
"Manon", wrote Puccini to his publisher Giulio Ricordi in 1889, "is a heroine I believe in and therefore she cannot fail to win the heart of the public." This turned out to be a truly prophetic statement since none of Puccinis other world successes were received on their first nights as rapturously as Manon Lescaut. The popularity of Puccinis great masterpiece has never waned and the highly acclaimed Götz Friedrich production at Covent Garden was hailed as an operatic milestone. Two of the worlds leading stars--Kiri Te Kanawa and Placido Domingo--head a strong cast conducted by the brilliant Italian conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli.
Géronte de Ravoir
Madrigal Singer
Dance Master
Inkeeper

"Manon", wrote Puccini to his publisher Giulio Ricordi in 1889, "is a heroine I believe in and therefore she cannot fail to win the heart of the public." This turned out to be a truly prophetic statement since none of Puccinis other world successes were received on their first nights as rapturously as Manon Lescaut. The popularity of Puccinis great masterpiece has never waned and the highly acclaimed Götz Friedrich production at Covent Garden was hailed as an operatic milestone. Two of the worlds leading stars--Kiri Te Kanawa and Placido Domingo--head a strong cast conducted by the brilliant Italian conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli.
1983-08-01
7
Manon Lescaut
7.5Live from ROH 1985. Giordano's Andrea Chenier is one of the greatest of verismo operas, full of heart-stopping big tunes and powerful emotional situations. If it is not as well-known as it should be, it is because in summary it sounds a little too like Puccini's Tosca: there is a tussle between political opponents over a woman, an attempt to save a condemned man, a tenor aria about writing poetry on the eve of execution. The difference is that Gerard (Giorgio Zancanaro) is not a villain like Scarpia, he is an idealist whom the French Revolution has betrayed as much as it has his rival the poet Chenier (Placido Domingo). His temptation to abuse his power to seduce the virtuous Maddalena (Anna Tomowa-Sintow) is a momentary one, though its consequences are terrible. There is a streak of post-Wagnerian decadence in much of this--Maddalena is at least as much in love with death as she is with Chenier, and the final love duet has a deeply sinister aspect. -- From Amazon.co.uk
7.7Aspiring thespians Aldo, Giovanni and Giacomo work dead-end jobs while nurturing the dream of staging their production of Cyrano de Bergerac, but love for the same lady will tear their friendship apart. Three years later, Giovanni and Giacomo reunite after learning that Aldo is dying.
5.5Wedding Planner, Kelsey Wilson, is about to have her big break: planning her beloved cousin's lavish and exclusive wedding. Everything is going smoothly until Connor McClane, a devilishly handsome private investigator, shows up and turns Kelsey's world upside-down. Hired by a secret source, Connor quickly disrupts the upcoming nuptials but wins Kelsey's heart in the process.
7.0Barbie as Odette, the young daughter of a baker, follows a unicorn into the Enchanted Forest and is transformed into a swan by an evil wizard intent on defeating the Fairy Queen.
8.2As the Avengers and their allies have continued to protect the world from threats too large for any one hero to handle, a new danger has emerged from the cosmic shadows: Thanos. A despot of intergalactic infamy, his goal is to collect all six Infinity Stones, artifacts of unimaginable power, and use them to inflict his twisted will on all of reality. Everything the Avengers have fought for has led up to this moment - the fate of Earth and existence itself has never been more uncertain.
6.2A newly-developed microchip designed by Zorin Industries for the British Government that can survive the electromagnetic radiation caused by a nuclear explosion has landed in the hands of the KGB. James Bond must find out how and why. His suspicions soon lead him to big industry leader Max Zorin who forms a plan to destroy his only competition in Silicon Valley by triggering a massive earthquake in the San Francisco Bay.
7.4Liana and Alexa (Barbie and Teresa) are best friends who share everything, including their love of singing. Upon meeting a girl inside a mirror, the duo embark on a journey that will put their friendship to the ultimate test.
6.8To prove a point about measuring up and fitting in, Texas teen Willowdean “Dumplin’” Dickson enters a local pageant run by her ex-beauty queen mom.
6.6A talented photographer stuck in a dead-end job inherits an antique Advent calendar that may be predicting the future -- and pointing her toward love.
8.3Eighties teenager Marty McFly is accidentally sent back in time to 1955, inadvertently disrupting his parents' first meeting and attracting his mother's romantic interest. Marty must repair the damage to history by rekindling his parents' romance and - with the help of his eccentric inventor friend Doc Brown - return to 1985.
6.9When cops Schmidt and Jenko join the secret Jump Street unit, they use their youthful appearances to go undercover as high school students. They trade in their guns and badges for backpacks, and set out to shut down a dangerous drug ring. But, as time goes on, Schmidt and Jenko discover that high school is nothing like it was just a few years earlier -- and, what's more, they must again confront the teenage terror and anxiety they thought they had left behind.
