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The Sleeping Beauty has been delighting audiences in Covent Garden since 1946. Sixty years later, in 2006, the original staging was revived, returning Oliver Messel’s wonderful designs and glittering costumes to the stage. Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky’s enchanting score and Marius Petipa’s original choreography beautifully combine with sections created for The Royal Ballet by Frederick Ashton, Anthony Dowell and Christopher Wheeldon. This ballet is sure to cast its spell over anyone who sees it. Booking recommended

Puccini’s opera of young love in 19th-century Paris is packed with beautiful music for Act II’s evocation of Christmas Eve in the Latin Quarter and a poignant final scene over which the composer himself wept. Richard Jones’s production perfectly captures La bohème’s mixture of comedy, romance and tragedy, with striking designs by Stewart Laing. The cast features some great interpreters of Puccini’s bohemian lovers, as well as former members of The Royal Opera’s Jette Parker Young Artists Programme. Booking recommended

Choreographer Cathy Marston is previously an Associate Artist of the Royal Opera House and Director of Bern Ballett, and much in demand internationally. The inspiration for her first work for The Royal Ballet Main Stage is the momentous life and career of the cellist Jacqueline du Pré. A new work by Liam Scarlett, The Royal Ballet’s Artist in Residence, provides the second part of the programme. Please note: The scheduled premiere and live relay of Liam Scarlett’s new work has…

Beethoven’s only opera is a masterpiece, an uplifting story of risk and triumph. In this new production, conducted by Antonio Pappano, Jonas Kaufmann plays the political prisoner Florestan, and Lise Davidsen his wife Leonore (disguised as ‘Fidelio’) who daringly sets out to rescue him. The music is transcendent throughout. Tobias Kratzer’s new staging brings together the dark reality of the French Revolutionary ‘Terror’ and our own time to illuminate Fidelio’s inspiring message of shared humanity.

Liam Scarlett’s glorious production of Swan Lake returns for its first revival. Remaining faithful to the Marius Petipa/Lev Ivanov text, Scarlett’s additional choreography and John Macfarlane’s magnificent designs breathe new life into this most-loved classical ballet. The Company shines in this eternal tale of doomed love. Tchaikovsky’s score soars with its symphonic sweep and combines perfectly with exquisite choreography from the grand pas de deux of Prince Siegfried and Odile to the swans at the lakeside. An intoxicating mix of…