Herbert von Karajan – Memorial Concert
When the musical world celebrates the centenary of Herbert von Karajan in 2008, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra will visit three of his most important domains for a jubilee concert tour: Paris, Lucerne and Vienna. Seiji Ozawa, the master class student of Karajan, will conduct this tour, Anne-Sophie Mutter who got to know Karajan in Lucerne in 1976,...More  

Giuseppe Verdi’s Luisa Miller
At the Verdi Festival 2007, the Teatro Regio di Parma presents in its stunning historical ambience an outstanding performance of Verdi’s masterwork Luisa Miller. The Agentinian singer Marcelo Álvarez, “one of the hottest tenors on the international scene" (Opera News), takes the role of Rodolfo.Leo Nucci, the world's greatest living Verdi,...More  

Gioacchino Rossini: La Cenerentola
Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu presents “La Cenerentola”. JoyceDiDonato, the 2007 winner of the Metropolitan Opera's Beverly Sillsprice, is a major artist with a beautifully schooled, richly handsome voice.Juan Diego Flórez with his bright lyric bel canto voice along with his Latin temperament is one of the most challeging Don Ramiros of our,...More  

Cecilia Bartoli -  The Barcelona Concert
Cecilia Bartoli celebrates the 200th birthday of Maria Malibran with her personal tribute to female superstar Maria Malibran, one of the most famous opera singers of the 19th century. Maria Malibran was the first woman to rival the operatic heroes of the 17th and 18th centuries, the castrati. Her extensive, exceptionally varied repertoire also demanded a range of,...More  

Charles Gounod-Roméo et Juliette
With its four duets for the title couple Charles Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette one of the most famous love tragedies in opera literature. Stage director Bartlett Sher makes his European opera debut with this production of Roméo et Juliette at the exceeding ambience of the Felsenreitschule. Rolando Villazón, one of the leading lyric tenors,...More  

Don Giovanni - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Don Giovanni, probably Mozart’s most famous opera, is the opening production of the Festival in 2008. Following his successful production of Le nozze di Figaro in Salzburg, German stage director Claus Guth is preparing his second Da Ponte opera. In the title role British baritone Christopher Maltman, Winner of the Lieder Prize at the 1997 Cardiff Singer of the World ,...More  

Edita Gruberova - The Art of Belcanto
The Film follows Edita Gruberova, one of the most acclaimed sopranos of recent decades, as she prepares the premiere of “Lucrezia Borgia”, the famous belcanto opera of Gaetano Donizetti. She’s going to make her debut in the name rolle in February 2008 in Barcelona. The film also shows the important milestones of her incomparable career for the past forty years to become,...More  

Giuseppe Verdi - Otello
Verdi’s last tragic opera Otello, like Shakespeare’s play, is a shattering psychological drama. The new production for the Salzburg Festival is directed by Stephen Langridge, who in 2006 attracted attention with his production of Offenbach’s Bluebeard in Bregenz. Riccardo Muti, one of the best Verdi conductors of our time, is returning to Salzburg,...More  

Idomeneo - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
The reopening of the historical Cuvilliés Theatre in Munich, where Idomeneo was first performed at January 1781 is celebrated with a fascinating performance of Mozart’s famous opera seria, composed by him when he was 24 years old. Kent Nagano conducts the Bayerisches Staatsorchester. Stage Director is Dieter Dorn. As Idomeneo acts John Mark Ainsley,,...More  

Jiri Kylian – Hans van Manen
“Car men” by Jiri Kylian is an unusual, slapstick-like tragicomedy featuring the unique dancer Sabine Kupferberg. Made in collaboration with the Dutch film maker Boris Paval Cone it’s a perfect example for Kylian’s very energetic and contemporary style. In “Sleepless”, a creation for six dancers, Kylian’s composer Dirk Haubich adapted the slow parts,...More  

Kent Nagano - Seeking New Shores
Introducing one of the world’s most successful conductors: Kent Nagano’s meteoric rise to fame took him via Lyon, Manchester and Los Angeles to Berlin, where for six years he directed the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester. In autumn 2006 Nagano took up two new posts: as chief conductor of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and General Music Director,...More  

Salzburg Festival 2008 - Opening Concert
For the opening concert of the Salzburg Festival 2008 there are two extraordinary artists meet the legendary Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra at the Great Festival Hall: Daniel Barenboim, “one of the few musicians in the world today who could accurately be described as ledgendary” (The Times) and Pierre Boulez, the most significant French,...More  

Thomas Hampson - Robert Schumann
Song and singing to Thomas Hampson are the “diary of our existence” and therefore of the greatest significance for intercultural dialogue and understanding. Hampson speaks excellently German and is therefore in this favoured repertoire also linguistically on firm ground. The program is performed at the famous Prinzregententheater in Munich,...More

Three Stars in Vienna
Two days before the finale of the European Football Championship (EM) Plácido Domingo, one of the original „Three Tenors“, joins the „dream couple“ of the operatic world, Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazón, in an open-air concert at the flowery castle of Schönbrunn at Vienna. Rarely have three such high-caliber artists come together in one concert. Domingo: the epitome of the ,...More  

Karajan - Or Beauty As I See It
Who was Herbert von Karajan? What lurks behind the enigmatic face of this man, on whom more has been written than on any
other member of his profession? For many, he was the epitome of classical music, for others the embodiment of the music market. He was the last dictator among orchestral conductors,
and the first successful large-scale,...More  

