Lucio Silla (2017)

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.

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”.

The Barber of Seville

23-year-old Gioachino Rossini completed his masterpiece IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA incredibly quickly – legend has it in just 13 days – which Rossini attributed to ‘facility and lots of instinct’. The opera, characterized by youthful energy and bold wit, has all the ingredients for comic chaos: an imprisoned young woman, her lecherous guardian and a young noble suitor. Skilfully plotting behind the scenes is Figaro, an irrepressible and inventive character in whom many have seen a resemblance to the young Rossini himself. The score fizzes with musical brilliance, from Figaro’s famous entrance aria to the frenzy of the Act I finale. This recording sees Joyce DiDonato (Rosina) bring literal meaning to the old theatrical motto Break a leg! She did just that in an earlier show but was determined to finish her commitment and was re-staged into the production to allow for the additional challenges that come when a leading lady in a lively physical role must wheel around the other performers...

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.

Il club dei 27

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

Semele

Opera superstar Cecilia Bartoli offers her first operatic release on DVD in 12 years, and also her first opera in English. Bartoli stars as Semele (a role usually taken by a soprano) in Handel s late opera, which features such well-known arias as Endless pleasure, endless love, Myself I shall adore, and Oh sleep, why dost though leave me? Robert Carsen s stylish modern dress production hints at parallels with the problematic relationship between the late Princess Diana and the British Royal Family. Recorded live at the Zurich Opera House in January, 2007.

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!

The Bartered Bride

Frantisek Filip film version of the Smetana opera.

Rigoletto

This tragic story revolves around the licentious Duke of Mantua, his hunch-backed court jester Rigoletto, and Rigoletto's beautiful daughter Gilda. The opera's original title, La maledizione (The Curse), refers to the curse placed on both the Duke and Rigoletto by a courtier whose daughter had been seduced by the Duke with Rigoletto's encouragement. The curse comes to fruition when Gilda likewise falls in love with the Duke and eventually sacrifices her life to save him from the assassins hired by her father.

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.

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.

Britten: Peter Grimes

The Italian and international press were unanimous in their praise for "Peter Grimes" at La Scala, which revived the tradition of Britten's operas on the lyric stages of Italy. A top British cast was marshaled by the baton of Robin Ticciati. Richard Jones's production focuses on the fisherman as the outside in a brutal and brutalized 1980s society, cut off by mutual suspicion and misunderstanding: an unforgettable production of a 20th-century operatic masterpiece that never loses its power. Filmed in High Definition and recorded in true Surround Sound.

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.

The Art of Singing: Golden Voices of the Century

Imagine a window into the past. Imagine finally connecting singers' bodies to the voices you have always treasured on record, watching footage of performances from another era. All of singers featured here have something in common (with one exception, Sutherland): they sang and performed on stage before the advent of filmed opera. . And it shows, for the first time, a few tantalizing minutes of recently recovered footage from Callas' legendary Lisbon Traviata, featuring Addio dal Passato and Parigi oh cara with Alfredo Kraus. This DVD will leave you asking for more.

Beethoven · Fidelio

A tribute to marriage coming from a bachelor is a tad suspicious. But for Beethoven the idealization of the woman-bride was heartfelt and sincere. It has always been a unique opera starring a courageous wife who wows audiences. Fidelio is a moral title, associated with the ideals of liberty of the French Enlightenment. Nobility and commoners are united in their thirst for justice against the oppression of power. For once the faithful consort of a desaparecido wins her battle against a treacherous tyrant, and the collective joy truly is “nameless”, as is sung on the stage. Especially because the “our heroes to the rescue” finale is recounted by the triumphant symphonic flair of the quintessential musician. Beethoven really does bring the world to collapse at the conclusion of this opera, which begins like a delightful little comedy, but which scales and transcends all the summits of the dramatic-musical art.

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.

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.

Mefistofele

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

Theodora

Julia Bullock, Joyce DiDonato and Jakub Jozef Orlinski star in Katie Mitchell’s thrilling new production of Handel’s Theodora in an alternative modern-day reality, Theodora, a religious fundamentalist, plots for the resistance against the Roman occupation. But when her secret plan to destroy the Roman embassy is discovered, she learns the true brutality of her oppressors. Harry Bicket conducts the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Der Schatzgräber

Franz Schreker’s career was cut short by the events of 1933 in Germany but he achieved real fame with his operas, and the huge success of Der Schatzgräber (‘The Treasure Hunter’) in the 1920s was the high point of his career. In a complex and ultimately tragic tale of destructive greed, desire and toxic social hierarchy, the innkeeper’s daughter Els is forced to confront the consequences of her murderous intent in what conductor Marc Albrecht considers ‘a work of exceptional quality, concentration and significance’. Following the huge success of Korngold’s Das Wunder der Heliane (Naxos DVD 2.110584–85 / Blu-ray NBD0083V), director Christof Loy continues his exploration of strong female characters and neglected 20th-century masterpieces with this highly acclaimed Deutsche Oper Berlin production.

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.

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.