Arthaus
For the American dancer and choreographer Alvin Ailey (1931–1989) dance is an international art which discloses itself to all people because it doesn't require any spoken language. Everywhere that the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre appeared, the audiences greeted the harmonic beauty, the dynamic movements and the dance-like expression of the soloists with great enthusiasm.
Ailey choreographed 79 ballets and developed his own style using modern dance, jazz and classical ballet. His pieces relate amusing and earnest stories of the black inhabitants of North America. His choreographs are an expression of their deep faith as well as their grace, their sorrow and their joy of living. And of course they have a special energy and sensuality because Ailey mainly choreographed his pieces to "black" music by using elements of blues, spirituals, jazz and soul.
Ailey choreographed 79 ballets and developed his own style using modern dance, jazz and classical ballet. His pieces relate amusing and earnest stories of the black inhabitants of North America. His choreographs are an expression of their deep faith as well as their grace, their sorrow and their joy of living. And of course they have a special energy and sensuality because Ailey mainly choreographed his pieces to "black" music by using elements of blues, spirituals, jazz and soul.
Recorded in the magnificent 14th century St. Mary's Church in Krakow, one of the most precious gothic monuments in Poland, this delightful performance of Bach's Christmas Oratorio exudes the joyful spirit of Christmas.
The first three cantatas of this oratorio are among the best-known pieces of the whole work, including the opening chorus Jauchzet, Frohlocket , the virtuoso tenor aria Groser Herr und starker König and the famous Sinfonia .
Helmuth Rilling conducts his own ensemble, the Gachinger Kantorei Stuttgart, one of the world's finest vocal ensembles today, and the Chorus and Orchestra of the Bach-Academy Krakow.
The first three cantatas of this oratorio are among the best-known pieces of the whole work, including the opening chorus Jauchzet, Frohlocket , the virtuoso tenor aria Groser Herr und starker König and the famous Sinfonia .
Helmuth Rilling conducts his own ensemble, the Gachinger Kantorei Stuttgart, one of the world's finest vocal ensembles today, and the Chorus and Orchestra of the Bach-Academy Krakow.
"Those in search of a thoroughly teutonic Fidelio should speed to Covent Garden. The new production, comes via the Theatre de la Monnaie in Brussels. It moves swiftly and surely, is powerfully cast and is conducted with fine muscular authority by Christoph von Dohnányi"
- The Times
- The Times
Berg was conscripted during the 1914-18 war and acquired from his experiences the compassion and loathing to write his first, terrifyingly great opera, about a soldier tormented and mocked by his superiors until he loses his reason, cutting the throat of his mistress, and drowning himself. A devious world destroys Wozzeck's sense of identity and turns him into a murderer.
This brutalisation is made palpable in Peter Mussbach's highly-stylised production which, in its expressionistic artificiality, heightens the emotional intensity of this searing work. In his hands Wozzeck becomes an agonising lament over lost innocence. Mussbach is a master of visual and dramatic effect and the impact of his staging is enhanced by the framing opportunities afforded by video recording under studio conditions. Surfaces are steeply raked and blaze in primary colours; perspectives are flattened and distorted; space is confined; decoration has been stripped away; character is manifested through costumes, masks, make-up, movement; the particular stands for the collective.
Dale Duesing, as Wozzeck, is a charismatic central figure, an agile performer, restless and tormented. The role of Marie is taken by Kristine Ciesinski, a consummate singer and actress of Berg's...
This brutalisation is made palpable in Peter Mussbach's highly-stylised production which, in its expressionistic artificiality, heightens the emotional intensity of this searing work. In his hands Wozzeck becomes an agonising lament over lost innocence. Mussbach is a master of visual and dramatic effect and the impact of his staging is enhanced by the framing opportunities afforded by video recording under studio conditions. Surfaces are steeply raked and blaze in primary colours; perspectives are flattened and distorted; space is confined; decoration has been stripped away; character is manifested through costumes, masks, make-up, movement; the particular stands for the collective.
Dale Duesing, as Wozzeck, is a charismatic central figure, an agile performer, restless and tormented. The role of Marie is taken by Kristine Ciesinski, a consummate singer and actress of Berg's...
The libretto, by Henri Meilac and Ludovic Halévy, is based on a novella by Prosper Mérimée. The first performance of Carmen on 3 March 1875, produced such a hostile reaction that Bizet left Paris physically and psychologically ill, and died only three months later on 3 June 1875, following two serious heart attacks. The massive scandal of the premiere may have been partially the result of Bizet's attempt to reform the Opéra Comique genre, yet it must still be said that Carmen is operatic history's most famous example of a failure being corrected by the passage of time: Carmen is now one of the most frequently performed operas in the world.
The major Spanish actress and producer Nuria Espert was brought in for the production at London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 1991, while the authentic Flamenco choreography comes from Cristina Hoyos and is danced by, among others, Juan Ortego. For the musical side of this successful production Zubin Mehta had top vocalists at his disposal to perform the roles of Carmen, Don José and Escamillo.
The major Spanish actress and producer Nuria Espert was brought in for the production at London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 1991, while the authentic Flamenco choreography comes from Cristina Hoyos and is danced by, among others, Juan Ortego. For the musical side of this successful production Zubin Mehta had top vocalists at his disposal to perform the roles of Carmen, Don José and Escamillo.
Arrigo Boito's treatment of the Faust legend is imaginative yet also faithful to Goethe's original conception, and the score is memorable for its rich orchestral sounds, beautifully punctuated with lyrical passages and choral interludes.
Robert Carsen's sumptuous, post-modern production of Mefistofele is a gloriously decadent and theatrically stunning realisation, and the San Francisco Opera's performance has been unanimously acclaimed in both Paris and San Francisco.
Samuel Ramey, in the title role, has won both critical and overwhelming popular approval.
Robert Carsen's sumptuous, post-modern production of Mefistofele is a gloriously decadent and theatrically stunning realisation, and the San Francisco Opera's performance has been unanimously acclaimed in both Paris and San Francisco.
Samuel Ramey, in the title role, has won both critical and overwhelming popular approval.
A cast of luminaries supported by the English National Opera gives a profound and masterful reading of Britten's gripping opera of sadism and injustice aboard a British man-o'-war. This production reunites Tim Albery's direction with the phenomenal talent of Philip Langridge, often acclaimed as a natural successor to Peter Pears. The libretto, by E.M. Forster and Eric Crozier, is based on the literary masterpiece by Herman Melville and tells the tale of a young seaman, Billy Budd, who is persecuted malevolently by his master-at-arms, Claggart. Accused of mutiny, the stammering Budd accidentally strikes Claggart dead and the tormented Captain Vere has no alternative but to hang him. The opera explores many universal themes - the individual at odds with society, the corruption of innocence, the continual conflict of good and evil - which no doubt lay close to the heart of Britten's own pacifism and are themes common to much of his dramatic music.
This production has Britain's leading operatic baritone, Thomas Allen, in one of his most distinguished roles, as Billy. He is noted not only for his superb abilities as a singer, but also for his acting skills, particularly necessary for the demanding role of the naive and virtuous character of Billy Budd. Philip...
This production has Britain's leading operatic baritone, Thomas Allen, in one of his most distinguished roles, as Billy. He is noted not only for his superb abilities as a singer, but also for his acting skills, particularly necessary for the demanding role of the naive and virtuous character of Billy Budd. Philip...
Perhaps it was Luchino Visconti's inspired cinematic version of Thomas Mann's stories which finally prompted the most distinguished English composer of the 20th century to adapt Death In Venice for the musical stage too. Indeed, it appears to be something which he had been considering for several years. Three years after the premiere of the film – and equally three years prior to his death – Britten succeeded with his last music drama in making a connection between opera and dance which was as innovative as it was unconventional, but which was also an outstanding success in every way.
This production by the Glyndebourne Touring Opera dates back to October 1989. The world's press praised the quality of the production (Stephen Lawless) and its choreography (Martha Clarke) as it did the exceptional performances by the musicians and vocalists, in particular Robert Tear as Gustav von Aschenbach.
This production by the Glyndebourne Touring Opera dates back to October 1989. The world's press praised the quality of the production (Stephen Lawless) and its choreography (Martha Clarke) as it did the exceptional performances by the musicians and vocalists, in particular Robert Tear as Gustav von Aschenbach.
Gloriana came into being when Benjamin Britten was asked to compose an opera to celebrate the Coronation of HRH Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. He took as his starting point Lytton Strachey's Elizabeth and Essex , which had much interested him when he first read it. He had at once seen in it the possibility of an operatic theme and the Coronation provided the right occasion for him to return to it. The tragic relationship between the ageing Queen and the brilliant young Earl of Essex provided Britten with great scope for his strong sense of theatre and this opera combines scenes of great pageantry with moments of private reflection. This contrast vividly depicts Queen Elizabeth’s dilemma – the conflict of duty and personal love. The opera traces the downfall of the Earl of Essex who, presuming upon his privilege as the Queen's favourite, forces a tragedy upon them both. Elizabeth I never forgot that she as the Queen and that, as a woman, she had to show that she could rule with no less authority and decision than a man, so she felt compelled to sentence Essex to death when he failed her and endangered the country.
This specially-staged studio recording of the English National Opera's highly-acclaimed production of Benjamin Britten's work features outstanding performances by Jean Rigby as Lucretia and Richard Van Allan as Collatinus. Anthony Rolfe Johnson and Kathryn Harries sing the Male and Female Chorus who poignantly comment on the brutal rape of Lucretia by Tarquinius, Prince of Rome. With its bare scrubbed boards, its sliding screens – against which the characters sometimes appear in silhouette – and its high-railed gantry from which the Chorus observe, both Graham Vick's staging and Russell Craig's severe designs have a cool, elegant simplicity. With no extraneous movement or gesture to distract the eye, everything is focused with a luminous intensity on the ritualistically compact unfolding of the drama and the inescapable fate of her characters. This ascetic production tellingly matches the austere restraint of Britten's first chamber opera, scored with sparse texture for a mere twelve instruments, a limitation over which Britten triumphed to produce music of deeply moving intensity.
This innovative production is a fine example of the exciting and imaginative work that is characteristic of the English National Opera.
This innovative production is a fine example of the exciting and imaginative work that is characteristic of the English National Opera.
Peter Grimes encapsulates many of the themes that preoccupy Britten's dramatic works - the vulnerability of innocence, the abuse of power and the suspectibility of the outsider to the pressures of of society.
Not since Peter Pears recording, with Britten, at Convent Garden have we been treated to a Grimes of such intelligence and complexity.
Director Tim Albery approaches this music theatre with great sensitivity, allowing both the music and the vocal line their individual space to unfold. David Atherton and the orchestra of the ENO, clearly understand how to drive the music's expressive power.
Not since Peter Pears recording, with Britten, at Convent Garden have we been treated to a Grimes of such intelligence and complexity.
Director Tim Albery approaches this music theatre with great sensitivity, allowing both the music and the vocal line their individual space to unfold. David Atherton and the orchestra of the ENO, clearly understand how to drive the music's expressive power.
Christopher Bruce's reputation as one of Britain's outstanding dancer/choreographers is based partly on his mix of classical and modern idioms and partly on his commitment to social conscious themes.
Silence is the end of our song is a moving ballet danced to a series of songs from Chile and dedicated to the Chilean people and their sufferings. Using documentary film – seen as hazy memories – and the words of the songs by Violeta Parra and the poet and songwriter Victor Jara, who was assassinated by the "junta" in 1973, the piece moves from light to darkness, from celebration to the need of courage in the face of political adversity or the threat of death. A touching, gentle and human statement.
Peppered with references to the body language, style and spirit of the sixties and early seventies, Rooster blazes with vitality. The infectious rhythms of some of the best-known hits of The Rolling Stones (Little Red Rooster, Ruby Tuesday, Paint it Black…) and the exhilarating choreography will inspire the viewer and is bound to get one to his feet.
Swansong is one of Bruce's most prominent works. Acclaimed as a modern classic the ballet shows a prisoner being interrogated by two guards using a startling...
