
Valery Gergiev conducts Mariusz Trelinski’s thrilling new production of these rarely heard one-act operas. Anna Netrebko stars as the blind princess of the title in Tchaikovsky’s lyrical work, opposite Piotr Beczala as Vaudémont, the man who wins her love—and wakes her desire to be able to see. Nadja Michael and Mikhail Petrenko are Judith and Bluebeard in Bartók’s gripping psychological thriller about a woman discovering her new husband’s murderous past.
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7.9As Agnes slowly dies of cancer, her sisters are so immersed in their own psychic pains that they are unable to offer her the support she needs.
7.5In 1916, a Chicago steel worker accidentally kills his supervisor and flees to the Texas panhandle with his girlfriend and little sister to work harvesting wheat in the fields of a stoic farmer.
7.5A research chemist comes under personal and professional attack when he decides to appear in a 60 Minutes exposé on Big Tobacco.
6.2After inheriting the family mortuary, a pyrophobic mortician accidentally exposes hundreds of un-cremated bodies to toxic medical waste. As the corpses re-animate, the mortician's inheritance-seeking younger brother unexpectantly shows up, stumbling upon a full zombie outbreak!
6.2A plane containing a highly classified government project crashes outside of a small town in the US. Realizing the level of danger, the government tries to secretly fix the problem. As tensions grow, the situation gets out of control, and civilians from the town find themselves facing their worst nightmare: a genetically enhanced killing machine that doesn't know how to stop.
7.9The three sons of devout Danish farmer Morten have widely disparate religious beliefs. Youngest son Anders shares his father's religion, but eldest son Mikkel has lost his faith, while middle child Johannes has become delusional and proclaims that he is Jesus Christ himself. When Mikkel's wife, Inger goes into a difficult childbirth, everyone's beliefs are put to the test.
7.3Richard Hanney has a rude awakening when a glamorous female spy falls into his bed - with a knife in her back. Having a bit of trouble explaining it all to Scotland Yard, he heads for the hills of Scotland to try to clear his name by locating the spy ring known as The 39 Steps.
7.1An ethical Baltimore defense lawyer disgusted with rampant legal corruption is forced to defend a judge he despises in a rape trial under the threat of being disbarred.
8.5An idiosyncratic FBI agent investigates the murder of a young woman in the even more idiosyncratic town of Twin Peaks. (This standalone version of the series pilot was produced for the European VHS market and has an alternate, closed ending.)
8.0Three steelworkers enlist in the Vietnam War, one leaving behind a rushed marriage, the others a shared love. What they encounter overseas changes their lives forever.
7.5In czarist Russia, a neurotic soldier and his distant cousin formulate a plot to assassinate Napoleon.
6.5With the help of a talking freeway billboard, a "wacky weatherman" tries to win the heart of an English newspaper reporter, who is struggling to make sense of the strange world of early-90s Los Angeles.
7.4In the questionable town of Deer Meadow, Washington, FBI Agent Desmond inexplicably disappears while hunting for the man who murdered a teen girl. The killer is never apprehended, and, after experiencing dark visions and supernatural encounters, Agent Dale Cooper chillingly predicts that the culprit will claim another life. Meanwhile, in the more cozy town of Twin Peaks, hedonistic beauty Laura Palmer hangs with lowlifes and seems destined for a grisly fate.
7.0The puppy love of two teenagers is set against a backdrop of adults struggling with their own lives. As a couple in love, they don't care about anything but themselves and seem totally unaware about everything that surrounds them.
8.0Two melancholic Hong Kong policemen fall in love: one with a mysterious underworld figure, the other with a beautiful and ethereal server at a late-night restaurant.
7.7The mysterious Count Orlok summons a happily married real estate agent to his castle, located up in the Transylvanian mountains, to finalise a terrifying deal.
6.4The story of two rival business managers, Xu and Bo, who are fighting over a revolutionary new in-house technology for control of their company. If Xu wins, his future will be secured.
7.1Billy is released after five years in prison. In the next moment, he kidnaps teenage student Layla and visits his parents with her, pretending she is his girlfriend and they will soon marry.
8.0In a Danish village in the early 1600s, a young woman named Anne, whose mother was thought to be a witch, develops sympathy toward an old woman, Marte, who is accused of witchcraft. The intervention of Anne's older but kindly husband, Pastor Absalon saved her mother -- but now, urged on by his overbearing mother, he refuses to help Marte. When Absalon's son returns home and is attracted to Anne, it's a matter of time before her family destiny catches up with her.
7.4When the actor in a scene for his film Life And Nothing More… has to quit, a film director casts another man for the part. However, complications arise since the man and the woman who was cast for the scene know each other.
