NORMA tells the tragic story of a supposedly chaste druidic priestess, who is driven to murderous jealousy by her lover's inconstancy. But she forgoes vengeance, protects innocence, and sees to it that the guilty atone for their crimes. Fiorenza Cedolins, Sonia Ganassi, Vincenzo La Scola, and Andrea Papi star in this 2007 Gran Theatre Del Liceu/Grand Theatre de Geneve co-production of the Bellini opera.
Giacomo Puccini's bittersweet opera of high-spirited bohemians and the doomed love between Rodolfo, the idealistic poet and Mimi, the consumptive flower-maker, is a beautifully balanced series of tableaux depicting the infectious joie de vivre of youth and the tragic waste of disease and separation. The legendary and incomparable partnership of Mirella Freni and Luciano Pavarotti as the two lovers has been captured in this special live recording from stage of the San Francisco Opera. Brian Large has adapted Francesca Zambello's production for video, further illuminating the fascinating interaction of Puccini's characters. Gino Quilico sings Marcello, the colorful and moody painter, whose tempestuous relationship with the flirtatious Musetta (sung by Sandra Pacetti), comically mirrors the more profound love of Rodolfo and Mimi. Nicolai Ghiaurov sings Colline.
Drama lyrique in five acts, after the play by Maruice Maeterlink
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.
In the present stylised production by Lorenzo Mariani the 'violet-perfumed murderess' is taken by mezzo-soprano Marianne Cornetti, one of the most in-demand representatives of her vocal category. Opposite her, in the role of Adriana, is a soprano who as a Verdi and verismo specialist also appears regularly at all the major international opera houses, Micaela Carosi. The 'cock-of-the-walk' role is sung by the world-class tenor Marcelo Álvarez. His timbre, velvety smooth yet robustly virile, is ideally suited to a vocal characterisation of the idolised Maurizio. Conductor Renato Palumbo is very much at home with Cilea's operatic masterpiece, since the Italian Romantic and verismo periods are at the core of his extensive repertoire.
Live performance of Verdi's Missa da Requiem at the Edinburgh Festival in 1982. An all-star quartet of soloists under the baton of Claudio Abbado, recorded in high definition audio.
Nancy Shade is persuasive as the awkward adolescent Marie, whose naiveté leads relentlessly to her downfall. Michael Ebbecke is sympathetic as Stolzius, her jilted lover and avenger, while William Cochran is properly brutish as Desportes, the officer who initiates her spiral of decline. Bernhard Kontarsky gets a dedicated response from his Stuttgart Opera forces, who perform with belief in this often excessive but always engrossing work. Recorded at the Staatsoper Stuttgart, 1989.
The La Scala Rheingold in May 2010 inaugurated Guy Cassiers Ring-Cycle and introduces a completely new paradigm to this work. While before him Patrice Chéreau had laid his focus on a historical analysis from 1870 to 1930 Germany, Guy Cassiers’ Ring unfolds “from our own present-day moment; it [takes] place in ‘the now’, the Jetztzeit (Walter Benjamin), placing our present and our future into the context of the promises and curses that we have inherited from history … The Cassiers Ring shows how the globalized moment of 2010 continues to build on the Wagnerian vocabularies of 1870.” (Michael Steinberg) Cast with a number of opera stars like René Pape, Stephan Rügamer, Johannes Martin Kränzle and Anna Larsson and conducted by Daniel Barenboim, this Rheingold is bound to put the audience under its spell.
Japan, early twentieth century. U.S. Navy Lieutenant B.F. Pinkerton inspects the house he has leased from a marriage broker. The broker, Goro, has procured him three servants and a geisha wife, Cio-Cio-San, known as Madama Butterfly. He is enchanted with the fragile Cio-Cio-San. Cio-Cio-San is heard in the distance joyously singing of her wedding. In a quiet moment, Cio-Cio-San shows her bridegroom her few earthly treasures and tells him of her intention to embrace his Christian faith. The Imperial Commissioner performs the wedding ceremony, and the guests toast the couple. The celebration is interrupted by Cio-Cio-San's uncle, a Buddhist priest, who bursts in, cursing the girl for having renounced her ancestors' religion. Alone with Cio-Cio-San in the moonlit garden, her husband dries her tears, and she joins him in singing of their love.
La Scala went all out for its 1986 production of this grandest of grand operas, with a strong cast and, most important for a video recording, a larger-than-life staging. The Triumph Scene in Act II is by no means Aida's only attraction, but it is the part that makes the strongest and most lasting impression and it is the visual and musical climax of this production. Stage director Luca Ronconi brings on a procession to dwarf all processions: looted treasures, heroic statuary, miserable captives struggling under the lash of whip-bearing slave drivers. On par with these visuals is Lorin Maazel's first-class performance of the popular Grand March with the outstanding La Scala chorus and orchestra. In Act III, the contrasting tranquility of the Nile Scene also gets a visual treatment to match the music's qualities.
