The career of Maria Callas was just a bit too early and too brief to receive full and satisfying video documentation like that now being accorded to such singers as Renée Fleming and Luciano Pavarotti. This black-and-white televised recital (Callas's Paris debut) took place at the Paris Opera on December 19, 1958 when television was still in its infancy. We might wish that it had happened earlier, when her voice was in better condition, or later, when video recording technology was more advanced--so that, for example, we would not have to take the narrator's word that Callas is wearing a red dress. But this is probably the best available Callas video recording, and her fans will welcome it warmly. Visual elements were as important as the vocal dimensions in her art.
Self - Tenor
Self - Bass
Self - Bass
The career of Maria Callas was just a bit too early and too brief to receive full and satisfying video documentation like that now being accorded to such singers as Renée Fleming and Luciano Pavarotti. This black-and-white televised recital (Callas's Paris debut) took place at the Paris Opera on December 19, 1958 when television was still in its infancy. We might wish that it had happened earlier, when her voice was in better condition, or later, when video recording technology was more advanced--so that, for example, we would not have to take the narrator's word that Callas is wearing a red dress. But this is probably the best available Callas video recording, and her fans will welcome it warmly. Visual elements were as important as the vocal dimensions in her art.
1958-12-19
8.5
Callas making her belated Paris debut at the sumptuous Paris Oryoga in 1958
During the Napoleonic wars, a Spanish officer and an opposing officer find a book written by the former's grandfather.
Bud Baxter is a minor clerk in a huge New York insurance company, until he discovers a quick way to climb the corporate ladder. He lends out his apartment to the executives as a place to take their mistresses. Although he often has to deal with the aftermath of their visits, one night he's left with a major problem to solve.
As a result of a successful conspiracy against Menshikov, Peter II is prematurely recognized as an adult and is in a hurry to be crowned in Moscow. The Dolgoruky brothers gather for this celebration. There were eight of them - all-powerful and influential representatives of the ancient Rurikovich family - and among them the beautiful Ekaterina, the daughter of the huntsman Alexei.
A vacationing entomologist suffers extreme physical and psychological trauma after being taken captive by the residents of a poor seaside village and made to live with a woman whose life task is shoveling sand for them.
A retired San Francisco detective suffering from acrophobia investigates the strange activities of an old friend's wife, all the while becoming dangerously obsessed with her.
Just out of jail, rumpled English archaeologist Arthur reconnects with his wayward crew of tombaroli accomplices – a happy-go-lucky collective of itinerant grave-robbers who survive by looting Etruscan tombs and fencing the ancient treasures they dig up.
Set against Paris' oldest bridge, the Pont Neuf, while it was closed for repairs, this film is a love story between two young vagrants: Alex, a would be circus performer addicted to alcohol and sedatives and Michele, a painter driven to a life on the streets because of a failed relationship and an affliction which is slowly turning her blind.
Polish immigrant Karol Karol finds himself out of a marriage, a job and a country when his French wife, Dominique, divorces him after six months due to his impotence. Forced to leave France after losing the business they jointly owned, Karol enlists fellow Polish expatriate Mikołaj to smuggle him back to their homeland.
Young lovers Sailor and Lula hit the road to start a new life together away from the wrath of Lula’s deranged, disapproving mother, who has hired a team of hitmen to cut the lovers’ surreal honeymoon short.
Terry Malloy is a kindhearted dockworker, and former boxer, who is tricked by his corrupt bosses into leading his friend to death. After falling in love, he tries to leave the waterfront and expose his employers.
A game designer on the run from assassins must play her latest virtual reality creation with a marketing trainee to determine if the game has been damaged.
When Lenny and his wife, Amanda, adopt a baby, Lenny realizes that his son is a genius and becomes obsessed with finding the boy's biological mother in hopes that she will be brilliant too. But when he learns that Max's mother is Linda Ash, a kindhearted prostitute and porn star, Lenny is determined to reform her immoral lifestyle. A Greek chorus chimes in to relate the plot to Greek mythology in this quirky comedy.
Covered in ice and snow, Elior Forest is the home to dangerous magical beasts and 50 elves frozen in ice. One day, the great spirit Puck helps a young girl break out of her ice prison. Her name is Emilia, a half-elf born with silver hair, long ears, and amethyst eyes—features that resemble the evil Witch who destroyed half the world long ago. Shunned by society because of her appearance, Emilia dwells in the forest with Puck as her sole companion and family. Burdened with a sin of destruction she does not remember committing, she spends her days trying to find a way to help her frozen kin. But when the great spirit Melakuera, the Arbitrator of the world, finds Emilia, her right to stay alive is brought into question. Will the bonds of ice she formed with Puck prove to be the warm thread that defies fate?
Anton and Erika started out as friends for five years and got into a romantic relationship for seven years. Anton is a commercial director while Erika is a former band member and becomes his stay-at-home partner. The day finally comes when he asks her to marry him.
A well-known Neapolitan writer returns to his hometown after a long absence and encounters an old friend known as Caracas. Caracas, once a neo-fascist skinhead, is now converting to Islam.
After her adoptive mother dies, Hortense, a successful black optometrist, seeks out her birth mother. She's shocked when her research leads her to Cynthia, a working class white woman.