Silence is the end of our song is a moving ballet danced to a series of songs from Chile and dedicated to the Chilean people and their sufferings. Using documentary film – seen as hazy memories – and the words of the songs by Violeta Parra and the poet and songwriter Victor Jara, who was assassinated by the "junta" in 1973, the piece moves from light to darkness, from celebration to the need of courage in the face of political adversity or the threat of death. A touching, gentle and human statement.
Peppered with references to the body language, style and spirit of the sixties and early seventies, Rooster blazes with vitality. The infectious rhythms of some of the best-known hits of The Rolling Stones (Little Red Rooster, Ruby Tuesday, Paint it Black…) and the exhilarating choreography will inspire the viewer and is bound to get one to his feet.
Swansong is one of Bruce's most prominent works. Acclaimed as a modern classic the ballet shows a prisoner being interrogated by two guards using a startling...
The Dance Theatre of Harlem's birthplace was in a disused garage in Harlem, a black district of New York. Arthur Mitchell, the founder who still acts as its artistic director, set up the ballet school with the aim of giving black dancers the opportunity of sound training, as their skin color meant that they often encountered difficulties finding employment with existing companies which consisted mainly of white dancers. Since its humble beginnings in 1969 – it was founded shortly after the murder of Martin Luther King – the Dance Theatre of Harlem has attained worldwide status. Today, its repertoire is a representative cross section from the history of artistic dancing. Alongside classics of the Russian school such as Swan Lake and Sheherazade , successful neoclassical ballets from the years following the First World War as well as works by contemporary choreographers are shown.
Léo Delibes was 30 years old when he achieved his critical breakthrough in France's musical metropolis. Having made his debut with the music for the ballet La Source (The Source), he was immediately entrusted with the commission of writing a ballet that would fill an entire evening performance; the result was Coppélia . The scenery for this fairy-tale piece was designed by Charles Nuitter, and the story was taken from E.T.A. Hoffmann's Der Sandmann (The Sandman).
In 1994 the Opéra National de Lyon performed Coppélia under the choreography of Maguy Martin. The set was designed by Renaud Gaulot, costumes by Montserrat Casanova, with lighting by Jørgen S. Johannessen. Kent Nagano conducted the orchestra of the Opéra National.
In 1994 the Opéra National de Lyon performed Coppélia under the choreography of Maguy Martin. The set was designed by Renaud Gaulot, costumes by Montserrat Casanova, with lighting by Jørgen S. Johannessen. Kent Nagano conducted the orchestra of the Opéra National.
During the 1920s Vladimir Dechevov (1889 – 1955) was regarded as one of the most promising younger Soviet composers. Darius Milhaud, who made his acquaintance in 1926 during a visit to Leningrad, praised him in the French press as a "genius" and "extremely original". However, subsequent attempts to make his compositions better known abroad were unsuccessful. In 1929 followed Dechevov's best-known composition: Ice and Steel . But such were the ideological tensions of this period that this avant-garde work soon disappeared from the public stage. Although Dechevov was one of the chief proponents of the left wing musical avant-garde in the 1920s and explicitly came out in favour of critical appropriation of elements from Western modernism, he was not subjected to direct ideological attacks during the Stalinist era. Neither, however, despite clearly moderating his compositional style, did he succeed in obtaining a prominent position in the conformist musical culture of socialist realism that held sway after 1932. It was only after the outbreak of the Second World War that he started once again to produce major works of his own: ballet music based on classical materials and patriotic tone poems. However, these did not prevent his name from increasingly being forgotten.
"…Riccardo Muti conducts Don Pasquale in Ravenna - a great celebration for everyone." This press quote from the Italian music magazine Il giornale della musica hit the mark exactly. Watching this realistic, young and vital production, directed by the 21 year old Andrea da Rosa and listening to a high potential and unspent young cast, you feel how powerful, charming and timeless this score by Donizetti is. This production was recorded during the Ravenna Festival in the gorgeous and patriarchal Teatro Dante Alighieri, in December 2006. Maestro Riccardo Muti shows one more time, what it means to perform an Italian opera with a young and professional Italian cast – an outstanding and breathtaking performance and really, "a great celebration for everyone".
Two queens on one island. A recipe for disaster. Especially as both have a legitimate claim to the other's throne. They are, after all, related… So power and politics are the name of the game. And, for reasons of state, one of the heads that wears a crown has to roll.
Maria Stuarda was laid to rest for more than a hundred years, finally being revived in 1958 in Bergamo under conductor Oliviero de Fabritiis. However the real breakthrough for the opera finally came with Giorgio de Lullo's Florentine production for the Maggio Musicale in 1967 (with set design and costumes by Pier Luigi Pizzi, director, set designer and costume designer at La Scala in 2008). As the two queens, Leyla Gencer and Shirley Verrett, set the vocal standards. Since then, the triumph of Maria Stuarda has been unstoppable. Various top interpreters have taken on the vocal and acting challenges of the main roles, including Montserrat Caballe, Beverly Sills, Janet Baker, Rosalind Plowright, Joan Sutherland, Huguette Tourangeau, Maria Chiara, Edita Gruberova and Agnes Baltsa. Mariella Devia as Maria and Anna Caterina Antonacci as Elisabetta have now also added their names to this illustrious list.
Bonus feature:
- Maria Stuarda - Backstage
Maria Stuarda was laid to rest for more than a hundred years, finally being revived in 1958 in Bergamo under conductor Oliviero de Fabritiis. However the real breakthrough for the opera finally came with Giorgio de Lullo's Florentine production for the Maggio Musicale in 1967 (with set design and costumes by Pier Luigi Pizzi, director, set designer and costume designer at La Scala in 2008). As the two queens, Leyla Gencer and Shirley Verrett, set the vocal standards. Since then, the triumph of Maria Stuarda has been unstoppable. Various top interpreters have taken on the vocal and acting challenges of the main roles, including Montserrat Caballe, Beverly Sills, Janet Baker, Rosalind Plowright, Joan Sutherland, Huguette Tourangeau, Maria Chiara, Edita Gruberova and Agnes Baltsa. Mariella Devia as Maria and Anna Caterina Antonacci as Elisabetta have now also added their names to this illustrious list.
Bonus feature:
- Maria Stuarda - Backstage
The 7th Symphony by Beethoven is often referred to as a 'dance symphony' and was described by Wagner as a 'grand apotheosis of the dance', but van Schayk hears in the music the voice of an almost obsessive idealism. Beethoven wrote the his Symphony No. 7 between 1812 and 1813, the last years of the Napoleonic Wars, and the choreographer feels that it expresses the composer's ecstatic longing to reach the sublime future he was convinced lay ahead at the end of the dark period of the war.
A great admirer of George Balanchine, Hans van Manen was once told that Beethoven was one of the few composers whose work was impossible to choreograph. Van Manen rose to the challenge, creating Grosse Fuge to Beethoven's String Quartet in B flat major, Op. 133 (Grosse Fuge) and the Cavatina from String Quartet in B flat major, Op. 130. The resulting work is an abstract ballet on van Manen's favourite theme - the tension and relationships between human beings. He once said, "As soon as I place two people in an empty room I express a mood or a relationship."
With a good deal of ironic and sometimes sarcastic humour, eroticism and aggression between man and women are expressed in the Piano Variations choreographed on Prokofiev's Sarcasms Op. 17, to...
A great admirer of George Balanchine, Hans van Manen was once told that Beethoven was one of the few composers whose work was impossible to choreograph. Van Manen rose to the challenge, creating Grosse Fuge to Beethoven's String Quartet in B flat major, Op. 133 (Grosse Fuge) and the Cavatina from String Quartet in B flat major, Op. 130. The resulting work is an abstract ballet on van Manen's favourite theme - the tension and relationships between human beings. He once said, "As soon as I place two people in an empty room I express a mood or a relationship."
With a good deal of ironic and sometimes sarcastic humour, eroticism and aggression between man and women are expressed in the Piano Variations choreographed on Prokofiev's Sarcasms Op. 17, to...
Strange Fish
As in all DV8's work, the performers in Strange Fish take astounding and humbling physical risks, and are audacious in fashioning metaphors of extreme emotion. The work concerns the nature of our quest for someone to love and something, or someone, to believe in. The tyranny of couples and groups, the pain of not belonging and the terror of being alone are all laid bare in a series of powerful images which are both pitiless and profoundly compassionate. Strange Fish is harrowing and frightening, but also contains some acutely funny moments.
Enter Achilles
A funny, cruel exploration of the male psyche, Enter Achilles is set in a typical British pub, a shabby, nicotine-stained boozer. Pop songs tumble out of the jukebox, there is football on the TV, and the eight men lark around, pint glasses in hand. But their blokish fun is balanced on a knife-edge of tension, for beneath the mateyness lurks a disturbing undercurrent of paranoia and insecurity, where weakness is brutally exploited and violence covers up vulnerability.
Dead Dreams of Monochrome Men
Dead Dreams of Monochrome Men explores the grisley world of the notorious serial killer Dennis Nilsen. Founded upon the conviction that...
As in all DV8's work, the performers in Strange Fish take astounding and humbling physical risks, and are audacious in fashioning metaphors of extreme emotion. The work concerns the nature of our quest for someone to love and something, or someone, to believe in. The tyranny of couples and groups, the pain of not belonging and the terror of being alone are all laid bare in a series of powerful images which are both pitiless and profoundly compassionate. Strange Fish is harrowing and frightening, but also contains some acutely funny moments.
Enter Achilles
A funny, cruel exploration of the male psyche, Enter Achilles is set in a typical British pub, a shabby, nicotine-stained boozer. Pop songs tumble out of the jukebox, there is football on the TV, and the eight men lark around, pint glasses in hand. But their blokish fun is balanced on a knife-edge of tension, for beneath the mateyness lurks a disturbing undercurrent of paranoia and insecurity, where weakness is brutally exploited and violence covers up vulnerability.
Dead Dreams of Monochrome Men
Dead Dreams of Monochrome Men explores the grisley world of the notorious serial killer Dennis Nilsen. Founded upon the conviction that...
The preocupation of the composer of "minimal music", Philip Glass, with Indian music and his interest in Gandhi began in 1966 during his first visit to India where he met Ravi Shankar. Since then, the rhythmic figures of Indian music have exercised a significant influence on his music which has a strong meditative and almost hypnotic effect through the repetitive sequences of tones with minimal changes. Glass's work needs time to unfold its hypnotic effect and fascination. With his second opera Glass didn't want to draw a historic portrait of Mahatma Gandhi. Instead he used the example of Gandhi's work during the last years between 1893 and 1914 in South Africa to draw an outline of the current worldwide political and religious problems. In South Africa Gandhi formulated his theory of passive resistance and civil disobedience known as Satyagraha as a reaction to the government's discrimination against the Indian population evidenced by its denial of basic rights such as the right to vote.
Harry Kupfer's version of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice , originally conceived for the Berlin Komische Oper and now in the repertory of The Royal Opera, won the Olivier Award for "Most Outstanding Achievement in Opera".
According to legend, Orpheus' magical power as a musician enabled him to regain his wife from the dead on condition that he did not look at her on the journey back from Hades - a condition it proved impossible to fulfil. In Harry Kupfer's updated version, Orfeo, in leather jacket, trainers and jeans, sees his Euridice die in a street accident. Succumbing to depression, he languishes in Hades - a psychiatric hospital - before taking his electric guitar to charm the beasts in an inner-city concrete jungle. Hans Schavernoch has designed an ingenious set with projected imagery on revolving screens and mirrors.
The German male alto, Jochen Kowalski, gives a virtuoso performance as the tormented Orfeo, with the young British soprano Gillian Webster as Euridice.
According to legend, Orpheus' magical power as a musician enabled him to regain his wife from the dead on condition that he did not look at her on the journey back from Hades - a condition it proved impossible to fulfil. In Harry Kupfer's updated version, Orfeo, in leather jacket, trainers and jeans, sees his Euridice die in a street accident. Succumbing to depression, he languishes in Hades - a psychiatric hospital - before taking his electric guitar to charm the beasts in an inner-city concrete jungle. Hans Schavernoch has designed an ingenious set with projected imagery on revolving screens and mirrors.
The German male alto, Jochen Kowalski, gives a virtuoso performance as the tormented Orfeo, with the young British soprano Gillian Webster as Euridice.
