Bizet: Carmen (2014)

The Marriage of Figaro

Mozart's Marriage of Figaro is a comedy whose dark undertones explore the blurred boundaries between dying feudalism and emerging Enlightenment. Herman Prey's Figaro is admirably sung in a firm baritone and aptly characterized. So too, is his antagonist, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as the Count perpetually frustrated by the scheming wiles of Figaro and Susanna, here the perky Mirella Freni, who sings and acts like a dream. The Countess is creamy-voiced Kiri Te Kanawa, and the Cherubino, Maria Ewing, looks just like the horny, teenaged page she's supposed to be. The all-star leads are complemented by worthy supporting singers, the Vienna Philharmonic at the top of its form, and the experienced Mozartian, Karl Böhm conducting a stylishly fleet performance.

Amadeus

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is a remarkably talented young Viennese composer who unwittingly finds a fierce rival in the disciplined and determined Antonio Salieri. Resenting Mozart for both his hedonistic lifestyle and his undeniable talent, the highly religious Salieri is gradually consumed by his jealousy and becomes obsessed with Mozart's downfall, leading to a devious scheme that has dire consequences for both men.

Sevil

The film takes place in Baku in 1918-19 and then several years later. The film is based on the opera of the same name by Fikret Amirov. Sevil became the first film opera in the history of Azerbaijani cinema.

John Adams: Nixon in China

In February 1972, the American president Richard Nixon went to China to meet Mao Zedong. In the context of the war in Vietnam and the cold war, this encounter marked a turning point in Chinese‑American relations. John Adams, a major musical figure of the last forty years, made this event of contemporary history the subject of his first opera. Nixon in China tackles the political thaw instigated by ping-pong diplomacy, begun by the invitation of the American table tennis players by their Chinese counterparts, one year before the presidential visit. A mesmerising work in which the pulsations and repetitions typical of minimalism are combined with melodic lines of great lyricism. For its entry into the Paris Opera repertoire, this work has been entrusted to the director Valentina Carrasco, who underlines the importance and the mediating power of Chinese national sport in history.

The Metropolitan Opera: Don Giovanni

Imbuing the familiar Don Juan myth with a captivating combination of comedy, seductiveness, danger, and damnation, Mozart created an enduring masterpiece that has been a cornerstone of the repertory since its 1787 premiere. The opera offers a rare opportunity for two baritones to star alongside one another as the title Lothario and his faithful yet conflicted servant, Leporello, as well as three memorable female roles—multifaceted women who both suffer the Don’s abuses and plot their revenge.

Love Me Forever

A man who loves an aspiring opera singer is prepared to sacrifice everything to help her with her career, even though he knows she doesn't love him.

The Passion of Scrooge

Is this a film about Scrooge? About a composer’s life? An opera within an opera? The Passion of Scrooge blurs these lines between performance, documentary, and fiction, into a cinematic concert experience that’s seasoned with magical reality. Composer Jon Deak has adapted Charles Dickens’ timeless tale into a contemporary opera that melts the heart, but doesn’t avoid the darkness in Scrooge that’s still resonant with the material concerns of our time. Using neither period costumes, nor set pieces to reconstruct old England, the film invites you to experience A Christmas Carol with the imaginative possibilities of a radio play. And then, to meet those visions in your head, filmmaker H. Paul Moon‘s floating camera intimately captures musicians performing the score as characters themselves, in this ageless haunted redemption story about “us, every one.”

Falstaff

It is to composer and librettist Arrigo Boito and his constant pestering of the octogenarian Verdi that there remained within him one last great comedy fighting to get out that we owe this absolute miracle of an opera. Produced in 1893 as Verdi turned 80 there is much in this masterpiece that can be identified as a modernist neoclassical work. The use of short motifs instead of long arioso melodic lines, the spry and reduced orchestral textures and the lack of a single 'stand and deliver' dramatic declamatory aria all serve to make this more of a 20th century work than an example of 19th century late-Romanticism.

