The Abduction from the Seraglio (2006)

La Traviata

This superb 2006 production of the Los Angeles Opera's La Traviata stars Renée Fleming, who joins the ranks of the elite handful of sopranos whose vocal and acting talents make their portrayals memorable. Her Violetta Valéry is a vulnerable figure torn between self-indulgence and love, sacrificing personal happiness to become a victim of the social mores of mid-19th-century bourgeois France. Fleming's acting captures the complexity of the character and her vocalism is flawless. She negotiates the wild coloratura of Act One with aplomb, and is stunning in the lyric passages that pervade the opera, and touching in her scenes with her lover, Alfredo, and his father. Her singing is free of the mannerisms that have sometimes crept into her work and at the same time she brings countless personal touches to the role, phrasing and verbal emphases that shed fresh light on the character.

Nullarbor

An animated road-movie set across the vast and barren landscape of Australia's Nullarbor Plain.

Americana

When a rare Lakota Ghost Shirt falls into the black market in a small town in South Dakota, the lives of local outsiders and outcasts violently intertwine.

Captain Nulle

Valdis Nulle is a young and ambitious captain of fishing ship 'Dzintars'. He has his views on fishing methods but the sea makes its own rules. Kolkhoz authorities are forced to include dubious characters in his crew, for example, former captain Bauze and silent alcoholic Juhans. The young captain lacks experience in working with so many fishermen on board. Unexpectedly, pretty engineer Sabīne is ordered to test a new construction fishing net on Nulle's ship and 'production conflict' between her and the captain arises...

Zero Point

Sensitive and restless Johannes is accepted to an elite school in Tallinn and expects life to go uphill. Instead, he becomes the victim of mental abuse by his classmates. In search of recognition, he goes to his old Lasnamäe friends, who spend their time doing drugs, hanging around, and partying, rather than focusing on schoolwork. At home, Johannes must deal with his mother’s deteriorating mental health. As the tension grows, he finds himself at zero point, where he must completely reset his life to build it up from scratch.

Strange Object

An archival investigation into the imperial image-making of the RAF ‘Z Unit’, which determined the destruction of human, animal and cultural life across Somaliland, as well as Africa and Asia.

Last Summer

One summer, a French teenager who has been living with his mother in the city moves in with his estranged father’s family in the countryside, where he clashes with his stepmother.

Jim's Story

Aymeric runs into Florence, a former coworker, one evening in Saint-Claude in the Haut-Jura. She is six months pregnant and single. When she gives birth to Jim, Aymeric is there. They spend happy years together until Christophe, Jim's biological father, shows up... It could be the start of a melodrama, it's also the start of an odyssey into fatherhood.

Walk Don't Run

During the housing shortage of the Summer Olympic Games in 1964, two men and a woman share a small apartment in Tokyo, and the older man soon starts playing Cupid to the younger pair.

Opus

A young writer is invited to the remote compound of a legendary pop star who mysteriously disappeared thirty years ago. Surrounded by the star's cult of sycophants and intoxicated journalists, she finds herself in the middle of his twisted plan.

A Legend

An archeologist noticed that the texture of the relics discovered during the excavation of a glacier closely resembled a jade pendant seen in one of his dreams. He and his team then embark on an expedition into the depths of the glacier.

The End We Start From

As London is submerged below floodwaters, a woman gives birth to her first child. Days later, she and her baby are forced to leave their home in search of safety. They head north through a newly dangerous country seeking refuge from place to place.

MAD

Have you ever felt lonely in a Relationship..., Marriage or Live_In , doesn't matter, when you can't share your feelings with your companion, it is like travelling to an unknown destination with a troublesome partner.

Night Always Comes

Facing eviction in a city her family can no longer afford, a woman plunges into a desperate and increasingly dangerous all-night search to raise $25,000.

All to Play For

Sylvie lives with her two children whom she’s raising on her own. One evening, there’s an accident, and her youngest son is removed from her care. Sylvie must subsequently fight to get her son back and to keep herself afloat.

In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro

There's a big drought in Africa. Food and water are scarce. 90,000 wild baboons suddenly start attacking humans and eating them in order to survive. Some people find themselves being hunted by the starving monkeys and must do whatever they can to stay alive.

Dove osano le cicogne

A couple is desperately looking to conceive a child and moves to Spain to get the help of a renowned doctor. Their plans change after they meet an apparently perfect girl that volunteers to carry on the pregnancy in their place.

Borgo

Melissa is an experienced, exemplary prison guard. But a dangerous spiral is set into motion when she transfers to a Corsican jail, where she accepts help and protection from inmate Saveriu to get her bearings. Upon his release, he contacts Melissa expecting to collect.