Grupo Corpo, or 'Body Group' are a Brazilian Dance Company who combine the sensuality of Afro-Brazilian dance forms and the technical prowess of ballet with a contemporary, highly theatrical sensibility.
Blending Brazilian spirit with African Rhythm and elements of classical ballet, the group has become Brazil's leading Ballet Company. Innovative lighting and scenery, and vivid costumes all add to the experience.
"O Corpo" , choreographed in 2000, is set to an original score by Arnaldo Antunes. The dance combines highly technical dance moves with a sharp edgy, urban flair. The piece shows the versatility of the dancers and their incredible competence in manipulating the entire body.
Bonus feature:
- Grupo Corpo: Behind the scenes - A film by Jurgen Wilcke
Blending Brazilian spirit with African Rhythm and elements of classical ballet, the group has become Brazil's leading Ballet Company. Innovative lighting and scenery, and vivid costumes all add to the experience.
"O Corpo" , choreographed in 2000, is set to an original score by Arnaldo Antunes. The dance combines highly technical dance moves with a sharp edgy, urban flair. The piece shows the versatility of the dancers and their incredible competence in manipulating the entire body.
Bonus feature:
- Grupo Corpo: Behind the scenes - A film by Jurgen Wilcke
George Frideric Handel's Admeto is considered one of the most successful operas produced in the first half of the 18th century. Along with Radamisto , Giulio Cesare , Tamerlano , Rodelinda and Alessandro , which were also written in this period, Admeto belongs to Handel's so-called 'London operas' - works he composed for the Royal Academy of Music. Though born in Halle, Germany, Handel spent most of his adult life in London and became a British subject in 1727.
Axel Kohler, the celebrated counter-tenor who is active in Munich, Halle and Berlin – now also well known for his work as a director - has brought Admeto into the modern era in timeless style by the skilful application of imaginative theatrical digressions. Kohler's production at the Halle Opernhaus revisits a work that encompasses comedy, tragedy and almost absurd grotesqueness and gives it a convincing metaphor in the form of a modern hospital.
Axel Kohler, the celebrated counter-tenor who is active in Munich, Halle and Berlin – now also well known for his work as a director - has brought Admeto into the modern era in timeless style by the skilful application of imaginative theatrical digressions. Kohler's production at the Halle Opernhaus revisits a work that encompasses comedy, tragedy and almost absurd grotesqueness and gives it a convincing metaphor in the form of a modern hospital.
English National Opera first mounted David Alden's production of Ariodante , one of Handel's greatest masterpieces, in 1993. It met with unanimous critical and popular acclaim - "a baroque triumph" (The Times); "Enthralling from start to finish" (Financial Times); "If anyone wants proof Handel is a great composer, here's the evidence" (The Guardian); "The orchestral playing was sublime, the singing unforgettably beautiful" (Daily Express).
The 1996 revival of Ariodante features many of the leading singers from the original 1993 production, from whom Alden drew performances of characteristic intensity: Ann Murray in the alto castrato title role, Lesley Garrett as Dalinda, Joan Rodgers as Ginevra, Christopher Robson as Polinesso and Paul Nilon as Lurcanio. Ivor Bolton conducts.
The 1996 revival of Ariodante features many of the leading singers from the original 1993 production, from whom Alden drew performances of characteristic intensity: Ann Murray in the alto castrato title role, Lesley Garrett as Dalinda, Joan Rodgers as Ginevra, Christopher Robson as Polinesso and Paul Nilon as Lurcanio. Ivor Bolton conducts.
Dame Janet Baker, in one of her greatest roles, leads a cast of some of Britain's finest interpeters of baroque opera and their performance under the baton of Sir Charles Mackerras is one of the highest musical excellence. This video is a studio recording of John Copley's acclaimed English National Opera production.
The opera was first performed in 1724 at the Haymarket Theatre in London using castrati singers in the heroes' roles. This production follows modern practice in using women in these parts. Dame Janet's virtuoso role as Julius Caesar has been heralded as a masterful recreation of the music which Handel wrote for the finest singers of his time.
The opera was first performed in 1724 at the Haymarket Theatre in London using castrati singers in the heroes' roles. This production follows modern practice in using women in these parts. Dame Janet's virtuoso role as Julius Caesar has been heralded as a masterful recreation of the music which Handel wrote for the finest singers of his time.
During the first London performance King George II is said to have been so moved by the "Hallelujah" chorus, that he rose from his seat, and the rest of the audience with him. The Messiah , Handel's best-known oratorio, is deemed to be the masterpiece of the genre and one of the main reasons that he became a popular artistic figure in London's contemporary music scene.
Helmuth Rilling conducts Mozart's 1789 arrangement of that "Grand Musical Entertainment". According to Rilling, it is due to the details that this arrangement is so fascinating: dynamic changes, a different segmentation of solo and chorus parts, the instrumentation modulated to the tone characteristic of Mozart's time. "Actually", says Rilling, "this Messiah is a new work, more colourful, and very interesting!"
Gramophone on the original CD issue: "I was particularly impressed by Cornelia Kallisch; her singing of 'He was despised' is beautifully controlled and her declamation clear and affecting... [Her] light-textured voice, sometimes recalling the youthful Ameling, is ideal in this repertory. The bass Alastair Miles is the British member of the team and his contribution is a strong one. His vigorous account of 'Why do the nations so furiously rage together?', completed by...
Helmuth Rilling conducts Mozart's 1789 arrangement of that "Grand Musical Entertainment". According to Rilling, it is due to the details that this arrangement is so fascinating: dynamic changes, a different segmentation of solo and chorus parts, the instrumentation modulated to the tone characteristic of Mozart's time. "Actually", says Rilling, "this Messiah is a new work, more colourful, and very interesting!"
Gramophone on the original CD issue: "I was particularly impressed by Cornelia Kallisch; her singing of 'He was despised' is beautifully controlled and her declamation clear and affecting... [Her] light-textured voice, sometimes recalling the youthful Ameling, is ideal in this repertory. The bass Alastair Miles is the British member of the team and his contribution is a strong one. His vigorous account of 'Why do the nations so furiously rage together?', completed by...
Nicholas Hytner's highly innovative production of Handel's comic opera won the coveted Laurence Olivier Opera Award. This live recording from the English National Opera stars Ann Murray as Xerxes, whose love for Romilda, sung by Valerie Masterson, sets off a series of love intrigues. The designer, David Fielding, has produced a stunning and elegant series of curious and absorbing images, creating a world of its own and recreating the culture of Vauxhall Gardens in Handel's own time. Sir Charles Mackerras conducts the English National Opera orchestra in an edition prepared by himself.
Handel's five act opera Teseo was premièred in 1713 at the Queen's Theatre in London. After flopping with his previous work Il pastor fido Handel tied up to his big success Rinaldo and again created an opera with a heroic subject, sophisticated stagecraft and a big orchestra.
The Italian librettist Niccolo Haym based the libretto on Philippe Quinault's Thesée , which has originally been created for Jean Baptiste Lully's homonymous opera. Teseo has inherited many qualities of the French tragédie lyrique style, such as the five-act structure, big arias in the middle of scenes (meaning that characters do not have to leave the stage after their arias), a secondary romantic couple, many short arias and recitatives and many accompanied recitatives.
In 1947 the opera was rediscovered and staged for the first time after Handel's death at the Göttinger Händelfestpiele, followed by a production at the Goethe-Theater Bad Lauchstädt and few others. Finally, in 2004 Handel's jewel of operatic work was performed at the beautiful setting of the Schlosstheater Potsdam under the direction of Axel Köhler.
The cast leaded by Jacek Laszczkowski, who is singing the title role and has been chosen as Singer of the Year 2003 by the German...
The Italian librettist Niccolo Haym based the libretto on Philippe Quinault's Thesée , which has originally been created for Jean Baptiste Lully's homonymous opera. Teseo has inherited many qualities of the French tragédie lyrique style, such as the five-act structure, big arias in the middle of scenes (meaning that characters do not have to leave the stage after their arias), a secondary romantic couple, many short arias and recitatives and many accompanied recitatives.
In 1947 the opera was rediscovered and staged for the first time after Handel's death at the Göttinger Händelfestpiele, followed by a production at the Goethe-Theater Bad Lauchstädt and few others. Finally, in 2004 Handel's jewel of operatic work was performed at the beautiful setting of the Schlosstheater Potsdam under the direction of Axel Köhler.
The cast leaded by Jacek Laszczkowski, who is singing the title role and has been chosen as Singer of the Year 2003 by the German...
Hansel und Gretel is a fairy-tale opera (Marchenspiel) by Engelbert Humperdinck to a libretto by his sister Adelheid Wette. The idea for the opera was proposed to Humperdinck by his sister, who approached him about writing music for songs that she had written for her children for Christmas based on Hansel and Gretel . After several revisions, the musical sketches and the songs were turned into a full-scale opera.
Hansel und Gretel has been associated with Christmas since its earliest performances, and it is often performed at Christmas time. It is much admired for its folk music-inspired themes, one of the most famous being the prayer from act II.
A family classic, it grew out of a set of incidental music and, written between 1890 and 1893, it was first performed on 23 December 1893 under Richard Strauss in Weimar. The form in which the story is used in the opera derives from the collection of Ludwig Bechstein. Gertrud, the desperate mother, sends her hungry children into the wood to pick strawberries, unaware of the danger to which she exposes them until Peter, the broombinder, returns and is shocked at what she has done; both anxious parents immediately set out to find them. The thoroughly happy ending introduces another significant...
Hansel und Gretel has been associated with Christmas since its earliest performances, and it is often performed at Christmas time. It is much admired for its folk music-inspired themes, one of the most famous being the prayer from act II.
A family classic, it grew out of a set of incidental music and, written between 1890 and 1893, it was first performed on 23 December 1893 under Richard Strauss in Weimar. The form in which the story is used in the opera derives from the collection of Ludwig Bechstein. Gertrud, the desperate mother, sends her hungry children into the wood to pick strawberries, unaware of the danger to which she exposes them until Peter, the broombinder, returns and is shocked at what she has done; both anxious parents immediately set out to find them. The thoroughly happy ending introduces another significant...
Besides being one of the most important Czech composers, Leoš Janáček is also among the most individual opera composers of the twentieth century, without whom one could hardly imagine the development of contemporary music. His nine stage works in particular have carried his homeland's life and customs, and also folk melodies and musical language, out into the world.
Leoš Janáček wrote the libretto for the Cunning Little Vixen himself, based on Rudolf Tešnohlidek's story of the same name, Příhody lišky Bystroušky (literally: 'The adventures of the vixen Bystrushka'). The first performance on 6 November 1924 at the Brno National Theatre was a great artistic success, and international acclaim followed with its legendary staging in 1956, at the Comic Opera in Berlin.
Leoš Janáček wrote the libretto for the Cunning Little Vixen himself, based on Rudolf Tešnohlidek's story of the same name, Příhody lišky Bystroušky (literally: 'The adventures of the vixen Bystrushka'). The first performance on 6 November 1924 at the Brno National Theatre was a great artistic success, and international acclaim followed with its legendary staging in 1956, at the Comic Opera in Berlin.
Not just in insider circles, the Russian Kirov Ballet of St. Petersburg is considered one of the world's leading ballet ensembles. On this DVD video the troupe finally presents a representative sampling of their extensive repertoire. Like a string of pearls, one highlight follows another. The music ranges from Frederic Chopin and Igor Stravinsky's "Petruschka" to Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings," famous for its part in the foreboding film "Platoon." For an excellent overview of the work of the famous Kirov Ballet and ballet itself, this DVD is a must-have.
Exactly 20 years separate Jiri Kylian's solo Silent Cries and his black-and-white film, Car Men , made in 2006 in collaboration with the Dutch filmmaker, Boris Paval Cone. What unites the two works is the sheer expressiveness of the dance on the one hand, and the distinctive facial gestures and body language of the dancer Sabine Kupferberg on the other. Kupferberg is the one who pulls the strings in Car Men , victim and plotter in equal measure, prepared at all times to stand up to life's problems – as well as to her three co-actors Escamillo, Don Jose and Micaela – with humour and enigmatic wit. And so at the end of Kylian's unusual, slapstick-like tragicomedy, she simply abandons her three colleagues, self-assured and incorrigible – just like her role model Carmen.
