The Graham Vicks production of FALSTAFF opened the new Covent Garden Royal Opera House, and was not to everybody's taste; the garish primary colours of the costumes. The staging is effective--the complicated counterpoint of the ensembles is reflected in unobtrusive blocking that keeps the vocal lines clear and separate, especially in the final fugue. Bryn Terfel's Falstaff is a memorable creation, self-mocking and self-aggrandising at the same time--so much so, in fact, that he almost does not need the vast prosthetic body he has to wear for the part. Desiree Rancatore is an admirably sweet-toned Nanetta; Bernadette Manca di Nissa an appropriately sardonic Mistress Quickly; Roberto Frontali as Ford, in his Act 2 scena, perfectly distils and parodies every jealousy aria ever written, including Verdi's own. Haitink's conducting is exemplary in the lyrical passages, gets almost everything out of the fast and furious comic sections.
Ford
Fenton
Nanetta
Mistress Quickly
Meg Page
The Graham Vicks production of FALSTAFF opened the new Covent Garden Royal Opera House, and was not to everybody's taste; the garish primary colours of the costumes. The staging is effective--the complicated counterpoint of the ensembles is reflected in unobtrusive blocking that keeps the vocal lines clear and separate, especially in the final fugue. Bryn Terfel's Falstaff is a memorable creation, self-mocking and self-aggrandising at the same time--so much so, in fact, that he almost does not need the vast prosthetic body he has to wear for the part. Desiree Rancatore is an admirably sweet-toned Nanetta; Bernadette Manca di Nissa an appropriately sardonic Mistress Quickly; Roberto Frontali as Ford, in his Act 2 scena, perfectly distils and parodies every jealousy aria ever written, including Verdi's own. Haitink's conducting is exemplary in the lyrical passages, gets almost everything out of the fast and furious comic sections.
2000-07-06
8
In a night of killer comedy, Bill Burr hosts a showcase of his most raucous stand-up comic pals as they riff on everything from COVID to Michael Jackson.
While settling into married life with Akiko, Ryu is brought into a case involving a woman named Katsuragi Aoi, a member of a pickpocketing ring with most of her teammates murdered from unknown masked vigilantes that Ryu fought as Accel. As the details of the case begin to unravel, Ryu is framed and Akiko believes that he may not be faithful to her. As the clock ticks down, Ryu must solve the case, clear his name, and save his marriage before everything comes to an explosive end!
After a meteorite unleashes a three-headed beast upon Tokyo, Mothra tries to unite with Godzilla and Rodan to battle the extraterrestrial threat.
A new member has joined Eli and the Shane Gang! Junjie, once the protector of the Eastern Caverns, is a master of the slugslinging art of Slug Fu! But even with the power of five slingers, the Shane Gang find themselves in over their heads as they race across The 99 Caverns in search of the Legendary Elemental Slugs. The five Elementals are ancient slugs of great power, and the forbearers of all slugs found in SlugTerra today. In the wrong hands, they could bring Slugterra to the brink of destruction. So when an evil alliance starts hunting down the Elementals, Eli and his friends — old and new — take off in pursuit of the greatest threat their world has ever faced!
Seven years ago, Zaid went to war against the Copenhagen underworld to avenge his dead brother. His identity as a respected doctor of cardiology and life as a family man is but a fading dream, and in prison Zaid suffers the loss of his son Noah, whom he barely knows. When a police agent approaches Zaid and offers him a deal to be released in exchange for infiltrating the Copenhagen underworld, he sees his chance to reclaim the remnants of the family life he left behind. But everything has a price, and Zaid realizes that he has now seriously endangered his son's life. After all, once you become part of the underworld, is there any way out?
If Stan, Kyle and Cartman could just work together, they could go back in time to make sure Covid never happened. But traveling back to the past seems to be the easy answer until they meet Victor Chaos.
RETURN tells the story of a retired Green Beret who embarks on a healing journey from Montana to Vietnam. There he retraces his steps, shares his wartime experiences with his son, treats his Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and seeks out the mountain tribespeople he once lived with and fought alongside as a Special Forces officer.
A man with a grudge against the late Little Joe seeks revenge on the Cartwrights and attempts to take over the Ponderosa.
Ean has a critical mission to return to the future to save everyone. However, she becomes trapped in the distant past while trying to prevent the escape of alien prisoners who are locked up in the bodies of humans. Meanwhile, Muruk, who helps Ean escape various predicaments, is unnerved when he begins sensing the presence of a strange being in his body. Traveling through the centuries, they are trying to prevent the explosion of the haava.
After an impulsive travel decision to visit friends, Freddie, 25, returns to South Korea for the first time, where she was born before being adopted and raised in France. Freddie suddenly finds herself embarking on an unexpected journey in a country she knows so little about, taking her life in new and unexpected directions.
The world is a mysterious place when seen through the eyes of an animal. EO, a grey donkey with melancholic eyes, meets good and bad people on his life’s path, experiences joy and pain, endures the wheel of fortune randomly turn his luck into disaster and his despair into unexpected bliss. But not even for a moment does he lose his innocence.
Chow returns to play Ko Chun, a skilled gambler who now lives in retirement in France. Wu Xingguo plays an evil gangster who forces Ko out of retirement by killing his pregnant wife. Ko is forced to team up with a variety of other people to win out in the end. Wu Chien-lien plays Chow's romantic interest, Chingmy Yau plays a Taiwanese femme fatale, and Tony Leung provides much of the laughs.