6.1In a world ravaged by a virus infection, turning its victims into the Undead, Alice continues on her journey to find survivors and lead them to safety. Her deadly battle with the Umbrella Corporation reaches new heights, but Alice gets some unexpected help from an old friend. A new lead that promises a safe haven from the Undead takes them to Los Angeles, but when they arrive the city is overrun by thousands of Undead - and Alice and her comrades are about to step into a deadly trap.
7.9Follow Alex Honnold as he attempts to become the first person to ever free solo climb Yosemite's 3,000 foot high El Capitan wall. With no ropes or safety gear, this would arguably be the greatest feat in rock climbing history.
7.2All the major DC superheroes are starring in their own films, all but the Teen Titans, so Robin is determined to remedy this situation by getting over his role as a sidekick and becoming a movie star. Thus, with a few madcap ideas and an inspirational song in their hearts, the Teen Titans head to Hollywood to fulfill their dreams.
7.3Good Witch Cassie Nightingale is back to her bewitching ways, but this time she’s also juggling a newborn daughter and her job as town Mayor. With such a busy schedule she and her husband, town sheriff Jake Russell, aren’t getting much sleep. Hoping for a break, Cassie plans a much needed vacation with her new family. But things go awry when a crime wave sweeps through town and an investigative reporter tries to ruin Cassie’s image after a video of her magically disappearing turns up on the internet. To make matters worse, Cassie’s estranged foster mother appears in town and Cassie’s stepdaughter is suddenly accused of the recent robberies. Supported by her loyal family and friends, Cassie must rely on her signature charm to put a stop to the rumors before they completely destroy the town, and a Good Witch’s reputation!
7.4A twice-divorced mother of three who sees an injustice, takes on the bad guy and wins -- with a little help from her push-up bra. Erin goes to work for an attorney and comes across medical records describing illnesses clustered in one nearby town. She starts investigating and soon exposes a monumental cover-up.
4.7Eight years after the third film, the OSS has become the world's top spy agency, while the Spy Kids department has since become defunct. Retired spy Marissa is called back into action, and to bond with her new stepchildren Rebecca and Cecil, she invites them along to stop the evil Timekeeper from taking over the world.
6.4Deloris Van Cartier is again asked to don the nun's habit to help a run-down Catholic school, presided over by Mother Superior. And if trying to reach out to a class full of uninterested students wasn't bad enough, the sisters discover that the school is due to be closed by the unscrupulous chief of a local authority.
The writer Dario Fo applies his inventive genius to Rossini's comic opera in its premiere DVD release. Recorded in 2005 under the musical direction of Maurizio Barbacini, Fo's production brings fresh vitality and colour to the story of Lisetta, and of her father Don Pomponio's increasingly ridiculous attempts to find a husband for her through an advertisement in the newspaper LA GAZZETTA. Filmed using high definition cameras with multitrack sound.
7.7After 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.
10.0Premiered immediately before the enduring masterpieces Rigoletto, Il Trovatore, and La Traviata, Luisa Miller incorporates the youthful vitality that had made Verdi an international sensation while also looking forward to the dramaturgical discipline and sophistication of those later works. In this Live in HD performance, soprano Sonya Yoncheva takes on the riveting title role, capping off a season in which she starred in three cinema transmissions. As her father, Miller, the legendary Plácido Domingo adds another baritone role to his extensive repertoire. Tenor Piotr Beczała as Rodolfo, Alexander Vinogradov as Count Walter, and Dmitry Belosselskiy as Wurm round out the illustrious cast, and Bertrand de Billy conducts.
8.0Live performance from the Schwetzinger Festspiele, 1987. At the age of 21, Italian composer Giacchino Rossini penned the masterful comic opera “L’Italiana in Algeri” (“The Italian Girl in Algiers”) in less than a month. The composer’s youthful exuberance comes across in this infectious 1987 performance. Though she’s known mainly for her Wagner roles, acclaimed German mezzo-soprano Doris Soffel shines in the title role of Isabella. Ralf Weikert conducts, and Mauro Pagano oversees sets and costumes.
10.0Sasha Regan’s award-winning All-male Company are set to lift everyone’s spirits with a treat in their new West End pirate’s cove. The swashbuckling pirates and their winsome lasses sail into the Palace Theatre with their inventive new take on W. S. Gilbert & Arthur Sullivan’s classic operetta THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE. Featuring a dazzling cast singing songs including: “I am a Pirate King”; “Oh, happy day, with joyous glee” and “A rollicking band of pirates we”, they are sure to raise the roof off the Palace Theatre!
9.0Recorded at the Glyndebourne Festival Opera in 1995, this acclaimed presentation of composer Gioachino Rossini's epic opus ERMIONE is based on Jean Racine's play "Andromache." Set in Troy after the city fell to the Greeks, the production recounts the rancorous battle between widow Andromache and Helen of Troy's green-eyed daughter, Ermione for the love of Pyrrhus
0.0David McVicar's exhilarating new production, with Anne Sofie von Otter in the title role, restores the Opera Comique to Bizet's masterpiece. Philippe Jordan, in his Glyndebourne debut, conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Glyndebourne Chorus, and a cast which includes Marcus Haddock, Laurent Naouri, and Lisa Milne.