Every now and again Jiri Kylian's vivid kinetic imagination catches us by surprise. His pieces frequently manage to delve deeply into the mystery of human existence to reveal its hidden aspects. With his special blend of music, stage space, light and costumes he conjures up moods and situations of such intensity that they are an ideal medium for posing important existential questions and delving into social phenomena.
Three early ballet's by of one of the most important choreographers of our times: Jiri Kylian.
Three early ballet's by of one of the most important choreographers of our times: Jiri Kylian.
Jules Massenet's opera Werther belongs to the most favourite works of French repertoire. It is in the first wave of German Romantic literature that Massenet found the source for his doubtless most powerful work – and certainly his most popular! Might the French musician have detected in his own life the inspiration for these pages about the tormented fate of Werther and Charlotte, of their impossible love, their sighs, their unhappiness? Rarely has the author of Manon found a more poignant or fitting touch, leading the listener right inside the tempestuous soul of his characters.
It was first performed in 1892 in Vienna, and based on a famous novel by J.W.Goethe The Sorrows of Young Werther . The story of the main character Werther takes place around 1772 in Wetzlar near Frankfurt, and unveils a touching drama of two young hearts who were not allowed to find happiness, because of the conventions of the period and family conditions. When Werther meets Charlotte, he falls in love with her at first sight but is desolated after finding out she is about to marry someone else. Charlotte's jolly and optimistic sister Sophie hides her feelings she secretly cherishes towards Werther who is hopelessly infatuated with Charlotte and has numerous times, to no avail,...
It was first performed in 1892 in Vienna, and based on a famous novel by J.W.Goethe The Sorrows of Young Werther . The story of the main character Werther takes place around 1772 in Wetzlar near Frankfurt, and unveils a touching drama of two young hearts who were not allowed to find happiness, because of the conventions of the period and family conditions. When Werther meets Charlotte, he falls in love with her at first sight but is desolated after finding out she is about to marry someone else. Charlotte's jolly and optimistic sister Sophie hides her feelings she secretly cherishes towards Werther who is hopelessly infatuated with Charlotte and has numerous times, to no avail,...
Eugene Scribe had presented the composer with the drama L'Africaine together with a libretto for Le Prophete as early as 1838. The world premier on 28 April 1865 was one of the outstanding social events of the Second Empire. L'Africaine was first performed at San Francisco Opera on 3 November 1972, the current performance, in the original French version, is a revival of the new production of the grande opera created by the opera house for its programme in September 1988.
Based on the Greek legend of Ulysses and his return to Ithaca after years at the Trojans wars, the opera Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria is one of the earliest opera of its kind ever written.
Monteverdi's music is of transcendental beauty. He took what had previously been rather monotonous, one-dimensional music drama and enriched it with a full musical expression complementing a coherent dramatic experience, picking up the existing art of drama. With full justification, he can therefore be called the real founder of opera.
This seminal 1973 production is directed by Peter Hall and conducted by Raymond Leppard at the National Theatre. The terrific cast and crew, particularly the outstanding Janet Baker, stage an impassioned production that is accentuated by the gorgeous visual design.
Monteverdi's music is of transcendental beauty. He took what had previously been rather monotonous, one-dimensional music drama and enriched it with a full musical expression complementing a coherent dramatic experience, picking up the existing art of drama. With full justification, he can therefore be called the real founder of opera.
This seminal 1973 production is directed by Peter Hall and conducted by Raymond Leppard at the National Theatre. The terrific cast and crew, particularly the outstanding Janet Baker, stage an impassioned production that is accentuated by the gorgeous visual design.
Caravaggio, born Michelangelo Merisi, has entered history due to his paintings of dramatic intensity. Caravaggio used to venture the threshold beyond the pale throughout his life. He was seen for admiration of his work and harsh opposition towards his extraordinary realism in painting human beings. Due to his passionate personality, he encountered more than several conflicts with people around him, sponsors, and the law. One of his foremost artistic twists was the extreme contrast between brightness and darkness, light and shadow.
Mauro Bigonzetti is one of the leading choreographers of the Italian ballet who freed himself from the predominance of mainly classical opera companies in the 80's. He created his choreographies mainly for the Aterballetto in Reggio Emilia that helped him to fame and worldwide attention. "When I think of Caravaggio, I think of the artist and the human being at the same time. These are the two sides of the human existence that interest me in particular. The relations of these two worlds are the inspiration for this work: the inner world on the one hand – and how it evolves artistically on the other."
Mauro Bigonzetti has developed the piece Caravaggio in collaboration with the Staatsballett Berlin.
Mauro Bigonzetti is one of the leading choreographers of the Italian ballet who freed himself from the predominance of mainly classical opera companies in the 80's. He created his choreographies mainly for the Aterballetto in Reggio Emilia that helped him to fame and worldwide attention. "When I think of Caravaggio, I think of the artist and the human being at the same time. These are the two sides of the human existence that interest me in particular. The relations of these two worlds are the inspiration for this work: the inner world on the one hand – and how it evolves artistically on the other."
Mauro Bigonzetti has developed the piece Caravaggio in collaboration with the Staatsballett Berlin.
La Clemenza di Tito was commissioned to celebrate the coronation of the Emperor Leopold II as King of Bohemia in 1791, and was written in eighteen days. Nicholas Hytner's elegant new staging, performed in the original Italian language, was premiered during the Mozart Bicentenary season at Glyndebourne on 28th June, 1991. An impressive cast is led by Philip Langridge (Tito), Ashley Putnam (Vitellia) and Diana Montague (Sesto). New recitatives, to replace those written by Mozart's pupil Süssmayr, were commissioned from composer Stephen Oliver for this production. Andrew Davis conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
The old philosopher Don Alfonso enrages his two friends, the officers Ferrando and Guglielmo, with his claim that their fiancées will sooner or later be unfaithful to them - like all women. He proposes a wager, which the two friends accept. They swear on their honour as soldiers that they will prove him wrong and that Dorabella and Fiordiligi are not like "all women".
The immaculately restored eighteenth-century Court Theatre at the country residence of the Swedish Royal Family is the ideal home for period opera. Ever since Drottningholm Court Theatre was rediscovered in the 1920s, it has served as a living memorial to the fabulous extravagance of courtly entertainment and provided the wherewithal for the recreation of the spectacular scenic transformations of the seventeenth and eighteenth century operatic repertoire. The conductor Arnold Östman was appointed Drottningholm's Artistic Director in 1980 and immediately set about establishing a Drottningholm Mozart style, attempting to recapture an authentic flavour through detailed historical research and the use of period instruments. He collaborates with German producer Willy Decker on this ever-popular Mozart comedy with an extensively rehearsed cast of young Swedish singers who "…proved a triumph of...
The immaculately restored eighteenth-century Court Theatre at the country residence of the Swedish Royal Family is the ideal home for period opera. Ever since Drottningholm Court Theatre was rediscovered in the 1920s, it has served as a living memorial to the fabulous extravagance of courtly entertainment and provided the wherewithal for the recreation of the spectacular scenic transformations of the seventeenth and eighteenth century operatic repertoire. The conductor Arnold Östman was appointed Drottningholm's Artistic Director in 1980 and immediately set about establishing a Drottningholm Mozart style, attempting to recapture an authentic flavour through detailed historical research and the use of period instruments. He collaborates with German producer Willy Decker on this ever-popular Mozart comedy with an extensively rehearsed cast of young Swedish singers who "…proved a triumph of...
Set in the exotic seraglio of the Pasha Selim, the story revolves around the rescue of the lovely Constanze by her lover Belmonte – a tale of love, bravery and forgiveness. In this work, Mozart breaks new ground in introducing dramatically rounded characters with recognisably human feelings and weaknesses. The work influenced and changed the nature of opera throughout Europe.
This charming production from Drottningholm does full justice to Mozart's score. Arnold Östman's deliberate conducting combined with Carl Friedrich Oberle's design demonstrates that this really is "an eternal masterpiece of music drama by a youthful, exuberant composer who suddenly found his individual voice and style in the field of opera with this particular work" (Opera now)
This charming production from Drottningholm does full justice to Mozart's score. Arnold Östman's deliberate conducting combined with Carl Friedrich Oberle's design demonstrates that this really is "an eternal masterpiece of music drama by a youthful, exuberant composer who suddenly found his individual voice and style in the field of opera with this particular work" (Opera now)
Mozart's charming opera tells the story of a Countess who disguises herself as a gardener in order to find and forgive her lover, who thinks he has killed her in a quarrel. The score is one of real musical delights with uncommonly rich and full orchestration and prominent parts for wind in particular. Arnold Ostman conducts this Goran Jarvefelt production in which the countess is played by Britt-Marie Aruhn.
Die Zauberflöte is the artistic and philosophical testament of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who died a few weeks after the work's première in Vienna.
Intertwining music of awesome purity and beauty with the conventions of the singspiel - a popular form of musical comedy – Mozart's final operatic legacy to the world explores Man's search for the truth and his confusion between the forces of dark and light and the final utopian resolution of seemingly irreconcilable elements.
Because of the opera's relationship to freemasonry, commentators have identified Tamino with the Emperor Joseph II, Pamina with the Austrian people, Sarastro with Ignaz von Born, Monostatos with the clergy and the Queen of the Night with the Empress Maria Theresa.
Whichever level one approaches Die Zauberflöte on, it remains a great work in the spirit of the Enlightenment as well as a delightful fairy-tale. Nothing is so simple as to be absolutely clear-cut. In life, the serious and the comic often intermingle in a way that is disconcerting. In Die Zauberflöte , Mozart succeeds in combining these two elements in a way which has never been surpassed.
The light and vibrant presentation of the Scandinavian cast - internationally renowned bass...
Intertwining music of awesome purity and beauty with the conventions of the singspiel - a popular form of musical comedy – Mozart's final operatic legacy to the world explores Man's search for the truth and his confusion between the forces of dark and light and the final utopian resolution of seemingly irreconcilable elements.
Because of the opera's relationship to freemasonry, commentators have identified Tamino with the Emperor Joseph II, Pamina with the Austrian people, Sarastro with Ignaz von Born, Monostatos with the clergy and the Queen of the Night with the Empress Maria Theresa.
Whichever level one approaches Die Zauberflöte on, it remains a great work in the spirit of the Enlightenment as well as a delightful fairy-tale. Nothing is so simple as to be absolutely clear-cut. In life, the serious and the comic often intermingle in a way that is disconcerting. In Die Zauberflöte , Mozart succeeds in combining these two elements in a way which has never been surpassed.
The light and vibrant presentation of the Scandinavian cast - internationally renowned bass...
Sinfonietta
Czech-born Kylián was inspired by the beautiful music of his compatriot, Janáček, to create this fluid, spacious, romantic ballet which has become a milestone in contemporary choreography. The forceful fanfares of Janáček's music are matched by a ceaselessly energetic and exuberant display of movement, creating and image which carries through the composer's intention of evoking the spirit of the "modern, free Czech".
Symphony in D
In Symphony in D Kylián demonstrates his remarkable ability to create a highly inventive and graceful ballet which is, at the same time, extremely funny. Set to Haydn's Symphony No.101, "The Clock" and Symphony No. 73, "The Chase" , it is an affectionate send-up of classical ballet poses and is performed with great wit and style by the Nederlands Dans Theater.
Stamping Ground
Stamping Ground is a unique and original ballet, inspired by Kylián's experience of Aboriginal culture and dance, which led him to seek out the universal qualities that underlie both modern ballet and a style of dancing that has survived in Australia for over 40,000 years. Stamping is the most important element in Aboriginal dance. Each tribe has its own way of...
Czech-born Kylián was inspired by the beautiful music of his compatriot, Janáček, to create this fluid, spacious, romantic ballet which has become a milestone in contemporary choreography. The forceful fanfares of Janáček's music are matched by a ceaselessly energetic and exuberant display of movement, creating and image which carries through the composer's intention of evoking the spirit of the "modern, free Czech".
Symphony in D
In Symphony in D Kylián demonstrates his remarkable ability to create a highly inventive and graceful ballet which is, at the same time, extremely funny. Set to Haydn's Symphony No.101, "The Clock" and Symphony No. 73, "The Chase" , it is an affectionate send-up of classical ballet poses and is performed with great wit and style by the Nederlands Dans Theater.
