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Watch an interview with Joyce DiDonato on Cendrillon, who takes the title role in a delightful production new to the Royal Opera.

Paule Constable offers an insight into lighting Luise Miller for The Donmar Warehouse in London. Recorded at an Insights event at the Royal Opera House. Photographs © Johan Persson. With thanks to The Donmar Warehouse for the use of production photography.

www.roh.org.uk/insights

Principal dancer, Marianela Nuñez, receives her 30th birthday cake!

Composer Duncan Chapman describes how the winners of the Fanfare compeition and members of Royal Opera House Orchestra work together on the winning compositions.

Join Alice on her adventures through Wonderland in this second revival of Christopher Wheeldon's brilliantly imagined full-length ballet. Find out more at http://www.roh.org.uk/productions/ali...

Alice encounters a cast of extraordinary characters down the rabbit hole: from the highly-strung Queen of Hearts, who performs a hilarious rendition of the famous Rose Adagio from The Sleeping Beauty; to dancing playing cards; a sinuous caterpillar and a tap-dancing Mad Hatter. There is a love narrative for Alice and the Knave of Hearts, and they dance a tender pas de deux at the close of Act II. But the ballet does not avoid the darker undercurrents of Lewis Carroll's story -- a nightmarish kitchen, an eerily disembodied Cheshire Cat and an unhinged tea party are all created in vivid detail.

A look at some of the special effects secrets from Peter Wright's magical production of The Nutcracker.
Find out more at http://www.roh.org.uk/nutcracker

Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker score was commissioned by the director of the Russian Imperial Theatres, following the resounding success of Sleeping Beauty in 1890. Marius Petipa created the scenario – based on a fairytale by E. T. A. Hoffman – and Lev Ivanov provided the choreography. The Nutcracker was first performed in 1892 at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg. It initially had a poor reception, but its combination of enchanting choreography and an unforgettable score have since made it one of the best-loved of all ballets.

In Peter Wright's classic production, the stage sparkles with theatrical magic – a Christmas tree grows before our eyes, toy soldiers come to life to fight the villainous Mouse King and Clara is whisked to the Land of Sweets on a golden sleigh. Tchaikovsky's score contains some of the best-known melodies in ballet, from the flurrying sounds of the Waltz of the Snowflakes to the dream-like Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and the vigorous Russian Dance. Julia Trevelyan Oman's designs draw upon 19th-century images of Christmas, making this a classic production for the festive season.

As part of Royal Ballet LIVE, we asked you to send us videos of yourself doing a grand jeté. Kristen McNally introduces some of the entries.

Director Stephen Langridge and designer Alison Chitty talk about their Royal Opera production of Richard Wagner's Parsifal. The creative team talk about the process of staging Richard Wagner's final masterpiece.

The creative team behind The Royal Opera's production of The Minotaur, director Stephen Langridge and designer Alison Chitty, bring a new staging of Parsifal to Covent Garden. Parsifal, Wagner's final opera, was first given at Bayreuth in 1882. For many years, at the insistence of Wagner and then his widow Cosima, performances outside the Bayreuth Festival were banned. This embargo was lifted in January 1914; by August of the same year Parsifal had been performed at more than fifty opera houses throughout Europe.

Wagner loosely based the opera on scenes from Wolfram von Eschenbach's medieval romance Parzifal. The score contrasts the sacred with the sensual, from the stark magnificence of the music for the procession to the Grail Hall in Act I to the richly orchestrated scene in which Kundry attempts to seduce Parsifal in Act II. There are sections of almost unearthly beauty such as the Act I Prologue, the Good Friday music in Act III, and the closing scene of the opera, in which Parsifal reveals the Grail to the knights.