La bohème - ROH (2018)

Salome

This filmed version of Strauss' shocker features Teresa Stratas as opera's most depraved teenager, and she's as perfect a Salome as one would ever hope to see or hear. Stratas inhabits the role, exploring the character's sensuousness as she vainly woos Jochanaan, her venomous hatred when she's rejected, the crazed look in her eyes when she demands his head--on a silver platter, no less. Such complete identification with a role, especially of a character so malignant helps make this 1974 Salome stand out among the many fine DVDs of the opera.

Così fan tutte

Semyon Bychkov conducts a cast of young, up-and-coming talent including American soprano Corinne Winters in a new production of Mozart’s opera on the nature of love.

Strauss II: Die Fledermaus

Glyndebourne's pulsating new production of the Waltz King's much-loved comic operetta. Its story centers on a magnificent masked ball, given by a Russian prince, that brings together all the main characters in various disguises. The three-act journey from boudoir to ballroom to jail provides ample opportunities for farce and humor, but also for genuine human emotion and a surprisingly realistic view of urban life.

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.

Amadeus

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

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.

Wagner: Tannhäuser

Anew production of Tannhäuser, which was premiered on 26 July 2019 and presented the Bayreuth debut of conductor Valery Gergiev, as well as the house debut of young soprano star Lise Davidsen. Tobias Kratzer’s staging presented Tannhäuser as a wildly contemporary parable of art and freedom which was praised as “novel” and “wrenching” (New York Times) and received exceptional press acclaim. hey were joined by mezzo soprano Elena Zhidkova’s Venus (“scene stealing”, according to Opera Today), baritone Markus Eiche’s Wolfram and Stephen Milling’s Landgraf.

Rigoletto

In Rigoletto, the deformed figure of the hunchbacked jester at the Mantuan court acts as a foil to his cynical and powerful master, an unscrupulous philanderer contrasted with his cruel and unforgiving fool. Rigoletto encourages and welcomes the Duke's conquests, pitilessly mocking his victims until he discovers that the Duke has abducted the one person he genuinely loves, his own daughter. As a result, the character of the court jester is transformed into a tragic figure who, in spite of his evident immorality and malice, allows us to sense the devotion he feels for his daughter and his horror at being destroyed by the same despotic world as that which he himself has helped to create.

Jenůfa

When a beautiful young woman in rural Moravia becomes unexpectedly pregnant, she learns that love is sometimes only skin-deep. Janáček took Gabriela Preissová's grim tale of infanticide and redemption, and condensed it into a masterful, spine-chilling drama. The tragic plight of the protagonists is presented with unsentimental realism that cannot help but trigger a response of deep compassion. Premiered at the National Theatre in the composer's hometown of Brno 115 years ago, the opera took him nine years to complete and is the first in which his distinctive voice can clearly be heard.

Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor

When Sir John Falstaff decides that he wants to have a little fun he writes two letters to a pair of Window wives: Mistress Ford and Mistress Page. When they put their heads together and compare missives, they plan a practical joke or two to teach the knight a lesson. But Mistress Ford's husband is a very jealous man and is pumping Falstaff for information of the affair. Meanwhile the Pages' daughter Anne is besieged by suitors.

Lohengrin

After Tristan und Isolde (2016), Parsifal (2017) and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (2018) this is the fourth installment of the exclusive, multiyear partnership between Deutsche Grammophon and the Bayreuth Festival, in which the Yellow Label is the exclusive audiovisual partner of the mythical Wagner festival, releasing each edition's new production on Blu-ray. This year, we are proud to release on Blu-ray the celebrated production of Lohengrin which was premiered on 25 July 2018, featuring an illustrious cast including Piotr Beczala and Anja Harteros in their house debuts, as well as the acclaimed return of Waltraud Meier to the Bayreuth Festival. The New York Times praised Piotr Beczala’s Lohengrin as “outstanding”, Anja Harteros [making] her impressive Bayreuth debut” as Elsa, and Ortrud “played with dominant presence by the incomparable Waltraud Meier”.