Stamping Ground
Stamping Ground is a unique and original ballet, inspired by Kylián's experience of Aboriginal culture and dance, which led him to seek out the universal qualities that underlie both modern ballet and a style of dancing that has survived in Australia for over 40,000 years. Stamping is the most important element in Aboriginal dance. Each tribe has its own way of...
The Penguin Cafe Orchestra
Under its leader and composer Simon Jeffes, this ensemble has been making its own idiosyncratic brand of music since the mid-1970s, drawing on classical and avant-garde sources, as well as pop, folk and ethnic forms, with instruments ranging from the piano, cello, violin and drums, to the ukelele, electric guitar and penny whistle. A studio recording of performances by the PCO is punctuated with interviews in which they discuss their original and eclectic style.
This programme celebrates the music of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra which, in the words of Simon Jeffes caters for an audience "capable of enjoying Wilson Pickett, Beethoven, the Rolling Stones, choral music from West Africa, Bach, Stravinksy, Irish bagpipe music and even Abba on the odd occasion".
Bonus feature:
'Still Life' at the Penguin Cafe - A ballet performance with an introduction narrated by Jeremy Irons and performed by The Royal Ballet
The idiosyncratic music and imaginary world of Simon Jeffes, founder of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra, prompted David Bintley to create this ballet, set in a cafe where penguins resemble people and people resemble penguins. Here, an exuberant cabaret is presented by a...
Under its leader and composer Simon Jeffes, this ensemble has been making its own idiosyncratic brand of music since the mid-1970s, drawing on classical and avant-garde sources, as well as pop, folk and ethnic forms, with instruments ranging from the piano, cello, violin and drums, to the ukelele, electric guitar and penny whistle. A studio recording of performances by the PCO is punctuated with interviews in which they discuss their original and eclectic style.
This programme celebrates the music of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra which, in the words of Simon Jeffes caters for an audience "capable of enjoying Wilson Pickett, Beethoven, the Rolling Stones, choral music from West Africa, Bach, Stravinksy, Irish bagpipe music and even Abba on the odd occasion".
Bonus feature:
'Still Life' at the Penguin Cafe - A ballet performance with an introduction narrated by Jeremy Irons and performed by The Royal Ballet
The idiosyncratic music and imaginary world of Simon Jeffes, founder of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra, prompted David Bintley to create this ballet, set in a cafe where penguins resemble people and people resemble penguins. Here, an exuberant cabaret is presented by a...
John Gay (1685-1732), a genial poet and playwright with a talent for satire, got the idea for The Beggar's Opera from his friend, the satirist Jonathan Swift, who had mentioned to him that "A Newgate pastoral might make a pretty sort of thing". It was staged by the actor-manager John Rich (who introduced pantomime to England) and succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, making, it was said, "Gay rich and Rich gay". In general, ballad opera, set among London's criminal classes and full of satirical jibes about corruption in high places, suited English taste better than Handel's heroic operas by the 1720s.
Created specially for television, this Beggar's Opera captures the quality and satiric edge of the Hogarth engravings which influenced Gay's original version. The characters of this highly-spirited comedy of London low-life thrived on thieving, lechery and deceit: Peachum, the receiver of stolen goods, shops his clients when it suits him; Macheath, the highwayman, has married Polly Peachum but is promised to Lucy Lockit; Lucy tries to poison her rival, Polly; Peachum and Lockit can both profit from Macheath's demise and so he is brought to the gallows through his lecherous exploits. Lust, greed and corruption abound in this exuberant piece of popular...
Created specially for television, this Beggar's Opera captures the quality and satiric edge of the Hogarth engravings which influenced Gay's original version. The characters of this highly-spirited comedy of London low-life thrived on thieving, lechery and deceit: Peachum, the receiver of stolen goods, shops his clients when it suits him; Macheath, the highwayman, has married Polly Peachum but is promised to Lucy Lockit; Lucy tries to poison her rival, Polly; Peachum and Lockit can both profit from Macheath's demise and so he is brought to the gallows through his lecherous exploits. Lust, greed and corruption abound in this exuberant piece of popular...
The ballet Solushka (Cinderella), by Sergei Prokofiev, was written as a commissioned work for the famous ballet company of the Kirov Theatre in what is now St Petersburg. Its premiere, however, actually took place in Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre on 21 November 1945. The work achieved international status with Frederick Ashton's version, which appeared under the English title of Cinderella in 1948.
This recording of Sergei Prokofiev's ballet Cinderella is taken from a performance by the Opéra National de Lyon in 1989, choreographed by Maguy Marin. Set and costumes are by Montserrat Casanova, lighting design by John Spradbery, and the musical directorship of the Opéra National taken up by Yakov Kreisberg.
This recording of Sergei Prokofiev's ballet Cinderella is taken from a performance by the Opéra National de Lyon in 1989, choreographed by Maguy Marin. Set and costumes are by Montserrat Casanova, lighting design by John Spradbery, and the musical directorship of the Opéra National taken up by Yakov Kreisberg.
Prokofiev's disturbingly enigmatic opera, The Fiery Angel , was never performed in his lifetime - considered too decadent by Stalin and his successors - but David Freeman's imaginative production asserts it as one of the composer's greatest masterpieces.
Ostensibly, it is a tale of religious hysteria and demonic possession, but the novel, by the Russian decadent Valéry Bryusov, from which the opera is derived, also explores symbolically the love triangle endured by the writer himself, inspired by the self-destructive figure of his lover, the poet Nina Petrovskaya.
David Freeman has completely entered into this opera's strangely unnerving world. Evil is all around us and in his sensational production the image is taken quite literally.
Ostensibly, it is a tale of religious hysteria and demonic possession, but the novel, by the Russian decadent Valéry Bryusov, from which the opera is derived, also explores symbolically the love triangle endured by the writer himself, inspired by the self-destructive figure of his lover, the poet Nina Petrovskaya.
David Freeman has completely entered into this opera's strangely unnerving world. Evil is all around us and in his sensational production the image is taken quite literally.
In the light of the newly raised interest in Sergei Eisensteins film "Ivan the Terrible, Part II" in 1958, Abram Stassevich, the conductor of the film score that had been composed by Sergei Prokofiev in close collaboration with the director, proposed to the young and highly acclaimed choreographer Yuri Grigorovich to make the material and music into a self-contained ballet. But it took until the 1970s until the idea of this ambitious project was put into action.
Grigorovich then asked the director of the Bolshoi Theatre, the composer and professor of composition Mikhail I. Tchulaki, to compose a ballet score for the new production on the basis of the Eisenstein's musical film material.
The score of Ivan the Terrible is a collage of no less than 377 fragments of the original film score, but also of other works by Prokofiev. Grigorovichs Ivan is different form the historical figure and even from Eisenstein's interpretation. It is a predominantly fictious, poetically symbolic creation of the choreographer who tried to reveal the inner world of his time and his contemporaries.
This programme is an absolute rarity and a real treasure for all ballet lovers.
Grigorovich then asked the director of the Bolshoi Theatre, the composer and professor of composition Mikhail I. Tchulaki, to compose a ballet score for the new production on the basis of the Eisenstein's musical film material.
The score of Ivan the Terrible is a collage of no less than 377 fragments of the original film score, but also of other works by Prokofiev. Grigorovichs Ivan is different form the historical figure and even from Eisenstein's interpretation. It is a predominantly fictious, poetically symbolic creation of the choreographer who tried to reveal the inner world of his time and his contemporaries.
This programme is an absolute rarity and a real treasure for all ballet lovers.
These two ballet recordings, based on the music of the French composer Maurice Ravel and the Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev, are recommended to every child, youth and adult whose heart and mind are open for a musical and dancing encounter with the world of fairy tales. Both of them are about a small boy and his dealings with nature. Despite their similarities, the two works are fundamentally different. It is the difference between the two which makes this combination so appealing. They differ in content, the structure of the plot, the type of composition and the treatment of orchestral instruments, on the one hand. On the other, the means used by the Nederlands Dans Theater and the Royal Ballet School to realize the material make L'enfant et les sortilèges and Peter and the Wolf two entirely unique works.
L'enfant et les sortilèges presents a fantastic ballet fairy tale rich in witty inspirations in dance, costume and stage design with the choreography and design of Jiří Kylián's and the pioneering Parisian opera allusion under Lorin Maazel. This production was awarded several prizes. And rightly so, for nary any other ballet has ever been met with such enthusiasm and amusement while deeply touching its audiences.
L'enfant et les sortilèges presents a fantastic ballet fairy tale rich in witty inspirations in dance, costume and stage design with the choreography and design of Jiří Kylián's and the pioneering Parisian opera allusion under Lorin Maazel. This production was awarded several prizes. And rightly so, for nary any other ballet has ever been met with such enthusiasm and amusement while deeply touching its audiences.
Sergei Prokofiev devoted the last twelve years of his life to War and Peace . Having completed the first version (containing eleven scenes) unusually quickly, the composer continued working on the opera over the next ten years. Consequently, the work has appeared in different versions and orchestrations.
Tolstoy's massive chronicle of Russian family life during and after the Napoleonic Wars is one of the greatest novels in world literature and is very close to the hearts and experiences of the Russian people. During World War II, another 'great patriotic war', the Soviet authorities, in the face of the Nazi invasion, pasted pages of Tolstoy's book on to public buildings. Writing his final opera during this momentous period, Prokofiev very skilfully captured Tolstoy's piercing insight into human nature, choosing dramatic key moments from Tolstoy to reflect private and public destinies against a background of Russia under threat.
The greatest landmark in the stage history of the opera came with the 1991 production at the Mariinsky Theatre, when Prokoviev's complete score was performed for the first time with no cuts. This production, staged at the start of the third millennium, presents a fresh reading of Prokofiev's masterpiece.
Tolstoy's massive chronicle of Russian family life during and after the Napoleonic Wars is one of the greatest novels in world literature and is very close to the hearts and experiences of the Russian people. During World War II, another 'great patriotic war', the Soviet authorities, in the face of the Nazi invasion, pasted pages of Tolstoy's book on to public buildings. Writing his final opera during this momentous period, Prokofiev very skilfully captured Tolstoy's piercing insight into human nature, choosing dramatic key moments from Tolstoy to reflect private and public destinies against a background of Russia under threat.
The greatest landmark in the stage history of the opera came with the 1991 production at the Mariinsky Theatre, when Prokoviev's complete score was performed for the first time with no cuts. This production, staged at the start of the third millennium, presents a fresh reading of Prokofiev's masterpiece.
" La Boheme , which opened at the San Francisco Opera House Wednesday night [Nov 19, 1988], starred international recording star Luciano Pavarotti as Rodolfo and Mirella Freni as Mimi, who both had their debut with the company 21 years ago in the same roles."
- Opera review, November 1988
- Opera review, November 1988
Giacomo Puccini, the most significant Italian opera composer to follow in the footsteps of Giuseppe Verdi, discovered the foundation for Madam Butterfly in London where he had traveled for the first performance of his Tosca in June 1900. Puccini immediately recognized the moving effect of the tragic single-act drama, and towards the end of the year he decided to use it as the basis for an opera. (The plot of the opera is set "in Nagasaki around 1900".) A car accident in February 1903 prevented the composer from working for a considerable period; however, he noted the completion of Butterfly on 28 December. The first performance at Milan's Scala nearly two months later (17 February 1904) belongs among operatic history's great premiere scandals. Puccini withdrew the work, divided its two acts into three, added the tenor aria "Addio fiorito asil", and abbreviated parts. Performances in Brescia (May 1904), Paris (1906) and Berlin (1907) marked the work's rise to success, which belongs to a tradition of operas based on exhilarating, exotic, oriental themes. The Scala production of 1986 is characterized by an authentic Far Eastern flair. The Japanese director Keita Asari had at his disposal a décor and costumes team and two exceptional vocalists to perform the main roles from...