7.0Stage director Emilio Sagi's production of the legendary Barber of Seville is enriched by a bright distribution. Maria Bayo returns to one of her signature role as Rosina, opposite Juan Diego Florez, the Rossini expert tenor. The title role is embodied by the Italian baritone Pietro Spagnoli, while Ruggero Raimondi and Bruno Pratico reconcile the audience with Don Basilio and Don Bartolo.
0.0Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), WWV 86B, is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner with a German libretto by the composer. It is the second of the four operas that form Wagner's cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung). The story of the opera is based on the Norse mythology told in the Volsunga Saga and the Poetic Edda.[1][2] In Norse mythology, a valkyrie is one in a group of female figures who decide which soldiers die in battle and which live. Die Walküre's best-known excerpt is the "Ride of the Valkyries". DVD release June 2009.
0.0Among DVDs of "Hoffmann" currently available, this is the only one that even begins to stand comparison with the superlative Powell and Pressburger film (whose ideas it occasionally borrows). Olivier Py's baroque imagination, which sometimes leads him into self-indulgence and incoherence, is well suited to bringing out this opera's darkness and he does an excellent job
0.0This is a joy from beginning to end. Although there are many tricks and ideas from Laurent Pelly, as always he seems to still retain the Offenbach magic. La Lott and Monsieur Beuron are a joy, but so is everyone else. The Patriotic Trio by the sea is both a hoot and wonderfully sung, the score seems truly complete yet never flags and the finale sequences for especially acts 1 & 2 are a joy of movement and sound fused as one glorious Offenbachian moment.
0.0The complete version of Verdi's Otello performed by Placido Domingo and Kiri Te Kanawa, at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Gala Performance in honour of Sir Georg Solti's 80th birthday.. 27 October 1992. BBC 2 Television live relay.
0.0Jean-Marie Villegier's modern interpretation of Handel's "Rodelinda" – filmed live at the world-renowned Glyndebourne Opera House in the United Kingdom, sets the timeless tale of jealousy and treachery in the black-and-white world of the silent-movie era. Soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci sings the title role of Rodelinda, with tenor Kurt Streit and bass Umberto Chiummo performing the parts of Grimoaldo and Garibaldo, respectively.
10.0Live 2001 production from the Zurich Opera House of the classic Mozart/Da Ponte opera, with Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting and directed for television and video by Brian Large.
8.0Live performance, Bayerische Staatsoper, 2011. The Tales of Hoffmann (French: LES CONTES D'HOFFMANN) is an opéra fantastique by Jacques Offenbach that combines three short stories by E.T.A. Hoffmann into a haunting whole: a melancholy poet reflects on three women he loved and lost in the past: a mechanical performing doll, a Venetian courtesan, and the consumptive daughter of a celebrated composer. One of the questions this opera poses for any director is how to link the 'tales' of Hoffmann's three lost loves together and knit them satisfactorily into the Prologue and Epilogue. In this production, Richard Jones solves the puzzle by turning it into an autobiographical journey which ends with a grand meet-up of all the characters Hoffmann has encountered: for once, Hoffmann is not presented as a rollicking kind of drunken story-spinner, but rather a sad-eyed, sobered-up depressive, who reaches for the bottle only because his disastrous love life has gone wrong yet again.
8.0José Cura, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Verónica Villarroel and Yvonne Naef lead the star cast of Verdi's blazingly passionate opera IL TROVATORE, in Elijah Moshinsky's new Royal Opera House production co-produced with Teatro Real Madrid, with sets by the noted film designer Dante Ferretti and costumes by Anne Tilby.
7.0Iconic songstress Barbra Streisand culminates her 13-city tour in Miami with dazzling ballads, Broadway standards and stories from behind the scenes.
8.0Gaetano 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.
7.0Part of Tutto Verdi series - Nabucco (2009) Parma. NABUCCO was Verdi’s third work for the stage and proved his first great success when performed in 1842. It deals with the Hebrew’s attempts to break free from the yoke of their Babylonian oppressors and is nowadays numbered among Verdi’s most popular works, not least on account of its famous Chorus of Hebrew Slaves, which has one of the best-loved melodies in the whole history of opera.
7.8Most opera houses ring in the New Year with Johann Strauss Jr.'s most popular operetta--the festiveness of which is appropriate for the occasion--and this December 31, 1983, Covent Garden performance follows suit. An exceptional cast--led by Hermann Prey and Kiri Te Kanawa as the couple whose marriage survives the comic indiscretions of three long acts--obviously has as much fun as the audience. Plácido Domingo leads the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House through its paces with panache. Prince Orlofsky's Act II party is always a splendid opportunity to pull out all the stops with surprise "guests," and this performance makes the most of its chance: entering the proceedings to sing one of his tailor-made chansons, "She," is French crooner Charles Aznavour, who is followed by dancers Merle Park and Wayne Eagling, their delightful pas de deux flashily choreographed by Sir Frederick Ashton.