Donizetti - La Favorite

Donizetti's French masterpiece was in the hands of Italian conductor Antonello Allemandi. This maestro, a bel canto specialist, captured the fire and intensity of the passions from the get-go, making the overture a superbly eloquent transition to a musical world based on beautiful lines and colors that elaborate distress and make it compellingly elegant. Allemandi demonstrated a full authority over the stage for the musically complex scenes, and in the arias and duets he demonstrated his confidence in the artistry of distraught singers by establishing ample tempos to support their soaring vocal lines while he concentrated on pulling every possible nuance from the pit players.

Lucia di Lammermoor

Live from the Teatro Carlo Felice di Genova 2003

Salomé

Live from the Royal Opera 2008. David McVicar’s powerful 2008 production of Strauss's opera – based on a play by Oscar Wilde – takes the controversial and disturbing film 120 Days of Sodom as its visual reference. The action is set in a debauched palace, which has suggestions of Nazi Germany. Strauss’s ravishing and voluptuous score adds to the sexual alchemy that is conjured by an international cast led by Nadja Michael in the title role. Salome is filmed for the big screen with High Definition cameras and recorded in true surround sound.

La Traviata

"This is Vienna State Opera live at home". March 2015.

Rigoletto

An outsider—a hunchbacked jester—struggles to balance the dueling elements of beauty and evil that exist in his life.

Eugene Onegin

In Trelinski's timeless production he leads a superb, first-class young cast headed by Artur Ruzinski as Onegin and Kristīne Opolais as Tatyana. Mariusz Trelinski, Polish filmmaker and theater director, has created a series of dream-like, surrealist tableaux of great suggestive beauty.

The Metropolitan Opera: Anna Bolena

David McVicar's atmospheric and brooding production captures the drama of this riveting piece of British history, retold as only Donizetti could. International superstar Anna Netrebko is Queen Anne Boleyn, trapped in an unhappy marriage to King Henry VIII (Ildar Abdrazakov) whose roving eye has settled on another woman—Jane Seymour (Ekaterina Gubanova), Anna's friend, but now her unwitting rival. Add in Anna's early love, Percy (Stephen Costello), just returned to the court from exile, and the result is a haunting, explosive account of Queen Anna's tragic final days, before she goes to her execution in one of the most moving and dazzling final scenes in all of opera.

The Metropolitan Opera: Don Carlo

Family jealousy, threat of rebellion, political back-stabbing and the Inquisition weigh heavy on the court of King Phillip II. The tension finally ignites at the King's coronation, where a number of heretics are to be burnt at the stake.

Don Carlo

C Majors Tutto Verdi project comes to one of Verdis most popular operas: Don Carlo. Based on Schiller's play of the same name, Don Carlos was written for the Paris Opéra in 1865-66 in the tradition of a French grand opera. Repeatedly revised and performed in Italian as Don Carlo, the opera is seen here in the version that Verdi prepared for Modena in 1886. In many respects, this is Verdi's most ambitious and most forward-looking work.

Verdi: Don Carlo

Verdi wrote this five act opera with a French Libretto for the Paris opera. Premiere 1867. Then there are three versions of this opera, the French 1867 version, the revised Italian four Act Don Carlo 1884, plus the Modena version 1886. This version is the 1884 version with Act One reinstated, as well as the original beginning of Act 2. To complicate matters the French opera was simply translated into Italian, and then the changes were made. There is an even newer edition completed in 1980 by Ricordi, and others floating around as well.

Der Fliegende Holländer

This vivid film of Wagner's romatic opera succeeds in conveying what has famously been called "the wind that blows out at you whenever you open the score", including Daland's boat anchoring against the Sandwike cliffs, the red-sailed phantom ship, and the ghost crew rising from the dead. "Scenes that recall classic horror films... Brilliantly successful" (Nürnberger Nachrichten), "Captures the works' essence" (Süddeutsche Zeitung). With a superb cast; conducted by Wagner authority Wolfgang Sawallisch.

Farinelli

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