Manon Lescaut , Puccini's first major success, is a work of impassioned emotions based on the 18th-century novel by Abbe Prevost, depicting the doomed infatuation of Chevalier des Grieux for beautiful, fun-loving Manon. Puccini clothes the story in warmly passionate music that makes a direct appeal to the listener's emotions. "Manon", wrote Puccini to his publisher Giulio Ricordi in 1889, "is a heroine I believe in and therefore she cannot fail to win the heart of the public." This turned out to be a truly prophetic statement since none of Puccini's other world successes were received on their first nights as rapturously as Manon Lescaut . The popularity of Puccini's great masterpiece has never waned and the production at the Chemnitz Opera House was hailed as "a magnificent event" and "moments we go to the opera for."
Bonus features:
- Interviews with Bernhard Helmich, Ansgar Weigner, Frank Beermann, Astrid Weber
Bonus features:
- Interviews with Bernhard Helmich, Ansgar Weigner, Frank Beermann, Astrid Weber
La Fenice's 2008 schedule includes a special treat for opera-goers: a production of Puccini's seldom-performed opera: La Rondine (The Swallow). The score of the operetta-like three-act "lyrical comedy", which tells the story of the love between Magda and Ruggero, must be one of Puccini's most subtle creations. The light, bubbling music reveals levels of artistry and complexity that few composers have ever matched.
Milan-born conductor Carlo Rizzi has worked with the world's leading orchestras since 1982 – from Los Angeles and Chicago to Zurich, Milan and Salzburg, where he conducted a much-acclaimed production of La Traviata with Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazon in 2005.
Graham Vick, a highly experienced opera director, who also is something of a "Britpop" enthusiast, has directed productions at the New York Met, Vienna State Opera, Bavarian State Opera and the Royal Opera House, London. In Glyndebourne, where he was director of produc-tions from 1994 to 2000, he was responsible, amongst other things, for staging Cosi fan tutte , Don Giovanni and Pelleas et Melisande .
Milan-born conductor Carlo Rizzi has worked with the world's leading orchestras since 1982 – from Los Angeles and Chicago to Zurich, Milan and Salzburg, where he conducted a much-acclaimed production of La Traviata with Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazon in 2005.
Graham Vick, a highly experienced opera director, who also is something of a "Britpop" enthusiast, has directed productions at the New York Met, Vienna State Opera, Bavarian State Opera and the Royal Opera House, London. In Glyndebourne, where he was director of produc-tions from 1994 to 2000, he was responsible, amongst other things, for staging Cosi fan tutte , Don Giovanni and Pelleas et Melisande .
The star-studded vocal ensemble, under the direction of internationally renowned director David Runnicles, guarantees a satisfactory interpretation of Puccini's majestic opera. The aria, "Nessun dorma," which has now become a global hit, is sung by the young Indiana-born tenor Michael Sylvester as Calaf. At the vanguard of the contemporary art genre, David Hockney has been hired as both director and designer to contribute his experience to this well-staged opera project.
The new production of Purcell's The Fairy Queen launched in 1995 by the English National Opera (ENO) was received with great enthusiasm by both the public and musical press. This atmospheric production was prepared by David Pountney, Robert Israel created the stage set, Dunya Ramicova was responsible for costume design and Quinny Sacks was responsible for the choreography of the dance roles as well as the numerous breathtaking ballet scenes. Under the musical direction of Nicholas Kok, the English National Orchestra played baroque music which was as crystal clear as it was expressively infectious. Next to outstanding performers of the dancing roles such as Puck (Simon Rice) and the Indian boy (Arthur Pita), an entire armada of excellent singers was summoned up such as one seldom experiences together on the baroque opera stage. These included Yvonne Kenny as Titania, Thomas Randle as Oberon and Richard Van Allan as King Theseus. Jonathan Best, with his comic portrayal of the drunken poet, was loved by the audience and praised highly by the press, while other singers like Michael Chance, Mary Hegarthy, Janis Kelly, Marc Le Brocq and Christopher Ross all contributed their talents to produce an unusual musical theatre experience that has been masterfully preserved on this video.
Created specially for television and recorded in studio, this short opera by one of today's most eminent Finnish composers is based on a Christmas story by the American writer O. Henry.
Rautavaara sets The Gift of the Magi in a poor district of Helsinki in the 1920s. Snow covers the ground and the poor tenants of Mr Salomon's building live in fear of eviction. Minna (Pia Freund) and Joel (Jaako Kortekangas), two young newly-weds, are having trouble paying their rent, let alone buying Christmas presents. Yet they both long to give the other something special as an expression of their love.
So that she can buy Joel a chain for his watch, his most treasured possession, Minna sells her beautiful hair. Joel adores his wife's shining locks and parts with his watch so that he can purchase the magnificent set of jewelled combs she covets. Though their gifts are now useless, their joy in each other's love is precious beyond value. In the words of O. Henry: "Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are the wisest. Everywhere they are the wisest. They are the magi."
The telling of the story is unsentimental, Hannu Heikinheimo's staging exquisitely observed, and Rautavaara's music powerfully compelling. The Christmas message finds a...
Rautavaara sets The Gift of the Magi in a poor district of Helsinki in the 1920s. Snow covers the ground and the poor tenants of Mr Salomon's building live in fear of eviction. Minna (Pia Freund) and Joel (Jaako Kortekangas), two young newly-weds, are having trouble paying their rent, let alone buying Christmas presents. Yet they both long to give the other something special as an expression of their love.
So that she can buy Joel a chain for his watch, his most treasured possession, Minna sells her beautiful hair. Joel adores his wife's shining locks and parts with his watch so that he can purchase the magnificent set of jewelled combs she covets. Though their gifts are now useless, their joy in each other's love is precious beyond value. In the words of O. Henry: "Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are the wisest. Everywhere they are the wisest. They are the magi."
The telling of the story is unsentimental, Hannu Heikinheimo's staging exquisitely observed, and Rautavaara's music powerfully compelling. The Christmas message finds a...
For his first opera production, Dario Fo, the theatre director known for his brilliant wit, chose to stage Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia, for the Netherlands Opera. First mounted in 1987, it was a huge success and a live recording of its revival in May 1992, the 200th anniversary of Rossini's birth, has been made.
Fo has said that 'Rossini is the musician of eating and love. He composes music rich in herbs and aromas, in which you find olives, tomatoes, fish, grapes, roses and rosemary, sheets and tablecloths, dry wine and the laughter of girls.' His Barbiere is a joyful carnival. During the overture he fills the stage with carnival revellers and immediately the commedia dell'arte origins of opera buffa are restored. Visual theatrics abound, never at the expense of the music, but highlighting it, engaging the eye as well as the ear. Fo addresses the heart more than the intellect and Rossini's comedy comes up dazzling and vital.
Fo has said that 'Rossini is the musician of eating and love. He composes music rich in herbs and aromas, in which you find olives, tomatoes, fish, grapes, roses and rosemary, sheets and tablecloths, dry wine and the laughter of girls.' His Barbiere is a joyful carnival. During the overture he fills the stage with carnival revellers and immediately the commedia dell'arte origins of opera buffa are restored. Visual theatrics abound, never at the expense of the music, but highlighting it, engaging the eye as well as the ear. Fo addresses the heart more than the intellect and Rossini's comedy comes up dazzling and vital.
La Cenerentola is one of those Rossini operas that cannot be forced into a stylistic straightjacket. An opera buffa with tragic overtones, a comedy with magical nuances, a parable in which one character – Alidoro – pulls all the strings. The fairy tale transcends character comedy to become a baroque allegory whose finale is a vindication of Ferretti's subtitle La bontà in trionfo : "the triumph of good". For the 1988 Salzburg festival, Michael Hampe staged La Cenerentola with the assistance of stage and costume designer Mauro Pagano and lighting designer Hans Toelstede. His approach highlights not so much the fairy tale as Rossini's underlying satirical commentary on the society of his times and human relationships. A star cast including Ann Murray as Angelina and Francisco Araiza as Don Ramiro ensure musical quality, as does Rossini expert Riccardo Chailly's conducting of the Vienna State Choir and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
This Cologne Opera production, one of Rossini's most brilliant compositions, was directed by Michael Hampe and boasts a star-studded cast with Ileana Cotrubas, Carlos Feller, David Kuebler and Alberto Rinaldi.
Rossini's opera is a perennial favourite and tells the story of a servant girl, accused of stealing a silver spoon. She is brought to trial by the Justice of the Peace, whose advances she has repulsed, and is condemned to death. Tragedy turns to comedy when, just before the execution is due to take place, it is discovered that the real thief is a magpie.
Bruno Bartoletti conducts this lively and colourful production, designed by Mauro Pagano.
Rossini's opera is a perennial favourite and tells the story of a servant girl, accused of stealing a silver spoon. She is brought to trial by the Justice of the Peace, whose advances she has repulsed, and is condemned to death. Tragedy turns to comedy when, just before the execution is due to take place, it is discovered that the real thief is a magpie.
Bruno Bartoletti conducts this lively and colourful production, designed by Mauro Pagano.
This recording features the world premiere of Aulis Sallinen fifth opera: The Palace.
The opera is based on the libretto by the distinguished writers Hans-Magnus Enzensberger and Irene Dische. Inspired by Mozart's Entfuhrung aus dem Serail and Ryszard Kapuscinski's The Emperor , they created a satirical story of the collapse of a thoroughly corrupt court. It shows how absurd an autocrat can get in the setting of ludicrous ceremonies and bizarre rules of precedence.
Sallinen's music is like a kaleidoscope: rich, multi-coloured and many faceted. It is instantly appreciable and approachable. The production by Kalle Holmberg earned thunderous ovations from audience and critics alike.
Bonus feature:
- Making of The Palace
The opera is based on the libretto by the distinguished writers Hans-Magnus Enzensberger and Irene Dische. Inspired by Mozart's Entfuhrung aus dem Serail and Ryszard Kapuscinski's The Emperor , they created a satirical story of the collapse of a thoroughly corrupt court. It shows how absurd an autocrat can get in the setting of ludicrous ceremonies and bizarre rules of precedence.
Sallinen's music is like a kaleidoscope: rich, multi-coloured and many faceted. It is instantly appreciable and approachable. The production by Kalle Holmberg earned thunderous ovations from audience and critics alike.
Bonus feature:
- Making of The Palace
After its first performance in Vienna, the operetta Die Fledermaus set out to conquer the world. It is one of the few operettas which are regularly staged by the great opera houses of the world such as the New York Metropolitan Opera, the Milan Scala, The Staatsoper in Vienna and the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London. In 1977 John Cox directed the piece in London with a lavish production using a stage set of Julia Trevelyan Oman. On New Year's Eve of 1990 this production gave the luxurious setting for Joan Sutherland's farewell from her London audience which had admired the singer since her great success at this famous opera house in the fifties. The glittering party in the second act of Die Fledermaus reached its high point during her tumultuously applauded appearance and the engagement of her friends and colleagues Luciano Pavarotti and Marilyn Horne with whom she had often appeared together on stage.
Capriccio is somewhat unique in the opera repertoire. This "conversation piece for music in one act" was written in 1942 during Strauss' later years and concerns an intellectual discussion at a soiree about whether words or music are the most important in opera, thus an opera itself. Strauss himself feared that the public at large would not know how to take this "treat for cultural connoisseurs" - but he was wrong. His theatrical "theatrical fugue" was to become one of the most frequently performed of his late works.
This production provides a wonderful showcase for the inimitable Kiri Te Kanawa, a Strauss specialist, who sparkles her way through the role of the humoured and charming countess torn between two suitors.
This production provides a wonderful showcase for the inimitable Kiri Te Kanawa, a Strauss specialist, who sparkles her way through the role of the humoured and charming countess torn between two suitors.
This Vienna State Opera production of Strauss's opera of revenge, torment, violence and horror, is directed by Harry Kupfer as a tale of tyranny and bloodshed. His bold and terrifying concept is reiterated in Hans Schavernoch's cavernous decor. He opens with an abattoir, the five maids piling dripping chunks of carcasses into borrows, and closes with a more human slaughterhouse as Orestes raises his bloody hands to heaven.
