A huge new production of Verdi’s rarely seen five-act French opera Les Vepres siciliennes will be one of several highlights of Royal Opera's 2013-14 season at Covent Garden, announced today. The opera will be coming to the Royal Opera House for the first time, in a co-production with the Royal Danish Opera, Copenhagen, as part of the house’s continuing celebrations of Verdi’s bicentenary.

Marina Poplavskaya, Bryan Hymel and Erwin Schrott will star in a first production for the house by Norwegian director Stefan Herheim. Royal Opera music director Sir Antonio Pappano will conduct. Eight performances in October and November will include a 90-strong chorus and 32 dancers, including four principals from the Royal Ballet and four from the Royal Danish Ballet.

The opera’s major Act III ballet ‘Les Quatres Saisons’ will be performed in full and the creative team is placing particular emphasis on dance. The choreographer will be Royal Ballet principal Johan Kobborg. Herheim’s production relocates the opera from 13th century Sicily to Paris in 1855 and will focus on the musical structure of the opera, linking it to the world of 19th century theatre and, in particular, to French grand opera. Phillipp Furhofer’s opulent 1850s opera house design provides the setting from which the opera unfolds.

Wagner’s bicentenary is the excuse for the first new production of Parsifal since 2001. Six performances in November and December, with a stellar cast, will also be conducted by Pappano. The team responsible for Birtwistle’s The Minotaur return, with Wagner’s last opera being directed by Stephen Langridge, working again with designer Alison Chitty. Simon O’Neill, singing the title role at Covent Garden for the first time after performances in Bayreuth and Vienna, will be joined by Angela Denoke as Kundry, René Pape as Gurnemanz, Gerald Finley as Amfortas and Willard White as Klingsor.

Other season highlights announced today include a new Don Giovanni by Kasper Holton in February, with Mariusz Kwiecień as Giovanni and Alex Esposito  as Leporello. The casting of Véronique Gens as Donna Elvira catches the eye.

Sir Simon Rattle will conduct Magdalena Kožená in a new production of Poulenc’s Les Dialogues des Carmélites, which will be seen at Covent Garden for the first time since 1983.

Pappano will conduct a new production by Jonathan Kent of Manon Lescaut, with Kristine Opolais, Christopher Maltman and Jonas Kaufmann, singled out by Pappano as the ideal tenor for Italian opera. ‘He is clearly number one in Italian, French and German repertory,’ Pappano said. ‘People pick on a certain baritonal quality in the voice, but I don’t think that is a negative. He also speaks Italian very well.’

Next year’s 150th anniversary of Richard Strauss will be marked by three operas, including a new Die Frau ohne Schatten, conducted by Semyon Bychkov, and revivals of Ariadne auf Naxos, with Karita Mattila, and Elektra.

Former Gramophone Artist of the Year Joyce DiDonato, a Covent Garden favourite and the current queen of bel canto, returns next summer in the final new production of the season, Donizetti’s historical opera Maria Stuarda, which will be conducted by Bertrand de Billy.

Two casts in Le nozze di Figaro will see Christopher Maltman and Gerald Finley share the role of the Count, with Sally Matthews, fresh from her sensational Countess at Glyndebourne sharing that role with Rebecca Evans. Luca Pisaroni and Alex Esposito share Figaro, while Lucy Crowe, most recently a smashing Rosina at the Coliseum, and Camilla Tilling share Susanna. John Eliot Gardiner and Colin Davis conduct.

Simon Keenlyside and Karita Mattila will star in a keenly-awaited Wozzeck, under Sir Mark Elder in Keith Warner’s production in the autumn, while the sensational Elīna Garanča will reprise her breathtaking Carmen, with Roberto Alagna as Don José, over Christmas.

Patrizia Ciofi, after her last-minute appearance in Robert le diable, will star as Marie in La fille du régiment with Juan Diego Flórez, master of the top Cs, and, interestingly, Kiri Te Kanawa in the role previously taken by Dawn French – La Duchesse de Crackentorp. Will she sing, one wonders?

Joseph Calleja, Anna Netrebko, Bryn Terfel and Simon Keenlyside will star in seven performances of Gounod’s Faust next April – ‘a once-in-a-lifetime’ casting, said director of opera Kasper Holton.

Antony Craig