Glyndebourne Live: Il barbiere di Siviglia (2016)

Amadeus

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

The Metropolitan Opera: The Tempest

Composer Thomas Adès conducts the Met premiere of his powerful opera based on Shakespeare’s last play, in Robert Lepage’s brilliantly inventive production. Simon Keenlyside is the magician Prospero, who conjures the storm that shipwrecks his enemies and sets in motion the course of events. Rising Met stars Isabel Leonard and Alek Shrader are the young lovers, Miranda and Ferdinand, Alan Oke sings the sinister Caliban, and Audrey Luna gives a memorable performance as the sprite Ariel.

Carmen

This all-star cast is framed by Peter Hall’s gritty, realistic production and conducted by James Levine, who brings out all the surging emotion and gripping drama in Bizet’s score. At the center of the story is Agnes Baltsa, whose smoky mezzo is tailor-made for the gypsy Carmen, an independent woman who glories in obeying only her own rules, but who is haunted by fate. Superstar tenor José Carreras is Don José, the solider from a small town who catches Carmen’s eye and is destroyed by his growing obsession with her. Samuel Ramey is the charismatic matador Escamillo, who lures Carmen away from Don José with tragic result. Leona Mitchell is Micaëla, the simple girl from Don José’s hometown who cannot save him. March 21, 1987 Matinee Broadcast.

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.

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”.

Confession of the Vanished

The film follows the staging of the opera Olimpiade while at the same time exploring the dramatic life of its composer Josef Mysliveček, a friend and teacher of W. A. Mozart.

Die Walküre

The gorgeous and evocative Otto Schenk/Günther Schneider-Siemssen production continues with this second opera in Wagner’s Ring cycle. Hildegard Behrens brings deep empathy to Brünnhilde, the favorite daughter of the god Wotan (James Morris) who nevertheless defies him. Morris’s portrayal of Wotan is deservedly legendary, as is Christa Ludwig, as Fricka. Jessye Norman and Gary Lakes are Sieglinde and Siegmund, and Kurt Moll is the threatening Hunding. James Levine and the Met orchestra provide astonishing color and drama. (Performed April 8, 1989)

Tchaikovsky: The Enchantress

Originally set in the 15th c century, Tchaikovsky's "The Enchantress" is updated to the present day in this innovative production. The charismatic, emancipated Nastasya, who rejects the advances of the devious Mamïrov, duly faces the implacable forces of traditional values in a society riven by divisions between liberal freedoms and religious orthodoxies. The tragic outcome engulfs everyone...

Verdi: Macbeth

Star soprano Anna Netrebko created a sensation in her first Met performances as the malevolent Lady Macbeth, the central character in Verdi’s retelling of Shakespeare’s tragedy. She is joined by Željko Lucic, who brings dramatic intensity and vocal authority to the title role of the honest general driven to murder and deceit by his ambitious wife. René Pape is Banquo, Joseph Calleja is Macduff, and Principal Conductor Fabio Luisi presides over Adrian Noble’s atmospheric production.

Farinelli

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

Puccini: Turandot

Franco Zeffirelli's magnificient staging of Puccini's final opera - a fairy tale set in a mythical China - is one of the most popular in the Met repertory. In this Live in HD production, Maria Guleghina takes on the title role and Marcello Giordani is Calaf, the unknown prince. Marina Poplavskaya and Samuel Ramey co-star, and Andris Nelsons conducts in his Met debut.

Pavarotti, Birth of a Pop Star

Although he is unanimously credited with having democratised opera, making it accessible to the greatest number, focus is rarely put on the strategy he devised and implemented in order to carry out his actions, nor what his actions reveal of the man and artist, and of the resulting metamorphosis from opera singer to pop artist. Through this angle, this film sets out to pay tribute to the man who summed up his credo, obsession and life’s work, in the following way: “They led the public to believe that classical music belonged to a restricted elite. I was the way to prove to the world that was wrong.

Cavalleria rusticana

Franco Zeffirelli directs these two legendary La Scala productions telling tragic tales of jealousy. Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana features performances by Elena Obraztsova, Plácido Domingo, and Renato Bruson. Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci stars Teresa Stratas, Plácido Domingo, and Juan Pons. Both are conducted by George Pretre. This production of Pagliacci earned director Franco Zeffirelli the coveted Emmy as Best Director in the category of Classical Music Programming.

The Metropolitan Opera: Dead Man Walking

American composer Jake Heggie’s compelling masterpiece, the most widely performed new opera of the last 20 years, arrives in cinemas in a haunting new production by Ivo van Hove. Based on Sister Helen Prejean’s memoir about her fight for the soul of a condemned murderer, Dead Man Walking matches the high drama of its subject with Heggie’s beautiful and poignant music and a brilliant libretto by Tony and Emmy Award–winner Terrence McNally. Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin takes the podium, with mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato starring as Sister Helen. The outstanding cast also features bass-baritone Ryan McKinny as the death-row inmate Joseph De Rocher, soprano Latonia Moore as Sister Rose, and legendary mezzo-soprano Susan Graham—who sang Helen Prejean in the opera’s 2000 premiere—as De Rocher’s mother.