Phas Gaye Re Obama

Phase Gaye Re Obama is a comedy set against the backdrop of global recession/meltdown that originated in USA. The film traces the journey of OM Shashtri, an American citizen of Indian origin, who loses all his wealth overnight to the global recession & has been asked to vacate his home by the bank unless he pays up $100,000 (mortgaged amount) within 30 days. Seeing no other option Om comes to India to sell a small piece of an ancestral property. But within days of landing in India he is kidnapped by a 'recession-hit' underworld gang those who think that he is still a millionaire. What happens to Om, is he able to save his home, how did the 'poor' gangster cope with their 'poor' catch & what do small town Indian gangsters have to say to President Obama...is largely forms the rest of the story. The film, showcases how global recession/ meltdown impacted lives from an America based businessman to underworld dons in the dusty plains of small town India.

Alpha

Alpha, a troubled 13-year-old lives with her single mom. Their world collapses the day she returns from school with a tattoo on her arm.

Fando and Lis

Fando and his partially paralysed lover Lis search for the mythical city of Tar.

The Wedding Banquet

Frustrated with his commitment-phobic boyfriend Chris and running out of time, Min makes a proposal: a green-card marriage with their friend Angela in exchange for her partner Lee's expensive IVF. Elopement plans are upended, however, when Min's grandmother surprises them with an extravagant Korean wedding banquet.

Long Distance

After crash-landing on an alien planet, an asteroid miner must contend with the challenges of his new surroundings, while making his way across the harsh terrain to the only other survivor – a woman who is trapped in her escape pod.

Evil Does Not Exist

Takumi and his daughter Hana live in Mizubiki Village, close to Tokyo. One day, the village inhabitants become aware of a plan to build a camping site near Takumi's house offering city residents a comfortable "escape" to nature.

House of Ga'a

At the height of the Oyo Empire, the ferocious Bashorun Ga'a became more powerful than the kings he enthroned, only to be undone by his own blood.

Giantess Battle Attack!

The beautiful, beastly Beverly returns and faces a new gaggle of gargantuan gals, hell bent on achieving deluxe diva domination. Get ready for the cinematic smackdown thrills of Giantess Battle Attack. Size really does matter.

Old Man Junior

Morbius Jr, now an OId Man, is nearing the end of life, when he finds the last hope for all Morbkind. However, as he fights to protect the future of Morbheads, he finds himself facing off against an unlikely of enemy... HIMSELF.

Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills

A horrific triple child murder leads to an indictment and trial of three nonconformist boys based on questionable evidence.

Orenda

Orenda means an invisible force, a life spirit that inhabits everything living and lifeless: people, wind, birds, rabbits, stone. The one who serves Orenda and sings to it may receive its power. Exploring the themes of guilt and grace, the destinies of two women intertwine into a tense emotional thriller set on a remote island.

La Syndicaliste

The true story of Maureen Kearney, the head union representative of a French multinational nuclear powerhouse. She became a whistleblower, denouncing top-secret deals that shook the French nuclear sector. Alone against the world, she fought government ministers and industry leaders, tooth and nail to bring the scandal to light and to defend more than 50,000 jobs.. Her life was turned upside down when she was violently assaulted in her own home... The investigation is carried out under pressure: the subject is sensitive. Suddenly, new elements create doubt in the minds of the investigators. At first a victim, Maureen becomes a suspect.

Bus Palladium

A comedy that follows the break-up of a French rock group.

Magnificent Obsession

Reckless playboy Bob Merrick crashes his speedboat, requiring emergency attention from the town’s only resuscitator while a local hero, Dr. Phillips, dies waiting for the life-saving device. Merrick then tries to right his wrongs with the doctor’s widow, Helen, falling in love with her in the process.

Così fan tutte

Who loves whom in Così fan tutte, Mozart’s and Da Ponte’s cruelly comic reflection on desire, fidelity and betrayal? Or have the confusions to which the main characters subject one another ensured that in spite of the heartfelt love duets and superficially fleetfooted comedy nothing will work any longer and that a sense of emotional erosion has replaced true feelings? Così fan tutte is a timeless work full of questions that affect us all. The Academy Award-winning director Michael Haneke once said that he was merely being precise and did not want to distort reality. In only his second opera production after Don Giovanni in 2006, he presents what ARTE described as a “disillusioned vision of love in an ice-cold, realistic interpretation”.

Il club dei 27

A 12-year-old boy tries everything to join a music lovers club.

Amadeus

Disciplined Italian composer Antonio Salieri becomes consumed by jealousy and resentment towards the hedonistic and remarkably talented young Salzburger composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Operette

A musician is offered a job in Vienna as stage director, but his disagreements with the aristocratic opera manager end in abrupt firing in spite of a mutual attraction. He's quickly engaged by another theatre and becomes famous for his lavish stage productions and fine acting, which begins their golden age with Suppé and Strauss.

