Giacomo Puccini's immortal opera, in a high budget feature-film version directed by Academy Award nominee Robert Dornhelm, stars opera's 'Golden Couple', Rolando Villazon and Anna Netrebko as the protagonists, Rodolfo and Mimi. The chemistry between them is electric, unrivalled in the theatre today. Russian soprano Anna Netrebko is not only beautiful but has a marvelous voice and technique; Mexican tenor Rolando Villazon, has a wonderful voice and an incredible charisma. The director not only wanted to remain steadfastly faithful to Puccini's design but also document two of the leading singers of the modern age rather than embarking on a 'trendy' contemporary re-creation.
Schaunard
Live 1973 concert performances by celebrated Polish-American virtuoso concert pianist Arthur Rubinstein, with the Concertgebouw Orchestra under conductor Bernard Haitink. Filmed in August 1973 at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the performances include Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto, in C minor, op. 37; and Brahms's First Piano Concerto, in D minor, op. 15. These are followed by four short pieces for solo piano, by Schubert, Brahms, and Chopin. The 2008 DVD release by Deutsche Grammophon also includes a short documentary, "Rubinstein at 90", an interview with Robert MacNeil, filmed at Rubinstein's home in Paris in 1977.
009 Re:Cyborg follows a group of nine cyborgs, each of them created by a shadowy organization for use as weapons against humanity. The group turns on their creators to protect the population instead, using the powers given them to fight their creators.
Young man has his dreams come true when the sexy new maid seduces him. But she also has a secret that leads to trouble.
Young art student Hideo paints an unnerving portrait of Tomie, who whispers that she loves him. Inexplicably, he reacts by stabbing her to death with a painting trowel. Two friends, Takumi and Shunichi, arrive on the scene and help him dispose of the body. To cheer him up, the boys take the unwitting murderer to the nearest bar for a party... but a mysterious girl named Tomie shows up, bearing a few odd physical resemblances to the dead girl in the ground.
The Red Mountain Tribe hangs out in my backyard. "Lipton's lovely home movie PEOPLE, in its affection for valuable inconsequential gestures, indicates in the course of its three minutes why there has to be a continuing alternative to the commercial cinema." – Roger Greenspun, The New York Times
With input from actor and writer Jan Hlobil, director and cinematographer Rene Smaal presents a film in the true surrealist tradition, in the sense that only 'found' elements were used, and that it defies interpretation based on ordinary cause-and-effect time sequence.
As a professional monster truck wrestler, Mater must work his way up through the ranks from an amateur tow truck to World Champion Monster Truck Wrestler. But rival wrestlers I-Screamer, Captain Collision, and The Rasta Carian aren't about to give up without a fight.
When twin girls are found dead in their family’s barn, reality star turned TV-reporter Meredith Phillips and her de-facto camera crew are dispatched to rural Wisconsin to investigate the gruesome deaths. In their relentless drive to break the story, the reporters become entangled in a deadly mystery and uncover the small town’s shocking secret. Edited together from the crew’s multiple cameras, the film documents their struggle to survive the most terrifying night of their lives and becomes the only evidence of a crime too horrific to imagine.
Early morning silence is broken by screeching tires as a helicopter bears down on a speeding vehicle. Taking a quick corner, the team tumbles out into the woods as their car pulls away. Now they must make their way through the thick of nature and thick gunfire to accomplish their mission. Not a single word of dialogue is spoken throughout the entire film. Instead, the music, sounds, images and deeply truthful acting turn a simple plot into an intense experience. Passion and intrigue keep building to the very end.
Street vendors in Korea are almost like a national institution, they are so widespread and relied upon. In Little Pond in Main Street a group of vendors band together to create a community radio station but come into conflict with other groups, as well as the government trying to shut them down.
Hazel runs a beauty salon out of her house, but makes extra money by providing ruthless women the oppurtunity to perform hit jobs. L.T. is a parasite, and contacts Hazel looking for work after he runs out of money. She is reluctant to use him for a hit, since she prefers using women, but decides to try him on a trial basis. Meanwhile, the cop she pays off wants an arrest to make it look like he's doing his job, but Hazel doesn't want to sacrifice any of her "associates". The sleazy side of life is explored in this delightfully dark and deadpan film.
Upon waking up in a strange forest, a young man questions whether or not the environment around him is real or a figment of his imagination.
José Luis (19) works at a gas station. There he meets Amaro (48), a wealthy client with whom he initiates a sexual and emotional relationship. José Luis falls in love with him and receives his financial support, not knowing that he maintains this type of relationship with other boys like him
LAPD detective Mike Dooley and his dog, the German Shepherd Jerry Lee, have been successfully partnered for ten years, but Jerry’s advancing age has Dooley’s superiors suggesting retirement and they are forced to work with a younger K-9 team: female cop Sergeant Welles and her disciplined Doberman Zeus.
Alessandro Corbelli takes the title role in Annabel Arden's whirlwind production of Puccini's compact opera, in which the scheming Gianni Schicchi retrieves for himself the spoils of a disinherited family to pave the way for his daughter to marry her love.
The life and career of Italian opera singer Farinelli, considered one of the greatest castrato singers of all time.
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.