Claude Debussy - Pelléas et Mélisande

Drama lyrique in five acts, after the play by Maruice Maeterlink

Carmen in 3D

Passion, jealousy and betrayal take center stage at Londons Royal Opera House in a spectacular production of the worlds most popular opera. Bizets Carmen is packed with some of the best-loved and memorable music in all of opera. In this characteristically vivid and vibrant stage production by Francesca Zambello, beautifully filmed in 3D by Julian Napier, Seville is brought to life with ranks of soldiers, crowds of peasants, gypsies and bullfighters as well as a magnificent horse, a donkey and even some chickens! This spectacular RealD and Royal Opera House production features a supremely talented cast, gripping drama and Bizets energetic and passionate score. It is truly a musical event to remember!

Viva Vivaldi

Viva Vivaldi! is a concert by the Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli interspersing arias from the 20 surviving operas of Vivaldi with two concertos. Given with the early music ensemble Il Giardino Armonico before a very appreciative audience in the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the performance is part of Bartoli's exploration of the Venetian composer's opera music which also includes The Vivaldi Album. There is a startling dynamic energy, which contrasts powerfully with the more restrained interpretations by singers such as Emma Kirkby. Bartoli's natural Italian and the live atmosphere of Maria Grazia d'Alessio's oboe gives her interpretation of the quietly haunting and melodically rich "Non ti Lusinghi la Crudeltade" from Tito Manlio a particular piquancy. The Flautino Concerto is a most attractive interlude, while the more famous Lute/Violin Concerto beguiles with its exquisite lyricism.

Alceste

John Eliot Gardiner conducts Gluck’s 1776 French version of “Alceste” at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. Soprano Anne Sofie von Otter takes the title role of Alceste, Queen of Thessaly, who offers to die at the hands of the gods in place of her husband, Admète (Paul Groves), so that the people will not lose their king. Alceste is then saved from the underworld by Hercule (Dietrich Henschel).

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.

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.

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.

The Blu-ray Experience II: Opera, Ballet & theatre

Plot unavailable

Poulenc's The Human Voice / Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle

Running through Bartók’s disenchanted tale, whose haunting music was initially condemned as unplayable, and the expression of despair in Poulenc’s monologue, the director Krzysztof Warlikowski perceives a shared dramatic thread, a shared feminine consciousness and a shared sense of imprisonment and suffocation: for the woman who penetrates the confines of Bluebeard’s castle and Elle, the woman who clings to a telephone conversation with a man as the only thing worth living for, are condemned to share the same fate. And this man she speaks to, does he really exist? Unless the director has interpreted Cocteau’s words to the letter and the telephone has become a “terrifying weapon that leaves no trace, makes no noise”…

Berg: Wozzeck

Based on real events and drawing on Georg Büchner's revolutionary play, Alban Berg's Wozzeck turns a grimly tragic narrative of violence and murder into one of the most powerful and original operas of the 20th century. Berg's uncompromising portrayal of brutality and madness generated much controversy, but the significance of Wozzeck was soon recognised; its compelling lyrical expansiveness, large-scale dramatic gestures and remarkable musical structures producing music of overwhelming emotional intensity. The Financial Times declared this to be 'a beautiful, moving, engrossing production… this is a consummate Wozzeck, blending clarity, lyricism, compassion and crushing force.'

Alban Berg - Wozzeck

The soldier Wozzeck (Christian Gerhaher) flits through a world that he is unable to decipher. The doctor torments him with absurd medical experiments; the captain humiliates and ridicules him. And Wozzeck’s lover, Marie (Gun-Brit Barkmin), with whom he has a child, cuckolds him with the drum major. Wozzeck becomes a murderer, stabbing Marie to death. Georg Büchner’s drama fragment, on which Alban Berg based his first opera, is an unflinching case study of social injustice and human suffering. But it is also a grotesque piece that thrives on exaggeration – and in which only a fine line separates the unfathomable from the ridiculous. Accordingly, director Andreas Homoki forgoes all realism.

Phantom

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