1965 production of The Cunning Vixen directed by Walter Felsenstein at Studio Adlershof.
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”…
In the film One Night. One Life, based on the cycle Pierrot Lunaire, Arnold Schönberg’s opus 21, director Oliver Herrmann has created a surreal, at times grotesque dream world set in a modern city, through which Pierrot moves like a spirit. In each new number she passes through different scenes and levels of the world around us: such as an abattoir, a peep-show, a station or a supermarket.
A documentary about the life and career of the conductor Carlos Kleiber. Featuring interviews with Placido Domingo, Brigitte Fassbaender, Manfred Honeck, Michael Gielen, and others. On the 11th July 2004 Carlos Kleiber got into his car and drove from Munich, via the Alps, to his holiday home in the remote Slovenian village of Konjsica. There he wrote a final letter to a friend in which he bid farewell to the world. A short time later the conductor, increasingly plagued by illness and suffering, was found dead.
A production of Mozart's opera recorded live at Zurich Opera House in 2000. Cecilia Bartoli leads an all-star cast including Roberto Saccà, Liliana Nikiteanu, and Agnes Baltsa. The conductor is Nikolaus Harnoncourt. Filmed live at the Zurich Opera House in February 2000 on a set which visualises the subtitle "The School for Lovers", the plot revolves around two army officers arguing about the fidelity of their brides, then setting out to test their chastity. Despite the often playful humour, this is not only psychologically telling music-making, but reveals Mozart exploring the structure of opera, discarding convention to mix large ensemble sections with arias for as many different combinations of singers as possible. With Liliana Nikiteanu attractively contrasted with Bartoli, and thoroughly convincing performances by Roberto Sacca (Ferrando) and Oliver Widmer (Guilelmo), this Così has a freshness and flow which, coupled with the timeless romantic themes, feels very contemporary.
When a wealthy Turkish aristocrat arrives in a humble Italian town, the married women roll their eyes in delight, their rival lovers lose out, and the husbands rage with jealousy. These may be silly clichés, but they are the subject of IL TURCO IN ITALIA and the composer plays with them – quite deliberately. He knows that he is putting archetypes of Italian comedy on stage with figures such as the exotic lady-killer Selim, the young woman Fiorilla, who is chained to the stove at home, but adventurous, and her husband Geronio, who is ridiculous because he is much too old – and relishes the ironic exaggeration. Franz Welser-Most conducts the Zurich Opera House Chorus and Orchestra in this performance of Rossini's opera buffa.
At first glance, the title of Shostakovich’s opera seems to speak for itself: Katherina, neglected and unhappy in her marriage, commits the most heinous crime just like the Shakespearian Lady Macbeth. But Nikolai Leskov’s short novel, which portrays Katherina as a monster, was only the starting point for Shostakovich to elicit understanding for an oppressed woman whose pursuit for self-determination is suppressed by society. Through combining satiric, grotesque and tragic elements in his music, Shostakovich succeeds in striking the balance between repulsion at Katherina’s immoral acts and sympathy for her. Violence, eroticism and the paralysing boredom of Russian society in the 19th century are the founding elements of this composition. The choir and orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino conducted by James Conlon accompany tremendous soloists such as Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet, Vladimir Vaneev and Vsevolod Grivnov in the original language in this live recording.
Russian-born composer Sofia Gubaidulina entered the international spotlight at a relatively late age, when the 49-year-old came forward with her premier violin concerto, "Offertorium," in 1980. Gubaidulina authored that piece for Gideon Kremer. Curiously, it would be another 12 years before Gubaidulina received a commission (from Paul Sacher) to author her second violin concerto, and another 15 years after that until the notes fell on ears ripe with anticipation. For the debut of the "Second Violin Concerto," Gubaidulina insisted that no one other than German violin virtuoso Anne-Sophie Mutter perform it. That Mutter performance from August 2007 appears, in its entirety, in this classical concert film. Jan Schmidt-Garre directs.
Richard Wagner's operatic retelling of the story of the search for the Holy Grail receives a lavish production in this video, which records performances held in Bayreuth, St. Petersburg, and Ravello, Italy. Internationally renowned tenor Placido Domingo leads the distinguished cast; Tony Palmer directs.
The Marriage of Figaro that received its premiere on 26 February 1975 in the Komische Oper Berlin was Walter Felsenstein’s last production and in many respects can be regarded as representing his legacy. Having just returned from directing a guest production at Vienna’s Burgtheater, Felsenstein had been working on Figaro since early February 1974. He had already directed three productions of the work – in 1934 in Cologne, in 1942 at the Salzburg Festival and in 1950 at the Komische Oper.