A pair of mice attempt to board Noah's Ark: Vini, a charismatic poet with terrible stage fright, and Tito, a talented and charming guitarist. When the rains come, only one male and one female of each species is allowed on Noah's Ark. With the help of an ingenious cockroach and fate's good luck, Vini and Tito sneak their way onto the Ark and together avert a showdown among the ships carnivores and plant eaters. All the while, the animals perform a series of classic songs inspired by world renowned poet, Vinicius de Moraes. Can these talented stowaways use music to break the tension and help these cooped up creatures survive the 40 days and 40 nights together?
Pinhead is set loose on the sinful streets of New York City to create chaos with a fresh cadre of Cenobitic kin.
During the Napoleonic wars, a Spanish officer and an opposing officer find a book written by the former's grandfather.
Mute Moon-young records people's faces with her small camcorder on the subway. One day, she avoids her drunk father at home and films Hee-soo who is crying over saying goodbye to her boyfriend and gets caught. The two feel some sort of kinship and become closer.
Thrown together under tragic circumstances, three generations of women from the same family are forced to learn to live together on a small rural chicken farm in New Jersey, which generates moving and amusing situations.
Jean-Marc is a man without qualities living in times that are out of joint. His wife and children ignore him; he's a mid-level government functionary in Montreal doing his job without care. He has an active imagination of sexual conquest, but his only real feelings come when he visits his aged mother, whose health is failing. When his wife leaves abruptly to work in Toronto, Jean-Marc sets out to reorder things with his daughters, his social life, and at work. In a world that at best is a farce, does he stand a chance?
La Cenerentola, ossia La bontà in trionfo (Cinderella, or Goodness Triumphant) is an operatic dramma giocoso in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. The libretto was written by Jacopo Ferretti, based on the fairy tale Cendrillon by Charles Perrault. The opera was first performed in Rome's Teatro Valle on 25 January 1817.---- IMDB id refers to Great Performances: Season 24, Episode 12 La Cenerentola (3 Apr. 1996) from Houston Grand Opera so release date is misleading.
When a wealthy young lady loses her inheritance, she decides to apply for work in disguise. In prim and proper working girl attire she becomes the respectable companion of a woman looking to reform her wayward nephew.
Yet another variation on Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee At King Arthur's Court." Here, a computer malfunction causes a science researcher to be sent back in time with her laptop, which she uses to amaze the court.
Three socially awkward sorority girls invite three fraternity pledges over for a night of fun, but when the group holds a séance, the girls find themselves possessed by a shaman who transforms them into lustful, uninhibited succubi.
Raquel has been the live-in housekeeper for a kind, reasonably wealthy family for half her life, and the joyless repetition of the job has begun to take its toll. Increasingly dependent on painkillers, Raquel resorts to pranks and childish avoidance to antagonize the family’s college-age daughter and a procession of new servants, all in the hopes of protecting her precarious power within the home. Her antics successfully push everyone away, until new maid Lucy actually pushes back.
Recording of the Takarazuka Revue's 2008 Moon Troupe production of the musical "Me and My Girl."
Tiffani attempts to help her geeky but very cute friend Casey find true love - or at least a sexy hunk. Taken under Tiffani’s wing, Casey pretends to be Ryan, Tiffani's hot, straight, stripper ex-boyfriend, in order to seduce the smoldering Zack online, which works, until the real Ryan shows up!
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.
In 1812, during the French period, large parts of Germany are occupied by the troops of Napoleon. Several paramilitary Freikorps units battle the French forces, among them the Black Brunswickers led by the 'Black Duke' Frederick William of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. After the War of the Fifth Coalition, the Black Hussars are pursued by Napoleon throughout the country, but frequently take refuge with the noble-minded German people.
This DVD of a live 2005 performance from the Zürich Opera under the musical direction of Franz Welser-Möst has many things to recommend it -- the young tenor Piotr Beczala as Alfredo, the marvelous Thomas Hampson as Giorgio Germont, the playing of the Zurich Opera orchestra, the simple but effective sets by by Erich Wonder, the uncluttered stage direction by Jürgen Flimm. It also has some flaws: strangely variable volume level of the recorded sound sometimes coming on so loud as to make one reach for the volume control, and the uneven performance of the Violetta, Eva Mei who, for all her merits, gives a dramatically effective performance marred by occasional difficulties with vocal production. Still, overall I felt this was a moving production, one that I would recommend, although perhaps not as an only DVD of one of Verdi's most popular operas.
The pain of unrequited love is portrayed unforgettably by two of today’s greatest stars. Renée Fleming is musically and dramatically radiant as the shy Tatiana, who falls in love with the worldly Onegin, played with devastating charisma by Dmitri Hvorostovsky. Their mesmerizing vocalism and chemistry explode in one of opera’s most heartbreaking final scenes. With Valery Gergiev on the podium conducting Tchaikovsky’s passionate score, this performance is one for the ages.
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”.
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.
It's hard to imagine confirmed Straussians not wanting this starry Metropolitan Opera performance of Elektra. Strauss and his librettist, Hugo von Hofmannstahl, transformed Sophocles' take on Homer's tale into a harrowing opera noir. Elektra lives for one reason, to kill her mother, Klytämnestra, and her stepfather, Aegisth, the murderers of her father, Agamemnon. In contrast to Elektra's vengeful obsession, her sister Chrysothemis desires to get on with life. When their long-missing brother, Orestes, returns to do the deed, Elektra celebrates with a dance of death and, her sole purpose in life fulfilled, dies. Strauss joined the hermetic plot to music of the utmost opulence, violent and yearning by turns, evoking the cardinal principles of Greek tragedy - pity and terror.