Lucia di Lammermoor

This telecast offers a rare opportunity to see the legendary Joan Sutherland in the role that first catapulted her to international stardom. She drove audiences wild by the way her opulent voice caressed the music’s long phrases and sprinted effortlessly through the fiendish runs, trills, embellishments and stratospheric high notes. One of the glories of the operatic world, her portrayal of Donizetti’s hapless heroine is a multifaceted and moving characterization. The incomparable tenor Alfredo Kraus is Edgardo, the man Lucia loves but cannot have. (Performance taped November 13, 1982. Broadcasted September 28, 1983.)

Puccini: Manon Lescaut

All the throbbing eroticism—and ultimate heartbreak—of Puccini’s youthful score is unleashed by James Levine and his top-flight cast. Plácido Domingo is Des Grieux, the handsome, headstrong young aristocrat who falls head over heels for the enticing, impetuous Manon Lescaut (Renata Scotto). Manon returns his love, but her obsession with luxury ruins them both. Gian Carlo Menotti’s opulent production, with sets and costumes by Desmond Heeley, superbly captures the colorful world of 18th century France.

Verdi Otello

Desdemona in Verdi's Otello was a career role for soprano Renata Tebaldi, from her first operatic performance outside of Italy to her final appearance on the opera stage. Between those landmarks she performed the role nearly 100 times all over the world and made studio audio recordings that became reference recordings for the role. This 1962 production with the Deutsche Oper Berlin and Giuseppe Patane was planned as a media event from the outset and blessedly captures a consummate artist in a signature role at the peak of her gifts.

The Metropolitan Opera - Puccini: Manon Lescaut

Kristine Opolais is the young woman whose conflicting desires for love and luxury lead to her tragic end, and Roberto Alagna plays the man who falls for her in Puccini’s early hit. Richard Eyre’s elegant production, which sets the action in 1940s occupied France, was one of the highlights of the Met’s 2015–16 season. Massimo Cavalletti as Manon’s brother and Brindley Sherratt as her aging admirer co-star, and Principal Conductor Fabio Luisi is on the podium.

The Phantom of the Opera

The deformed Phantom who haunts the Paris Opera House causes murder and mayhem in an attempt to make the woman he loves a star.

Benvenuto Cellini

With his affinity for the 16th-century sculptor Benvenuto Cellini's advocacy of artistic and personal freedom, Hector Berlioz went straight for the grand gesture with his first completed opera. Returning to it years after initial production debacles, Berlioz stated that he would 'never again find such verve and Cellinian impetuosity, nor such a variety of ideas.' The plot revolves around Cellini's wooing of Teresa, a match frustrated at every opportunity by his rival, the cowardly Fieramosca. Benvenuto Cellini is a pithy work combining romance, excitement, violence, comedy and spectacle; the perfect stage for Terry Gilliam's stylishly colorful and larger than life directing.

Cosi Fan Tutte

An excellent performance of this delightful opera. The principals are superb, especially the sisters. Bruscantini as Don Alfonso is past his prime, but he knows and understands the role inside out, so one does not even notice his vocal limitations. Araiza is in top form as Ferrando, and Morris makes virile Guglielmo. The only disappointment is Battle as Despina. Unlike her partners, she does not have feel for the Mozart ensemble, and her vocal mannerisms are totally unbecoming. How the producers allowed that to happen is a mystery. Muti's conducting is terrific, much better than on his La Scala video, where he is uninvolved.

The Metropolitan Opera: Norma

Deep in a forest where druids and warriors seek revenge against the conquering Romans, Norma is scorned by the Roman proconsul Pollione, with whom she has two children. Her kindness turns to fury when she discovers that Pollione has taken Adalgisa, a novice priestess, as his new lover. When Pollione loses his high rank in the army and is offered as a sacrifice, Norma promises him freedom under one condition.

The Metropolitan Opera: The Exterminating Angel

After the acclaimed Met premiere of Thomas Adès's "The Tempest" in 2012, the composer returned with another masterpiece, this time inspired by filmmaker Luis Buñuel's seminal surrealist classic "El Ángel Exterminador", during the 2017–18 season. As the opera opens, a group of elegant socialites gather for a lavish dinner party, but when it is time to leave for the night, no one is able to escape. Soon, their behavior becomes increasingly erratic and savage. The large ensemble cast tackles both the vocal and dramatic demands of Adès's opera with one riveting performance after another. Tom Cairns, who also penned the work's libretto, directs an engrossing and inventive production, using a towering wooden archway to trap the characters onstage. And Adès himself takes the podium to conduct the frenzied score, which features a host of unconventional instruments, including the eerie electronic ondes Martenot.

