vanity threatens to divide the great houses of England and drag his people into a dynastic civil war that will last 100 years.