Conducting his first Strauss opera, Claudio Abbado wrings a harrowing performance from the peerless Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. The music is infused with an eeriness and neurosis that heightens the emotions on stage. In the title role, Eva Marton gives an uninhibited and exultant performance, matched by that of Brigitte Fassbaender as her mother, Klytemnestra, murderer and widow of Agamemnon. Bejewelled from head to foot and consumed by the flames of guilt-ridden insanity, Fassbaender sings as if truly possessed. The more lyrical role of Chrysothemis is sung by Cheryl Studer, with a ragged and single-minded Orestes played by Franz Grundheber.
Conducting his first Strauss opera, Claudio Abbado wrings a harrowing performance from the peerless Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. The music is infused with an eeriness and neurosis that heightens the emotions on stage. In the title role, Eva Marton gives an uninhibited and exultant performance, matched by that of Brigitte Fassbaender as her mother, Klytemnestra, murderer and widow of Agamemnon. Bejewelled from head to foot and consumed by the flames of guilt-ridden insanity, Fassbaender sings as if truly possessed. The more lyrical role of Chrysothemis is sung by Cheryl Studer, with a ragged and single-minded Orestes played by Franz Grundheber.
The onset of the First World War and the Russian Revolution of 1917 had drastic consequences for Stravinsky in his Swiss exile: his property was confiscated, and he thereby lost the rights to his works and the associated income, leaving him in a situation which isolated him as an artist. His librettist for L'Histoire du soldat , Charles Ferdinand Ramuz, also found himself in this terrible position.
In 1917 Ramuz and Stravinsky hatched the idea of "founding a travelling theatre which, with as little funding as possible, could be moved easily from place to place and perform in small meeting places." Towards the end of the First World War, a chamber theater was thus formed which had a timeless image and could be established anywhere. It involved a street ballad-like series of scenes about a pact between a soldier and the devil which was "to be read, played and danced". The associated new work, with its diversity, its structure, the switching between narration, action, mime and dance, and its elements from tango, English Waltz and Ragtime, could not have been categorized under any genre which existed at the time. It was premiered on 28 September 1918 and in this version is brilliantly reinterpreted by the Nederlands Dans Theater.
In 1917 Ramuz and Stravinsky hatched the idea of "founding a travelling theatre which, with as little funding as possible, could be moved easily from place to place and perform in small meeting places." Towards the end of the First World War, a chamber theater was thus formed which had a timeless image and could be established anywhere. It involved a street ballad-like series of scenes about a pact between a soldier and the devil which was "to be read, played and danced". The associated new work, with its diversity, its structure, the switching between narration, action, mime and dance, and its elements from tango, English Waltz and Ragtime, could not have been categorized under any genre which existed at the time. It was premiered on 28 September 1918 and in this version is brilliantly reinterpreted by the Nederlands Dans Theater.
In 1951, in Venice, Igor Stravinsky conducted the premiere of his only full-length opera The Rake's Progress . He had conceived the idea for this work after visiting the Chicago Art Institute in 1947, where he came upon a series of eight satirical engravings of the same title, created by the English painter and copperplate engraver William Hogarth in 1735. On the recommendation of his neighbour Aldous Huxley, Stravinsky asked W. H. Auden to write an opera libretto for him, which was ready by late February 1948.
Peter Mussbach's production was first performed at the 1996 Salzburg Festival. Sylvain Cambreling directed the choir of the Vienna State Opera and the Camerata Academica. The soloists included Jonathan Best (Trulove), Dawn Upshaw (Anne Trulove) and Jerry Hadley (Tom Rakewell).
Peter Mussbach's production was first performed at the 1996 Salzburg Festival. Sylvain Cambreling directed the choir of the Vienna State Opera and the Camerata Academica. The soloists included Jonathan Best (Trulove), Dawn Upshaw (Anne Trulove) and Jerry Hadley (Tom Rakewell).
Tchaikovsky is regarded as Russia's great symphonist. In his music he succeeded in creating a synthesis between the national musical language of Russia and the compositional forms and techniques of western European romanticism. His works are distinguished by rich melodic passages, parts of which are full of the deepest melancholy, interspersed with cheerful, dance-like, sections drawn from Russian folk music. His great operas Eugene Onegin and Pique Dame reveal a fascinating artistry that uses expressive, highly dramatic characters and scenes. Pique Dame was written quickly, in the spring of 1890 in Florence, and its first performance took place the same year at the Marinsky theatre in St. Petersburg. The production recorded here received the highest acclaim for its outstanding interpretation at the 1992 Glyndebourne Festival. The London Philharmonic under Andrew Davis accompanied a cast which included Sergei Leiferkus (Count Tomsky) and Dimitri Kharitonov (Prince Jeletzky).
With its perfect fusion of music and choreographic ideas, The Sleeping Beauty is the quintessential romantic ballet, and it finds its spiritual home preserved in the outstandic classic traditions of the Kirov Ballet.
The stylish grandeur of choreographer and artistic director Oleg Vinogradov's production shows the entire company as its best. The higher traditon in dance continues with Larissa Lezhnina, one of Kirov's brightest new talents, brilliant as Princess Aurora, and Farukh Ruzimatov's performance in the role of Prince Desire demonstrates both power and grace.
It may be a truism to say Russians interpret Russian music best, but based on this stunning Kirov Ballet performance it's excitingly and exhilaratingly accurate. From the principal dancers to the last member of the ensemble, the grace and mastery of this world-class company is clearly in evidence.
The stylish grandeur of choreographer and artistic director Oleg Vinogradov's production shows the entire company as its best. The higher traditon in dance continues with Larissa Lezhnina, one of Kirov's brightest new talents, brilliant as Princess Aurora, and Farukh Ruzimatov's performance in the role of Prince Desire demonstrates both power and grace.
It may be a truism to say Russians interpret Russian music best, but based on this stunning Kirov Ballet performance it's excitingly and exhilaratingly accurate. From the principal dancers to the last member of the ensemble, the grace and mastery of this world-class company is clearly in evidence.
Natalia Makarova, one of the most important interpreters of the classical ballet repertoire in the twentieth century, has also had great success as a producer. Her staging of Swan Lake is based on the original choreography by Petipa and Ivanov, with additional choreography by the late Sir Frederick Ashton. Evelyn Hart and Peter Schaufuss dance the main roles in this studio recording. Makarova's innovative interpretation presents the work as a story of perfect and eternal love. The main focus is on Siegfried's love for Odette, her love for him, his unfaithfulness, for which she ultimately forgives him, and her self-sacrifice in going to her death with him in order to break the power of an evil curse. The production is succinct and well paced. The stage design by Günther Schneider-Siemssen does not use scenery to communicate changes of place and mood but back projections, which are extremely effective for creating a mysterious, magical atmosphere.
The re-telling of part of the original epic legend of Troy follows the Homeric characters through their love, loyalties and vengeance – leading to the final slaughter of King Priam at the altar of his burning city. The opera also speaks of the inevitability and futility of war.
Rodney Macann heads a strong cast in the title role, giving a compelling performance as Priam, alongside Sarah Walker's moving portrayal of Hector's wife, Andromache. Howard Haskin plays Priam's rebellious son Paris, who elopes with Helen, wife of the Greek King of Sparta, thus instigating the great Trojan war.
Nicholas Hytner's innovative production is matched by the starkly stylised setting designed by David Fielding, which creates a timeless arena of war. Minimal costume and colour, frozen action and white light further enhance Tippett's marvellously sparse music played with fearless conviction and driving impetus by the youthful Kent Opera Orchestra under the direction of Roger Norrington.
Rodney Macann heads a strong cast in the title role, giving a compelling performance as Priam, alongside Sarah Walker's moving portrayal of Hector's wife, Andromache. Howard Haskin plays Priam's rebellious son Paris, who elopes with Helen, wife of the Greek King of Sparta, thus instigating the great Trojan war.
Nicholas Hytner's innovative production is matched by the starkly stylised setting designed by David Fielding, which creates a timeless arena of war. Minimal costume and colour, frozen action and white light further enhance Tippett's marvellously sparse music played with fearless conviction and driving impetus by the youthful Kent Opera Orchestra under the direction of Roger Norrington.
Turnage's operatic retelling of Oedipus the King, moved to present-day London Greek , first performed in 1988, was composed on behalf of the Munich Biennale and is based on Steven Berkoff's adaptation of Oedipus the King to a modern setting. It received its premiere in Munich and won the prizes for best opera and best libretto. It is a typical example of Turnage's determinedly urban type of music. His compositional style is not consistently tonal, but remains accessible, colourful, often with aggressive effects, but always retaining an underlying lyricism, at times with a powerful dramatic impact and emotional power.
This magnificent production of Verdi's most-loved masterpiece was a triumphant success when it opened at La Scala in December 1985 and Luciano Pavarotti's long-awaited performance as Radames - his first in Italy - was greeted with rapturous applause. In this live recording of that production, Pavarotti heads an exceptional cast with Ghena Dimitrova, Maria Chiara, Nicolai Ghiaurov and Juan Pons all in peak form. Lorin Maazel's reading of the score shows a rare understanding of Verdi's music.
Macbeth signifies the beginning of Verdi's life-long preoccupation with William Shakespeare where he came close to emulating the master with his congenial composition of Othello and whom he even surpassed with Falstaff . Aware of the great musical as well as literary challenge, Verdi wrote the scenario himself and essentially concentrated the piece on three main protagonists: Macbeth, Lady Macbeth and the prophecy of the witches… During the first performance on 14 March 1847 in Florence the audience reacted with great displeasure. The piece only gradually established itself in the world of opera. Luca Ronconi's new production of Verdi's early masterpiece which was first performed in June 1987 at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin was received in Germany and around the world with great praise.
This epic opera inspired by Shakespeare's tragic masterpiece was written in 1847, but did not receive its British premiere until 1938 when it was presented for the first time at Glyndebourne.
The tragedy is a penetrating, concentrated, and harrowing study of the ambition of Macbeth and his wife, Lady Macbeth. In the end both seem to verge on hallucination and madness as they recoil from the mayhem they have created around them.
The production features an outstanding international cast, with the Greek baritone Kostas Paskalis in the title role and British star Josephine Barstow making an exciting debut as Lady Macbeth. Proceedings are conducted by the sympathetic baton of John Prithard. The designer, Emanuele Luzzati, has created a series of stunning visual impressions, including the chilling witches' chorus, the sumptuous banquet at which Macbeth sees the ghost of Banquo and Lady Macbeth's heart-rending sleepwalking scene.
The tragedy is a penetrating, concentrated, and harrowing study of the ambition of Macbeth and his wife, Lady Macbeth. In the end both seem to verge on hallucination and madness as they recoil from the mayhem they have created around them.
The production features an outstanding international cast, with the Greek baritone Kostas Paskalis in the title role and British star Josephine Barstow making an exciting debut as Lady Macbeth. Proceedings are conducted by the sympathetic baton of John Prithard. The designer, Emanuele Luzzati, has created a series of stunning visual impressions, including the chilling witches' chorus, the sumptuous banquet at which Macbeth sees the ghost of Banquo and Lady Macbeth's heart-rending sleepwalking scene.
In 1901, when Giuseppe Verdi's coffin was transferred to its interim resting-place, the 250,000 mourners burst into a song. Now, guess which one? Of course: "Va, pensiero, sull' ali dorate".
After all, Nabucco means "Va pensiero", "Va pensiero" means Verdi, and Verdi means Italy. The liberal republican Verdi became a patriotic figurehead and was hailed by many Italians the maestro della rivoluzione and the spiritual father of the longed for renaissance.
No wonder the Teatro Municipale di Piacenza chose one of Verdi's masterpieces to celebrate their Bicentenary.
Italian Ambrogio Maestri leads a superb cast in the title role as Nabucco. The highly acclaimed Verdi-singer is considered to be one of the finest baritones of his generation. Andrea Gruber, praised by The Financial Times for her "marvellous freedom and generosity of tone" set a course as his counter part, the Georgian bass Paata Burchuladze portrays a very impressive Zaccharia.
After all, Nabucco means "Va pensiero", "Va pensiero" means Verdi, and Verdi means Italy. The liberal republican Verdi became a patriotic figurehead and was hailed by many Italians the maestro della rivoluzione and the spiritual father of the longed for renaissance.
No wonder the Teatro Municipale di Piacenza chose one of Verdi's masterpieces to celebrate their Bicentenary.