The Metropolitan Opera: Nabucco

The success of Verdi’s third opera, a stirring drama about the fall of ancient Jerusalem at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar (Nabucco), catapulted the 28-year-old composer to international fame. The music and Verdi himself were subsumed into a surge of patriotic fervor culminating in the foundation of the modern nation of Italy. Specifically, the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves ('Va, pensiero'), in which the Israelites express their longing for their homeland, came to stand for the country’s aspirations for unity and that exciting era in Italian history, the Risorgimento, or 'Resurgence'.

Maria Callas Sings Tosca, Act II

At the beginning of 1964, the music world experiences something completely unexpected. Maria Callas returns to the opera stage as the prima donna. Her “Tosca” at the Royal Opera House becomes a sensation. Maria Callas wants to show everyone once again that she deserves the title of “prima donna assoluta.” On the condition that star director Franco Zeffirelli take over the direction, the exceptional singer agrees to sing the role of Tosca. The BBC recorded the 2nd act of the opera for television. It is one of the most dramatic acts in opera history: in order to free the painter Cavaradossi from the hands of torturers, Tosca ends up murdering the police chief Scarpia. The film footage is one of the rare opportunities to see Maria Callas in an opera performance and to experience her highly emotional performance art and vocal abilities...

Puccini: Madama Butterfly

Cio-Cio-San, the young Japanese bride of dashing American officer Lieutenant Pinkerton, finds her romantic idyll shattered when he deserts her shortly after their marriage. She lives in hope that one day he will return. Three years later, Cio-Cio-San and her little son see Pinkerton’s ship in the harbour. She excitedly expects his visit – but Pinkerton and his American wife Kate have come only to take the boy away, to raise him in America. Cio-Cio-San bids her son farewell and then takes her own life.

Der Rosenkavalier

In his new production, Robert Carsen places the action at the end of the Habsburg Empire, underscoring the opera’s subtext of class and conflict against a rich backdrop of gilt and red damask

Tosca

Non-musical account of Puccini's opera: Tosca and Cavaradossi are in love, but the tyrant Scarpia desires Tosca and oppresses Cavaradossi who is fighting for freedom.

A Night at the Opera

The Marx Brothers take on high society and the opera world to bring two lovers together. A sly business manager and two wacky friends of two opera singers help them achieve success while humiliating their stuffy and snobbish enemies.

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 Climax

Dr. Hohner, theatre physician at the Vienna Royal Theatre, murders his mistress, the star soprano when his jealousy drives him to the point of mad obsession. Ten years later, another young singer reminds Hohner of the late diva and his old mania kicks in. Hohner wants to prevent her from singing for anyone but him, even if it means silencing her forever.

The Ghosts of Versailles

What happened to Figaro and his friends after the events told in Rossini’s and Mozart’s operas? One possible sequel is told in John Corigliano’s “grand opera buffa” The Ghosts of Versailles—an uproariously funny and deeply moving work inspired by Beaumarchais’s third Figaro play, La Mère Coupable, and commissioned by the Met to celebrate its 100th anniversary. This telecast captures its world premiere run, conducted by James Levine. Håkan Hagegård is Beaumarchais, Figaro’s creator, who is deeply in love with Marie Antoinette (Teresa Stratas in a heart-searing performance) and determined to rewrite history and save her from the guillotine. A young Renée Fleming, at the beginning of her international career, sings the unfaithful Rosina. Gino Quilico is the wily Figaro who tries to take matters in his own hands, and Marilyn Horne stops the show as the exotic entertainer Samira.

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.

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.

Carmen

A film version of the famous Bizet opera, where a soldier (Don Jose) falls in love with a beautiful factory worker (Carmen), but she does not reciprocate his feelings.

Madame Butterfly

Cio-Cio-San, a young Japanese geisha, seeks to fulfill her dreams through marriage to an American naval officer. Her faith in their future is shattered by his empty vows and the loss she endures touches something deep within us all.

La traviata

This “Traviata” became one of the most succesful of all opera films, especially in France, where 800,000 Parisian cinemagoers flocked to it in the first six week. It was nominated for two Oscars (for production and costume design) and won BAFTAs in those two categories, as well as receiving BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations as 1983’s Best Foreign-Language Film.

