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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Diana Damrau, Ildebrando D'Arcangelo, Pietro Spagnoli, Marcella Orsatti Talamanca, and Monica Bacelli star in this La Scala production of the Mozart opera conducted by Gerard Korsten and directed by Giorgio Strehler.
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.
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.
Serge Prokofiev's enigmatic work, this is a tale of the supernatural, religious hysteria and demonic possession which is set in Germany at the time of The Inquisition.
Axel Kohler, the internationally renowned countertenor has brought Admeto into the modern era in timeless style by the skillful application of imaginative theatrical digressions. Köhler's production at the Halle Opernhaus revisits a work that encompasses comedy, tragedy and almost absurd grotesqueness, couching it in the convincing metaphor of a modern hospital.
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.
1965 production of The Cunning Vixen directed by Walter Felsenstein at Studio Adlershof.
Premiered in Stockholm in 1978, the work is based on a play by Michel de Ghelderode (1898-1962) and unfolds in an imaginary land inspired by the famous Dutch painter Pieter Brueghel the Elder: Nekrotzar, the Grand Macabre, announces the end of the world; but in a land ruled by eros, alcohol and corruption, his plan to unleash the Apocalypse bursts like a soap bubble. LIVE RECORDING FROM THE GRAN TEATRE DEL LICEU, BARCELONA, 2011
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.
