"Yenufa" is an outstanding phenomenon in the music of the 20th century. Drawing on Moravian folklore, Janáček faithfully and deeply conveyed the drama of a peasant girl. The composer followed the path of Mussorgsky, revealing the spiritual life of people through the recreation of intonations of living speech. The libretto is based on a drama written in a naturalistic manner. Free from naturalism, Janáček's music has powerful emotional strength and psychological truth. It was written during a difficult period in the composer's life (illness and death of his daughter).
Jenůfa
Kostelnička
Laca Klemen
Števa Buryja
Grandmother Buryjovka
Foreman of the mill
Barena
"Yenufa" is an outstanding phenomenon in the music of the 20th century. Drawing on Moravian folklore, Janáček faithfully and deeply conveyed the drama of a peasant girl. The composer followed the path of Mussorgsky, revealing the spiritual life of people through the recreation of intonations of living speech. The libretto is based on a drama written in a naturalistic manner. Free from naturalism, Janáček's music has powerful emotional strength and psychological truth. It was written during a difficult period in the composer's life (illness and death of his daughter).
2009-01-01
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Leos Janáček's Jenůfa performed at the Teatro Real, Madrid
After thirteen years of engagement, the boring sex life of Rui and Vani is limited to one intercourse every other week. They decide to seek excitement with a threesome and they decide to invite Vani's cousin Silvinha to participate late night, but an accident interrupts their game. Rui and Vani unsuccessfully spend the night searching for for companion of a bisexual woman.
Cowboys Beauregard Decker and Virgil Blessing attend a rodeo in Phoenix, where Decker falls in love with beautiful cafe singer Cherie. He wants to take Cherie back to his native Montana and marry her, but she dreams of traveling to Hollywood and becoming famous. When she resists his advances, Decker forces Cherie onto the bus back to Montana with him, but, when the bus makes an unscheduled stop due to bad weather, the tables are turned.
Journalists Ichiro Sakai and Junko cover the wreckage of a typhoon when an enormous egg is found and claimed by greedy entrepreneurs. Mothra's fairies arrive and are aided by the journalists in a plea for its return. As their requests are denied, Godzilla arises near Nagoya and the people of Infant Island must decide if they are willing to answer Japan's own pleas for help.
B-Dawg, Mudbud, Budderball, and all the rest of the Buddies are back, but this time, they're setting their sights even higher -- as in, the moon! With the help of their new pals Spudnick (voiced by Jason Earles) and Gravity, these pooches are go for launch. But to pull off their moon landing and make it home safely, our canine heroes will have to summon all their bravery and imagination...
A restauranteur teams up with a police officer and his ex-con brother to avenge the death of a friend's daughter.
Desperate to raise money for the experimental surgery that could restore his blind fiancee's eyesight, Toxie accepts a lucrative job with the evil multinational conglomerate Apocalypse Inc.
After a meteorite unleashes a three-headed beast upon Tokyo, Mothra tries to unite with Godzilla and Rodan to battle the extraterrestrial threat.
Frank Morrison is a divorced father with a 12-year-old son, Danny. His ex-wife Susan and son Danny now live with Rick Barnes, Susan's new husband. Danny, who has a reputation for telling lies, accuses his stepfather of committing a murder. Initially, no one believes his accusations, but then Frank becomes convinced and is the only one who believes him. Now, the father Danny trusts must protect him from the stepfather he fears.
A motocross team on their way to trial a new super-fuel head out across the desert lead by Rachel, who, unbeknownst to the rest of the group, is a survivor of the cannibal clan which menaced the Carter family several years before.
A producer puts on what may be his last Broadway show, and at the last moment a chorus girl has to replace the star.
Louis-Philippe Fourchaume, another typical lead-role for French comedy superstar Louis de Funès, is the dictatorial CEO of a French company which designs and produces sail yachts, and fires in yet another tantrum his designer André Castagnier, not realizing that man is his only chance to land a vital contract with the Italian magnate Marcello Cacciaperotti. So he has to find him at his extremely rural birthplace in 'la France profonde', which proves a torturous odyssey for the spoiled rich man; when he does get there his torment is far from over: the country bumpkin refuses to resume his slavish position now the shoe is on the other foot, so Fourchaume is dragged along in the boorish family life, and at times unable to control his temper, which may cost him more credit then he painstakingly builds up...
After being stung by a giant insect, Cooper learns that these bugs are attacking the whole city. He joins forces with the survivors Leechee and Sara in order to find a way to counter-attack.
Research chemist Barnaby Fulton works on a fountain of youth pill for a chemical company. One of the labs chimps gets loose in the laboratory and mixes chemicals, but then pours the mix into the water cooler. When trying one of his own samples, washed down with water from the cooler, Fulton begins to act just like a twenty-year-old and believes his potion is working. Soon his wife and boss are also behaving like children.
Following in the great tradition of his classic "How To" animated shorts of the 1940's, Goofy makes his return to the big screen in "How to Hook Up Your Home Theater". When Goofy is desperate to watch the Big Game, he heads to his local electronics store to tackle every consumer's nightmare - selecting the perfect home theater system and worse, trying to hook it all up.
Dr. Beck, who has changed his name, saves a young teenage girl drowning in Mexico, whom he falls in love with. As always, there are some complications in his way, but he has plans to possibly get past them and get the girl of his dreams.
A young girl turns into an A-List celebrity over night when her private journal is accidently published and becomes a best-seller.
As election time nears, current Triad chairman Lok faces competition from his godsons. At the same time, Jimmy looks to increase his business relations with mainland China.