The Metropolitan Opera: Tosca

Sir David McVicar’s bold new staging of Tosca, Puccini’s operatic thriller of Napoleonic Rome, thrilled Met audiences when it rang in the New Year in 2018. Only weeks later, the production was seen by opera lovers worldwide as part of the Met’s Live in HD series of cinema presentations. In this performance, Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva is the passionate title diva, opposite charismatic tenor Vittorio Grigolo as her lover, the idealistic painter Mario Cavaradossi. Baritone Željko Lučić is the menacing Baron Scarpia, the evil chief of police who employs brutal tactics to ensnare both criminals and sexual conquests. On the podium, Emmanuel Villaume conducts the electrifying score, which features some of Puccini’s most memorable melodies.

La Finta Giardiniera

Part of an epoch-making release of Mozart's complete operas on DVD, here is the 18-year old composer's first mature opera buffa. Hilarity mingles with passionate emotions when belfiore believes he has killed his lover in a fit of jealousy, but then encounters her disguised as gardener sandrina. Famed filmmaker Doris Dorie directs a superb young cast in this tale of love, hate and intrigue across class barriers, all vividly depicted by Mozart's astonishingly rich and varied music.

Aida - Arena di Verona

The grand scale and magnificent acoustics of the Roman arena in Verona are ideally suited to the pageantry of Verdi's Egyptian opera, presented here in a staging that is true to the original 1913 production, framed by obelisks and sphinxes and filled with chorus and dancers. Chinese soprano Hui He has won international acclaim for her portrayal of the eponymous slave girl whose forbidden love for the war hero Radamés (Marco Berti, the experienced Verdi tenor) brings death to them both.

Mefistofele

1989 recording of the San Francisco Opera production of Mefistofele: Boito's retelling of Goethe's Faust

Maria

Maria Callas, the world's greatest opera singer, lives the last days of her life in 1970s Paris, as she confronts her identity and life.

Cosi Fan Tutte

There are elements of Eurotrash in this outdoor Aix-en-Provence summer opera production. Nevertheless, the splendid singing and acting transform the story, normally treated as farce, into something considerably more serious. As many other critics have noted, the young lovers have not yet sorted everything out as this performance ends. Act One begins with the principal characters running around in the outdoor theater -- while the audience takes it in as if they had been advised to sit back and enjoy the novelty. Very likely they were also asked to refrain from applauding at the end of arias and ensemble pieces, in which the three-hour opera abounds.

La Vie parisienne

La Vie parisienne (Parisian life) is an opéra bouffe, or operetta, composed by Jacques Offenbach in 1866, with a libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy. This work was Offenbach's first full-length piece to portray contemporary Parisian life, unlike his earlier period pieces and mythological subjects. It became one of Offenbach's most popular operettas.

Phantom

Takarazuka Revue's Phantom based on the play by Maury Yeston and Arthur Kopit.

Traviata – You deserve a better future

The audience is invited into Violetta’s privacy to have a close look at the fire to which she abandons herself among the guests of this musical and phantasmagorical celebration that blends theatre and opera, voices that speak and sing, and where the distinction between the instrumentalists and the singers becomes blurred, where Charles Baudelaire is seated next to Christophe Tarkos, and where the phantoms of this Paris in full industrial boom whose future we are living at present, sing and die.

Puccini: La bohème

"La Bohème" is one of Giacomo Puccini's most popular and timeless works and the second-most performed opera at New York's Metropolitan Opera. This production, directed by the legendary Franco Zeffirelli, features José Carreras, Teresa Stratas, Renata Scotto and Richard Stilwell. The opera is replete with extraordinary visual beauty as it presents the tragic story of young bohemians struggling to make it in the world.

Farinelli

The life and career of Italian opera singer Farinelli, considered one of the greatest castrato singers of all time.

Mea Culpa – A ReadyMadeOpera

In Mea Culpa, Christoph Schlingensief blurs a delicate line: he ignores the threshold that separates the healthy from the sick. By making his cancer the subject of an opera, premiering on the largest German-speaking theater, he is putting the art district under pressure: a wonderful institution like the Burgtheater must use its artistic resources lavishly to reveal the entire "truth" about us humans. At the end of the day, when the scenery on Janina Audick's revolving stage has finally come to rest, when Isolde's last Liebestad has been sung enchantingly beautifully by Elfriede Rezabek and indescribable jubilation breaks out, then Schlingensief is completely alone with his illness.

Death in Venice

Gustav Von Aschenbach, a passionate composer, arrives in Venice as a result of wanderlust and there meets a young man by whose beauty he becomes obsessed.

The Bartered Bride

Frantisek Filip film version of the Smetana opera.