Divine G, imprisoned at Sing Sing for a crime he didn't commit, finds purpose by acting in a theatre group alongside other incarcerated men in this story of resilience, humanity, and the transformative power of art.
Disciplined Italian composer Antonio Salieri becomes consumed by jealousy and resentment towards the hedonistic and remarkably talented young Viennese composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
A celebration of love and creative inspiration takes place in the infamous, gaudy and glamorous Parisian nightclub, at the cusp of the 20th century. A young poet, who is plunged into the heady world of Moulin Rouge, begins a passionate affair with the club's most notorious and beautiful star.
Jerry Mulligan is an exuberant American expatriate in Paris trying to make a reputation as a painter. His friend Adam is a struggling concert pianist who's a long time associate of a famous French singer, Henri Baurel. A lonely society woman, Milo Roberts, takes Jerry under her wing and supports him, but is interested in more than his art.
In the spotlight of global media coverage, the first transgender woman ever to perform as Don Giovanni in a professional opera, makes her historic debut in one of the reddest states in the U.S.
Zaporozhets za Dunayem (Ukrainian: Запорожець за Дунаєм, translated as A Zaporozhian (Cossack) Beyond the Danube, also referred to as Cossacks in Exile) is a Ukrainian comic opera with spoken dialogue in three acts with music and libretto by the composer Semen Hulak-Artemovsky (1813–1873). The orchestration has subsequently been rewritten by composers such as Reinhold Glière and Heorhiy Maiboroda. This is one of the best-known Ukrainian comic operas depicting national themes.
Adapted from the opera written by the composer Semen Hulak-Artemovsky.
Car Men is a collaboration between the renowned choreographer Jíri Kylían and filmmaker Boris Paval Conen. Based on the opera 'CARMEN' by Georges Bizet they shot a hilarious and poetic short film in the destroyed landscape of a Czech brown coal mine. The actors in this film are older dancers from Kylían's troupe (around 50 years old) and the main prop is a 'TATRA 87', a famous car from 1937.
This is a good video of "Figaro", but there are a couple of better ones available. The Bohm and the Pappano are better still due to the female members of the casts. The reason for buying this one is the "Figaro", Bryn Terfel. No one can top him today in that role. John Eliot Gardiner also stands out. Many of us have voiced their opinion that If the Metropolitan Opera would release it's 1998 version, that would be the one to get.
All the throbbing eroticism—and ultimate heartbreak—of Puccini’s youthful score is unleashed by James Levine and his top-flight cast. Plácido Domingo is Des Grieux, the handsome, headstrong young aristocrat who falls head over heels for the enticing, impetuous Manon Lescaut (Renata Scotto). Manon returns his love, but her obsession with luxury ruins them both. Gian Carlo Menotti’s opulent production, with sets and costumes by Desmond Heeley, superbly captures the colorful world of 18th century France.
Inspired by an exclusive interview and performance footage of Chavela Vargas shot in 1991 and guided by her unique voice, the film weaves an arresting portrait of a woman who dared to dress, speak, sing, and dream her unique life into being.
A struggling female soprano finds work playing a male female impersonator, but it complicates her personal life.
Simon Keenlyside smolders dangerously in the title role of Mozart’s version of the legend of Don Juan, creating a vivid portrait of a man who is a law unto himself, and all the more dangerous for his eternally seductive allure. Adam Plachetka is his occasionally unruly servant Leporello. It’s when Giovanni tangles with Donna Anna (Hibla Gerzmava) that things start to unravel, aided by the reappearance of Donna Elvira (Malin Byström), who is determined not to let her seducer go. With Paul Appleby as Don Ottavio, Donna Anna’s eternally steadfast fiancé. Principal Conductor Fabio Luisi leads the Met Orchestra and Chorus.
La traviata (Italian: [la traˈviaːta], "The Fallen Woman"[1][2]) is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias (1852), a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The opera was originally entitled Violetta, after the main character. It was first performed on 6 March 1853 at the La Fenice opera house in Venice. Piave and Verdi wanted to follow Dumas in giving the opera a contemporary setting, but the authorities at La Fenice insisted that it be set in the past, "c. 1700". It was not until the 1880s that the composer and librettist's original wishes were carried out and "realistic" productions were staged.[3]
Die 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.
A man and a woman meet in the ruins of post-war Poland. With vastly different backgrounds and temperaments, they are fatally mismatched and yet drawn to each other.
Who loves whom in Così fan tutte, Mozart’s and Da Ponte’s cruelly comic reflection on desire, fidelity and betrayal? Or have the confusions to which the main characters subject one another ensured that in spite of the heartfelt love duets and superficially fleetfooted comedy nothing will work any longer and that a sense of emotional erosion has replaced true feelings? Così fan tutte is a timeless work full of questions that affect us all. The Academy Award-winning director Michael Haneke once said that he was merely being precise and did not want to distort reality. In only his second opera production after Don Giovanni in 2006, he presents what ARTE described as a “disillusioned vision of love in an ice-cold, realistic interpretation”.
In May of 1982 Julio Cortázar, the Argentinean writer and his companion in life, Carol Dunlop set out in their VW bus on a journey along the highway from Paris to Marseille that, for each of them, was to be their final one. Twenty-five years later, Océane Madelaine and Jocelyn Bonnerave set out to undertake the journey again.