An animated short based on Hans Christian Andersen's tale about a poor young girl with a burning desire to find comfort and happiness in her life. Desperate to keep warm, the girl lights the matches she sells, and envisions a very different life for herself in the fiery flames filled with images of loving relatives, bountiful food, and a place to call home.
Daryl Zero is a private investigator and—along with his assistant, Steve Arlo—he solves impossible crimes and puzzles. Although Daryl's a master investigator, he doesn't know what to do with himself when he's not working; he has no social skills, writes bad music and drives Steve crazy.
A retired veteran hunting in the Allagash backcountry of Maine discovers a dead woman with a duffle bag full of money. He soon finds himself in a web of deceit and murder.
This production was originally staged for the Pepsico Summerfare Festival, The International Performing Arts Festival of the State University of New York at Purchase. Leaving the lyrics in their original Italian, acclaimed American director Peter Sellars transports Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Don Giovanni" to a modern-day metropolis, nestling the opera's beloved characters among the brownstones of New York City's Harlem. Sellars's contemporary retelling of a classic musical tale is one of three performances in a Mozart series that also includes "Le Nozze di Figaro" and "'Così Fan Tutte."
Franco Zeffirelli's magnificient staging of Puccini's final opera - a fairy tale set in a mythical China - is one of the most popular in the Met repertory. In this Live in HD production, Maria Guleghina takes on the title role and Marcello Giordani is Calaf, the unknown prince. Marina Poplavskaya and Samuel Ramey co-star, and Andris Nelsons conducts in his Met debut.
The production bears the imprint of the conductor, Marko Letonja, and the director, Tobias Richter, whose understanding is ideal: both breathe a troupe spirit - specific to comedy - into this heterogeneous cast, which brings together young and old. Both give as much importance to recitatives as to arias and ensembles.
This first film of Cyprus' first director, Giorgios Filis, depicts music and dance customs in the form and style of a folk opera, with traditional Cypriot dances and songs. The film consists of a folkloric inventory based on the folk culture of Cyprus, as well as on similar ritual happenings. The narration and dialogue are entirely in the Cypriot dialect and are characterized by a rhetorical and poetic mood.
Franco Zeffirelli directs these two legendary La Scala productions telling tragic tales of jealousy. Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana features performances by Elena Obraztsova, Plácido Domingo, and Renato Bruson. Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci stars Teresa Stratas, Plácido Domingo, and Juan Pons. Both are conducted by George Pretre. This production of Pagliacci earned director Franco Zeffirelli the coveted Emmy as Best Director in the category of Classical Music Programming.
Alone in the woods, a young man is pursued by a horrifying specter and by visions of his deceased sisters. A meditation on the precarious uncertainty of the American Dream and the role that uncontrollable forces play in our lives, The West is a Land of Infinite Beginnings is inspired by a harrowing scene from the opera Proving Up, by composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek.
A young woman, married to a wealthy man, but miserably lonely; trapped within a world ruled with an iron fist. Katerina is driven by a lust for life and for love. Her husband, though, is impotent; her father-in-law a tyrant. No wonder, then, that she longs to free herself from this yoke. When Sergei starts work on the family estate, she sees in him a chance for salvation. However, their subsequent affair marks the beginning of a descent into crime.
At the beginning of 1964, the music world experiences something completely unexpected. Maria Callas returns to the opera stage as the prima donna. Her “Tosca” at the Royal Opera House becomes a sensation. Maria Callas wants to show everyone once again that she deserves the title of “prima donna assoluta.” On the condition that star director Franco Zeffirelli take over the direction, the exceptional singer agrees to sing the role of Tosca. The BBC recorded the 2nd act of the opera for television. It is one of the most dramatic acts in opera history: in order to free the painter Cavaradossi from the hands of torturers, Tosca ends up murdering the police chief Scarpia. The film footage is one of the rare opportunities to see Maria Callas in an opera performance and to experience her highly emotional performance art and vocal abilities...
The gorgeous and evocative Otto Schenk/Günther Schneider-Siemssen production continues with this second opera in Wagner’s Ring cycle. Hildegard Behrens brings deep empathy to Brünnhilde, the favorite daughter of the god Wotan (James Morris) who nevertheless defies him. Morris’s portrayal of Wotan is deservedly legendary, as is Christa Ludwig, as Fricka. Jessye Norman and Gary Lakes are Sieglinde and Siegmund, and Kurt Moll is the threatening Hunding. James Levine and the Met orchestra provide astonishing color and drama. (Performed April 8, 1989)
Siegfried is the third of the four operas that constitute Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), by Richard Wagner.
This is Laurent Pelly’s Théâtre des Champs-Élysées staging of Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, with a cast featuring Florian Sempey as Figaro, Catherine Trottmann as Rosina, and Michele Angelini as Il Conte Almaviva. Jérémie Rhorer conducts Le Cercle de l-Harmonie.
Live 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.
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”…
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”.
A musician is offered a job in Vienna as stage director, but his disagreements with the aristocratic opera manager end in abrupt firing in spite of a mutual attraction. He's quickly engaged by another theatre and becomes famous for his lavish stage productions and fine acting, which begins their golden age with Suppé and Strauss.
This telecast offers a rare opportunity to see the legendary Joan Sutherland in the role that first catapulted her to international stardom. She drove audiences wild by the way her opulent voice caressed the music’s long phrases and sprinted effortlessly through the fiendish runs, trills, embellishments and stratospheric high notes. One of the glories of the operatic world, her portrayal of Donizetti’s hapless heroine is a multifaceted and moving characterization. The incomparable tenor Alfredo Kraus is Edgardo, the man Lucia loves but cannot have. (Performance taped November 13, 1982. Broadcasted September 28, 1983.)
"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.
Arabella, Op. 79, is a lyric comedy or opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, their sixth and last operatic collaboration.