“Kaufmann is performing the title role for the first time, and it’s hard to imagine him bettered. His striking looks make him very much the Romantic and romanticised outsider of Giordano’s vision. His voice, with its dark, liquid tone, soars through the music with refined ease and intensity: all those grand declarations of passion, whether political or erotic, hit home with terrific immediacy.” – The Guardian Presented in its Covent Garden premiere in January 2015, this staging – directed by David McVicar and conducted by the Royal Opera’s Music Director, Sir Antonio Pappano – shows a bloody tricolour daubed with the words “Even Plato banned poets from his Republic” – written by Robespierre on the death warrant of the historical Chénier, a poet and journalist sent to the guillotine in 1794 for criticising France’s post-revolutionary government.
Olga Neuwirth, for a long time one of the great composers of the present, succeeds with this opera in creating a captivating arc across many musical genres. It’s an exciting, socially critical production by Polly Graham who puts a fantastically singing and playing Kate Lindsey in the center of the action.
Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka's magical masterpiece in its entirety, inspired by Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin's poem of a Russian tale. An evil sorcerer Chernomor casts a spell over wedding celebrations for Ruslan and Lyudmila at the court of Svetozar, the Prince of Kiev. Lyudmila vanishes and her father promises her hand and half his kingdom to the knight who rescues her. Ruslan on this quest of rescue encounters the knights Ratmir and Farlaf, the wise wizard Finn, the slave of Ratmir, Gorislava and sorceress Naina before confronting Chernomor in his magic garden. After all the challenges for Ruslan, true love prevails.
Spain 1820. It's meal time at the cigar factory. Carmen spends her break in the square. Close by is Don José cleaning his weapons.
Margaret Williams directs this 2001 production of adaptation of Benjamin Britten's television opera based on a short story by Henry James. Performers featured include Gerald Finley, Peter Savidge and Josephine Barstow. The conductor is Kent Nagano. As pertinent now as then, OWEN WINGRAVE was composed by Benjamin Britten at the height of the Vietnam War. The opera poses the question: Is pacifism an act of cowardice? Or rather a desire to escape from the spiral of war and create world peace? To what extent do we determine our own futures? Should we let past events inform the decisions we make? Britten’s characters grapple with timeless issues in this gripping psychodrama.
The opera: Nina, o sia La Pazza Per Amore itself, is an extra-ordinary sad and touching story, and seems very difficult to be performed if the singer has no acting talents. Therefore we adore Cecilia Bartoli for the magnificent performance as the crazy Nina who lost her mind totally. Her magnificent singing, we don't doubt at all, but her acting is amazingly such that it expressed a real situation of a girl becoming crazy and losing her mind caused by painful incidents in her love life. It is also supported by the other singers who are singing matching as perfectly and splendidly as the diva Cecilia Bartoli, especially the baritone Laszlo Polgar with his deep rich voice as the cruel father who has remorse and came back to see his daughter Nina and the young tenor Jonas Kauffmann with his clear light voice, resulting in a surprisingly beautifully performed opera.
Three arias from Antonín Dvořák´s fairytale opera Rusalka turned in to a movie, sung by Gabriela Beňačková (Rusalka), Libuše Márová (Witch), René Tuček (Hunter).
Robert Lepage’s landmark staging of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, unveiled over the course of the 2010–11 and 2011–12 seasons, was the first new Met production of the complete cycle in more than 20 years. Combining state-of-the-art technology with traditional storytelling, it brings Wagner’s vision into the 21st century. With Die Walküre, the story of the Ring enters the world of human beings. Jonas Kaufmann and Eva-Maria Westbroek are Siegmund and Sieglinde, the twin children of Wotan, sung by Bryn Terfel. Deborah Voigt stars in the title role of the Valkyrie Brünnhilde, Wotan’s favorite daughter. James Levine conducts.
Bizet’s rarely heard opera returned to the Met for the first time in a century on New Year’s Eve 2015, in Penny Woolcock’s acclaimed new production. Star soprano Diana Damrau sings Leïla, the virgin priestess at the center of the story. Matthew Polenzani and Mariusz Kwiecien are Nadir and Zurga, rivals for Leïla’s love who have sworn to renounce her to protect their friendship—and who get to sing one of opera’s most celebrated duets, “Au fond du temple saint.” Nicolas Testé is the high priest Nourabad and Gianandrea Noseda conducts Bizet’s supremely romantic score.
Performed at the Théâtre Graslin in Nantes in 2013. Francis Poulenc (1899-1963): Dialogues des Carmélites, opera in 3 acts and 12 scenes from a libretto by Emmet Lavery.
This all-star cast is framed by Peter Hall’s gritty, realistic production and conducted by James Levine, who brings out all the surging emotion and gripping drama in Bizet’s score. At the center of the story is Agnes Baltsa, whose smoky mezzo is tailor-made for the gypsy Carmen, an independent woman who glories in obeying only her own rules, but who is haunted by fate. Superstar tenor José Carreras is Don José, the solider from a small town who catches Carmen’s eye and is destroyed by his growing obsession with her. Samuel Ramey is the charismatic matador Escamillo, who lures Carmen away from Don José with tragic result. Leona Mitchell is Micaëla, the simple girl from Don José’s hometown who cannot save him. March 21, 1987 Matinee Broadcast.
The painter Lili Elbe was the first person to have gender confirmation surgery in the 1930s. The homonymous opera is a glimpse into the life of Lili Elbe and her wife Gerda Wegener (also a famous painter) through Lili's transition at a time when such surgery was still completely uncharted territory.
At the Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux, Raphaël Pichon conducts a new production of Rameau's opera Dardanus, with the ensemble Pygmalion, in a staging by Michel Fau and a choreography by Christopher Williams.