Tosca

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Donizetti: Anna Bolena

Gaetano Donizetti and his librettist Felice Romani kept the focus of their opera ANNA BOLENA on the personal rather than the political in this fictionalized Tudor tale: Henry VIII of England wants to get rid of his second wife, Anne Boleyn, so that he can marry her lady-in-waiting, Jane Seymour. He brings Lord Richard Percy, Anne's first love, back from exile so that he can find an excuse to accuse her of adultery. With the unwitting aid of Smeaton, a court musician, and Lord Rochefort, Anne's brother, the trap is easily sprung. This 2011 live recording from the Wiener Staatsoper showcases Anna Netrebko as she "scored a personal triumph" in her debut as the hapless Tudor Queen, while her stage partners - notably Elīna Garanča as Jane Seymour and Ildebrando D'Arcangelo as Henry VIII - were likewise showered with critical acclaim.

What's Opera, Doc?

Elmer Fudd is again hunting rabbits - only this time it's an opera. Wagner's Siegfried with Elmer as the titular hero and Bugs as Brunnhilde. They sing, they dance, they eat the scenery.

Rabbit of Seville

Behind the Hollywood Bowl stage which is playing the opera The Barber of Seville, Bugs Bunny flees into the backstage area with Elmer Fudd in close pursuit. Seeing his opportunity to fight on his terms, Bugs raises the curtain on Elmer, trapping him on stage. As the orchestra begins playing, Bugs comes into play as the barber who is going to make sure that Elmer is going to get a grooming he will never forget.

Tannhäuser and the Singers' Contest at Wartburg Castle

TANNHÄUSER UND DER SÄNGERKRIEG AUF WARTBURG is a grand opera by Richard Wagner in three acts. After experiencing boundless sensuality and freedom with the fun-loving Venus (soprano), the singer Tannhäuser (Tenor) finds it impossible to conform to the cultured setting of his betrothed Elizabeth (soprano), who loves him. During a singing contest, Tannhäuser describes the affair with Venus as the ultimate love experience and because of that, he is cast out from the established society. Thanks to Elizabeth's intervention, he is allowed to undertake a pilgrimage to the Pope to ask for the Holy Father's pardon. If the Pope accepts to forgive him, he would be allowed to take back his place in society. Tannhäuser accepts. But fate will not allow him to meet with his beloved Elizabeth again in this life. This is a recording of the legendary staging by Götz Friedrich for the 1978 Bayreuth Festival conducted by Sir Colin Davis.

Interrupted Melody

Interrupted Melody is the inspirational filmed biography of world-renowned Australian soprano Marjorie Lawrence. She’s a foremost Wagnerian, equal to the vocal and physical demands of the composer’s oeuvre. And she’s a beacon of triumph to anyone who fights back when personal tragedy strikes.

La Sonnambula

Just as a young woman is about to marry her sweetheart, she is discovered—by the entire village, to say nothing of her fiancé—asleep in the bedroom of a stranger. It takes the young man two acts to figure out that sleepwalking is to blame, and everything ends happily. Natalie Dessay as Amina and Juan Diego Flórez as Elvino deliver bel canto magic and vocal fireworks in Mary Zimmerman’s 2009 production. The Tony award-winning director transfers Bellini’s bucolic tale to a rehearsal room in contemporary New York, where an opera company rehearses La Sonnambula—and where the singers are truly in love with each other.

Maytime

An aging opera singer looks back on her long life, including her relationships with her vocal teacher and a student.

The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes

Dark fairytale about a demonic doctor who abducts a beautiful opera singer with designs on transforming her into a mechanical nightingale.

The Tales of Hoffmann

A young poet named Hoffman broods over his failed romances. First, his affair with the beautiful Olympia is shattered when he realizes that she is really a mechanical woman designed by a scientist. Next, he believes that a striking prostitute loves him, only to find out she was hired to fake her affections by the dastardly Dapertutto. Lastly, a magic spell claims the life of his final lover.

John Adams: Nixon in China

John Adams’s groundbreaking work vividly brings to life US President Nixon’s 1972 visit to the People’s Republic of China. Peter Sellars’s Metropolitan Opera production, based on his 1987 world-premiere staging, features choreography by Mark Morris and stars James Maddalena as Nixon, Robert Brubaker as Chairman Mao, Janis Kelly as First Lady Pat Nixon, Russell Braun as Chinese Premier Chou En-lai, and Kathleen Kim as Chiang Ch’ing, Mao’s wife. From the pomp of the public displays to the intimacy of the protagonists most private moments, Adams, Sellars and librettist Alice Goodman reveal the real characters behind the headlines in this landmark American opera.

Phantom

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

The Magic Flute

The Queen of the Night enlists a handsome prince named Tamino to rescue her beautiful kidnapped daughter, Princess Pamina, in this screen adaptation of the beloved Mozart opera. Aided by the lovelorn bird hunter Papageno and a magical flute that holds the power to change the hearts of men, young Tamino embarks on a quest for true love, leading to the evil Sarastro's temple where Pamina is held captive.

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.

Aida

This Italian film version of Verdi's opera stars Sophia Loren on the screen, with Renata Tebaldi providing the vocals.