0.0A 2002 live performance of Mikel Rouse's Dennis Cleveland, a multimedia opera set entirely on a television talk show in the late 20th century.
0.0"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.
0.0The most popular Czech comic opera, with a libretto by Karel Sabina, marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of Bedřich Smetana, in the current production of the National Theater in Prague. For more than 150 years, The Bartered Bride has dominated Czech opera. No one else, not even Smetana himself, has managed to surpass its popularity, which over the years has become part of our national DNA, so to speak. At the time of its creation in the 1860s, however, The Bartered Bride was actually quite a bold experiment – Bedřich Smetana and librettist Karel Sabina masterfully mocked all those who imagined "national opera" as an idyllic picture of the Czech countryside, where national virtues reign supreme.
0.0Award winning singer Katherine Jenkins performs an intimate concert in London's Cadogan Hall, accompanied by special guests, Collabro. Performing for a small audience of invited guests, and accompanied by a 25-piece orchestra, the celebrated artists will sing the songs that have made them famous - a selection that includes classical, popular, and musical theatre numbers.
8.5The Royal Ballet performs Tchaikovsky's classic ballet, choreographed by Liam Scarlett and starring Marianela Nunez as Odette/Odile and Vadim Muntagirov as Prince Siegfried.
0.0From the first steps of an emerging singer to the final bow of a celebrated soprano, 'PRIMADONNA OR NOTHING' follows three relentless women who sacrifice everything to be an opera star.
“Let us assume that Switzerland is truly a paradise. The music hereto was written long ago. We have merely forgotten it.” (Daniel Schmid) This is the material from which the most Swiss of all operas is made: the legendary Wilhelm Tell – a Swiss hero: straightforward, a primus inter pares of the indomitable freedom fighters, a good shot, surefire. A myth that becomes a poetic playground: nature in turmoil, the struggle for freedom and forbidden love. A legendary overture at a gallop with an iconic post horn motif – all this and much more in the thirty-seventh and last opera by Rossini.
6.0CARMEN is the classic tale of forbidden passion between a young man and a spoken-for woman, Carmen. From ORF and TDK Music, this release features a live performance of Georges Bizet's 19th century operatic masterwork Carmen. Directed by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Franco Zeffirelli, the production was shot on December 9, 1978, at the Wiener Straatsoper. Starring Elena Obraztsova in the titular role, the orchestra is conducted by Carlos Kleiber.
0.0Just as a young woman is about to marry her sweetheart, she is discovered—by the entire village, to say nothing of her fiancé—asleep in the bedroom of a stranger. It takes the young man two acts to figure out that sleepwalking is to blame, and everything ends happily. Natalie Dessay as Amina and Juan Diego Flórez as Elvino deliver bel canto magic and vocal fireworks in Mary Zimmerman’s 2009 production. The Tony award-winning director transfers Bellini’s bucolic tale to a rehearsal room in contemporary New York, where an opera company rehearses La Sonnambula—and where the singers are truly in love with each other.
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!
0.0Richard Wagner called Die Walküre the “first evening” of the Ring of the Nibelung; he called Das Rheingold the prologue or Vorabend. Musically and dramatically, we are introduced to a radically new and different world when the opening bars of Die Walküre resound. A fully developed orchestral palette of Leitmotivs paints a wild storm scene, and the curtain rises on a modest dwelling: a fully human scene that has nothing to do with the gods, dwarves and nymphs of Das Rheingold. At the same time, however, the way Die Walküre portrays radical beginnings reveals some telling reminiscences of the unfolding of Das Rheingold. Die Walküre is exciting and deeply feeling drama.
6.6The life and career of Italian opera singer Farinelli, considered one of the greatest castrato singers of all time.
0.0The tale of a quick-witted fox and her escape from confinement for a life in the forest.
0.0At 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.
0.0In the awe-inspiring Teatro Olimpico,Vicenza, Cecilia Bartoli, recognised as one of the best singers of our time, gives the most outstanding recital of work from a variety of composers such as Caccini, Schubert, Handel, Vivaldi, Bellini, Donizetti,Mozart, Rossini, Viardot and Bizet.
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
0.0Performed live at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Gluck's opera in three acts is conducted by Hartmut Haenchen. Performers include Jochen Kowalski, Gillian Webster and Jeremy Budd, alongside the Royal Opera Chorus and Orchestra. When Orpheus mourns for his late wife Eurydice, the god Cupid offers him the chance to descend into the underworld and lead her back to the land of the living, on the condition that he does not look at her face. He sets out on his journey, but his path to the Elysian Fields is blocked by the fierce Furies.