Italian Ambrogio Maestri leads a superb cast in the title role as Nabucco. The highly acclaimed Verdi-singer is considered to be one of the finest baritones of his generation. Andrea Gruber, praised by The Financial Times for her "marvellous freedom and generosity of tone" set a course as his counter part, the Georgian bass Paata Burchuladze portrays a very impressive Zaccharia.
Sliding marble walls, a mosaic-like floor, a leafless tree centre-stage, elegant costumes – with its young cast and a superlative performance by Roberto Frontali as Simon Boccanegra, this production has all the ingredients to leave a lasting impression. The Italian baritone is a regular guest at the world's major opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala Milan, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Zurich Opera House, the Staatsoper Berlin and Dresden's Semperoper. Born in 1979 and already principal conductor in Bologna, Michele Mariotti directs the ensemble in a bravura performance.
Simon Boccanegra is perhaps not one of Verdi's best-known operas. The composer himself returned to revise the work on several occasions. The original opera was premiered in Venice in 1857, this revised version not until 1881. Although never considered one of Verdi's crowd pullers, it remains one of the composer's most beautiful creations. Verdi's music underpins this human drama in all its surprising twists and turns…
Simon Boccanegra is perhaps not one of Verdi's best-known operas. The composer himself returned to revise the work on several occasions. The original opera was premiered in Venice in 1857, this revised version not until 1881. Although never considered one of Verdi's crowd pullers, it remains one of the composer's most beautiful creations. Verdi's music underpins this human drama in all its surprising twists and turns…
La Traviata represents a milestone in musical history, marking a move from Romantic opera towards a greater degree of realism. For the first time ever, contemporary material and figures had been chosen as the basis for an opera. A real prostitute, tuberculosis, a so-called man of honour whose provincial morality collides with the more flexible and superficial world of the French capital, money, bourgeois righteousness versus high-society superficiality and decadence – themes such as these have become well established on the operatic stage since then.
The legendary soprano Rosa Ponselle was right when she said of the huge range demanded of the title role, from the brilliance of Act I to the pure lyricism of the final "Addio del passato" that anyone singing Violetta should have four voices – a different one for each scene…
Liliana Cavani and Dante Ferretti's Traviata production was revived in the summer of 2007. The title role was sung for the first time at La Scala by the Romanian star soprano Angela Gheorghiu, who sings and plays the title role of Violetta overwhelmingly, with the Mexican tenor Ramon Vargas as Alfredo. Giorgio Germont was sung by Italian Roberto Frontali. The conductor Lorin Maazel reaped massive protests...
The legendary soprano Rosa Ponselle was right when she said of the huge range demanded of the title role, from the brilliance of Act I to the pure lyricism of the final "Addio del passato" that anyone singing Violetta should have four voices – a different one for each scene…
Liliana Cavani and Dante Ferretti's Traviata production was revived in the summer of 2007. The title role was sung for the first time at La Scala by the Romanian star soprano Angela Gheorghiu, who sings and plays the title role of Violetta overwhelmingly, with the Mexican tenor Ramon Vargas as Alfredo. Giorgio Germont was sung by Italian Roberto Frontali. The conductor Lorin Maazel reaped massive protests...
Certainly more than just the composer of the Four Seasons , Vivaldi also wrote hundreds of largely famous instrumental works, and his glorious church music is well known; but it wasn't until recent decades that his operas – of which he is said to have written more than fifty – were resurrected. Orlando furioso occupies a central and very significant place among Vivaldi's works. Not only does the whole score of this opera demonstrate its composer's full, creative maturity, but its outstanding features are also an extraordinary musical beauty, an attractive recitative line, and a balance between the various parts of the dramatic and musical whole. This exceptional musical achievement was no doubt partly due to the famous theme of the original story, as well as the literary and dramatic qualities of a first-rate libretto. Pier Luigi Pizzi's 1979 production of Orlando furioso in Verona marked the beginning of contemporary international interest in Antonio Vivaldi's operas. Ten years later the same director once more produced this work at the San Francisco Opera. A Californian public greeted the baroque magnificence of this production with great enthusiasm, and both the daily and specialist press outdid each other in eulogies of praise for the director, his new...
A bleak wind chord of E flat minor opens Richard Wagner's Götterdämmerung . It establishes the dominant atmosphere of the piece from its first bar: twilight, a deceptive half-light, prevails. Shadowy figures stumble towards the abyss. The last evening of the Ring is one of plotting and betrayal, of ominous oaths, a chilling lust for power, abuse and humiliation – and, also, of a superbly staged apocalypse, when the beings and things destined for destruction shine brightly for one last time. The leitmotivs and thematic ideas from throughout the whole tetralogy recur in Götterdämmerung , intensified and woven into a musical web from which there can be no escape. Everything appears to fit together fatally with everything else. There is nothing more to be done. The net of catastrophe is knotted too fatefully for that, both musically and dramatically. When Wagner sat down to write a prose outline of what turned out as the last part of the Ring , he called it Siegfried's Death . That was in the year of revolutions, 1848. The new title, usually translated as Twilight of the Gods , came later (Bernard Shaw called it Night Falls on the Gods but that never caught on). All the threads of the drama run now towards the hero's fall. The death of Siegfried precipitates the...
Outside Germany, the name Weimar tends to evoke mixed feelings and pictures of German history of the last hundred years. Within Germany, Weimar means a town in the state of Thuringia arguably saturated with the "Deutsche Kultur" of the "Weimarer Klassik", the legendary Bauhaus, and finally the life and work of Franz Liszt and his son in law Richard Wagner. In Weimar Richard Wagner began composing the first part of his RING-cycle, Das Rheingold . In 2008 the Nationaltheater Weimar started a new production of this unique tetralogy. The conductor is Carl St. Clair, a former student of Leonard Bernstein. With Michael Schulz' fine and highly intelligent staging this new "Ring" production becomes an outstanding document of contemporary opera theatre.
Richard Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung reflects the composer's autobiography as much as the political turmoil of his times. As work progressed, another figure grew to be as important as the hero Siegfried, the god Wotan, the mouthpiece for Wagner's ideas. "He's exactly like us: he is the sum of today's intellectual consciousness, whereas Siegfried is what we hope the human being of the future will be, but who cannot be fashioned by us, and who must make himself by means of our destruction!" Our own doom as the basis of a happier future? Second 'day' – and third part – of Richard Wagner's 'Ring', the musical saga that its author spent more than a quarter of a century composing. It follows the rise of a young hero, Siegfried, the illegitimate son of the twins whose story we were told in Die Walküre . On the one hand, there is learning about life, glorying in nature and in the emotions, as opposed to those of calculation and greed on the other. This episode shows how Wagner was intent on changing society, on showing that a different kind of man can exist, that the mercenary petit bourgeois world can be replaced by greater humanity and freedom.
After Nikolaus Lehnhoff's great success with Parsifal, Lohengrin and Tristan und Isolde this is his highly acclaimed Tannhauser co-produced with De Nederlandse Opera and Festspielhaus Baden-Baden.
Nikolaus Lehnhoff's production is based on the Paris version by Richard Wagner with an extended Venusberg scene and a ballet very surprisingly choreographed by Amir Hosseinpour and Jonathan Lunn. The minimalist staging and Raimund Bauer's ingenious sets make this a Tannhauser for our time. The cast as always with Lehnhoff has nothing to match these days.
Bonus features:
- Tannhauser – The Revolutionary includes interviews with stage director, conductor and cast as well as backstage material.
Nikolaus Lehnhoff's production is based on the Paris version by Richard Wagner with an extended Venusberg scene and a ballet very surprisingly choreographed by Amir Hosseinpour and Jonathan Lunn. The minimalist staging and Raimund Bauer's ingenious sets make this a Tannhauser for our time. The cast as always with Lehnhoff has nothing to match these days.
Bonus features:
- Tannhauser – The Revolutionary includes interviews with stage director, conductor and cast as well as backstage material.
The double title of the opera Tannhäuser oder der Sängerkrieg auf der Wartburg , which had its grand premiere on 19 October 1845 under Wagner's direction in the Hoftheater in Dresden, is already an indication of how Wagner's work unites two circles of material whose tradition stems from separate sources. The figure of the minnesinger is an historical fact and his episodes are documented with the Tannhäuserlied as far back as 1520. In a musical sense, the contrast between diatonicism and chromaticism is symbolic of two different worlds. Wagner revised the original work from 1845 in 1847, among other things, by changing the finale and then adapted the opera once again for a Paris production in 1861 (this is the "Parisian version" with additions).
David Alden's new production by the Bavarian State Opera at the National Theater in Munich, which premiered at the opera festival on 6 July 1994, was celebrated by audiences and music journals alike as a milestone of contemporary Wagner adoptions. Zubin Mehta conducted this focused yet enchanting musical interpretation.
David Alden's new production by the Bavarian State Opera at the National Theater in Munich, which premiered at the opera festival on 6 July 1994, was celebrated by audiences and music journals alike as a milestone of contemporary Wagner adoptions. Zubin Mehta conducted this focused yet enchanting musical interpretation.
"There are no bounds to the longing, the desire, the bliss, and the anguish of love. The world, power, fame, glory, honor, chivalry, loyalty, friendship… all are swept away. Only one thing is left alive… yearning, yearning, insatiable desire…" Richard Wagner
Of all operas, perhaps the one that least needs ingenious extramusical assistance is ‚ Tristan , this aurally erotic work that speaks so vividly to the listener's inner eye. Wagner's score is simply more illustrative and sensuously pictorial than any series of stage pictures could be. Golo Berg's sensuous conducting of the Dessau Philharmonic, continually presses that truth home. He leads the orchestra in a lithe and propulsive performance that shows unusual consideration for the wonderful voices of the singers. A sensational opera night at a small German opera company.
Of all operas, perhaps the one that least needs ingenious extramusical assistance is ‚ Tristan , this aurally erotic work that speaks so vividly to the listener's inner eye. Wagner's score is simply more illustrative and sensuously pictorial than any series of stage pictures could be. Golo Berg's sensuous conducting of the Dessau Philharmonic, continually presses that truth home. He leads the orchestra in a lithe and propulsive performance that shows unusual consideration for the wonderful voices of the singers. A sensational opera night at a small German opera company.
"The free man must be his own maker"
Richard Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung reflects the composer's autobiography as much as the political turmoil of his times. As work progressed, another figure grew to be as important as the hero Siegfried, the god Wotan, the mouthpiece for Wagner's ideas. "He's exactly like us: he is the sum of today's intellectual consciousness, whereas Siegfried is what we hope the human being of the future will be, but who cannot be fashioned by us, and who must make himself by means of our destruction!" Our own doom as the basis of a happier future?
Wagner dressed this Herculean task musically in the spreading, shimmering web of his leitmotivic working (there are approximately 20 distinct motives in Die Walküre ). Dramaturgically, the conversational style of Das Rheingold gives way to the tone of bourgeois tragedy: incestuous passion, more than one form of deep-seated marital antagonism, and a lot of talk, a lot of self-justification in the form of recapitulation. This, the First Day of the tetralogy ( Das Rheingold being a "preliminary evening"), was without doubt the "most moving, the most tragic" of all Wagner's works in the view of his wife Cosima, expressed in her diary on 31 August 1873. The text of Die Walküre...
Richard Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung reflects the composer's autobiography as much as the political turmoil of his times. As work progressed, another figure grew to be as important as the hero Siegfried, the god Wotan, the mouthpiece for Wagner's ideas. "He's exactly like us: he is the sum of today's intellectual consciousness, whereas Siegfried is what we hope the human being of the future will be, but who cannot be fashioned by us, and who must make himself by means of our destruction!" Our own doom as the basis of a happier future?
Wagner dressed this Herculean task musically in the spreading, shimmering web of his leitmotivic working (there are approximately 20 distinct motives in Die Walküre ). Dramaturgically, the conversational style of Das Rheingold gives way to the tone of bourgeois tragedy: incestuous passion, more than one form of deep-seated marital antagonism, and a lot of talk, a lot of self-justification in the form of recapitulation. This, the First Day of the tetralogy ( Das Rheingold being a "preliminary evening"), was without doubt the "most moving, the most tragic" of all Wagner's works in the view of his wife Cosima, expressed in her diary on 31 August 1873. The text of Die Walküre...