Inside Karajan - The private life of the acclaimed conductor
Very few people really knew Herbert von Karajan. The conductor gaveaccess to his private life only a little circle of strictly loyal people whokept their secrets even long after the maestro’s death. Thisdocumentary for the first time shows in the whole dimension the realman Karajan: not only the image of a dandy that he himself had shownto the public,...More  

Maestro for the Screen - The Conductor as Movie Star
Herbert von Karajan was the only major orchestral conductor to create film and later on video productions on his own responsibility. „I am actually born too early“, he said, well aware that video´s possibilities were still in their infancy. Georg Wuebbolt did interviews with Karajan’s team: his Director of photography, his cutter, his secretary,...More  

The Promise of Music Gustavo Dudamel
The Promise of Music Gustavo DudamelThe concert given by the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela under its conductor Gustavo Dudamel at the Beethovenfest 2007 in Bonn was not only the climax of this prestigious festival, but also a highlight of the entire musical year. Over 200 young musicians between the ages of 10and 24,...More  

The Frankfurt Concert
Being a world class soloist is already a great accomplishment. The ability to play two instruments with equal quality even more so. Julia Fischer - the youngest violin professor ever - proofed her exceptional talent. At an unforgetable concert evening in January 2008 in Frankfurt (“Alte Oper”) she first performed the violin concerto no. 3 H minor op. 61,...More  

Amor, vida de mi vida
The zarzuela is a Spanish-language opera with spoken dialogues and filled with pleasant-sounding, often folkloric tunes cast in arias, duets, four-part choruses and dances. One of the most renowned and ardent supporters of zarzuela melodies is Plácido Domingo, who is featured here in a concert given at the 2007 Salzburg Festival. Domingo is accompanied,...More  

Barenboim – West-Eastern Divan
The idea of uniting young musicians from Israel, Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and other Arab countries into an ensemble still seems incredible, almost impossible, today. Yet such an orchestra has been in existence and flourishing since 1999, when Daniel Barenboim and his friend Edward Said decided to found the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra,... More  

The World of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Since 1842 the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra travels around the world to play in the world’s concert halls and elate their fans. The yearly world wide coverage of the “New Year” concert results in millions of sold music-CDs, sold-out live concerts and millions of TV-viewers. This illustrates impressively that the interest for this Viennese musical phenomenon,...More  

Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari La Vedova Scaltra
Wolf-Ferrari wrotes La vedova scaltra as pure amusement, a portrayal of fine intrigue that is, in itself, without any idealistic echoes, following the uncritical line of eighteenth-century comedy - nostalgia for a civilization with ancient roots, which the musician still felt he was part of. Conductor: Karl Martin, Director; Sets and costumes: Massimo Gasparon,...More  

Gioachino Rossini La Pietra di Paragone
Considering that Rossini's opera buffa "La pietra del paragone" is hardly ever staged, music lovers can be forgiven for being in the dark about this sparklingly luminous work. The melodrame deserves an above-average treatment. The least one can say about this magical, multi-media production by Pierrick Sorin and Giorgio Barberio Corsetti – and its video recording by ... More  

Gioachino Rossini La cambiale di matrimonio
Created by Luigi Squarzina and revived by Giovanno Scandella, with scenes and costumes by Giovanni Agostinacci, this Pesaro production can count on a cast with well-estalbished singers. Conductor: Umberto Benedetti Michelangeli ; Soloists: Désirée Rancatore, Saimir Pirgu, Fabio Maria Capitanucci, Enrico Maria Marabelli, Mira Gortsevskaya;Orchestra... More  

Hector Berlioz Benvenuto Cellini
What an overweening opus! Grande Opéra! It´s the story of the libertine Benvenuto Cellini , sculptor,  artistic genius, knifer and women´s darling. This diverting tale, directed by Philipp Stölzl, finds its analogy in a wonderful music which is not only popular but also in such a way imaginative and complex that Berlioz´contemporaries weren´t able to express it,...More  

Modest Mussorgsky Chowanschtschina
Bloody power struggles in dark Russia at the end of the 17th century. Watershed for the society in a strife-torn populace. In Mussorgsky’s musical folk drama political and religious groups face one another irreconcilably. Will the princely Khovansky clan triumph over the Streltsy and usher in the new era? Gigantic choral scenes. Music on the threshold of modernity,...More  

Mstislaw Rostropovich - In memoriam
This Unitel documentary with unreleased footage material – produced in the course of his 80th birthday in March 2007 - shows the eventful and emotional life of the extraordinary cellist Mstislaw Rostropovich. In one of his last interviews, Mstislaw Rostropovich draws a touching bow from his childhood in Russia – when he suffered from the apathy of his father,... More  

Peter I. Tschaikowski Eugen Onegin
Tchaikovsky’s opera is based on Aleksandr Pushkin’s main work and because this was so famous, for many years it hindered the success of the opera. The opera tells the story of two outsiders. With his “lyric scenes” Tchaikovsky created an open structure which stage director Andrea Breth takes as an invitation to project the interpretation of Pushkin’s myth into the present,... More  

The Reichsorchester
This season the Berlin Philharmonic celebrates its 125th year. The orchestra is using its jubilee as an opportunity to examine a rather unknown chapter in its history: The years under the rule of the National Socialists (between 1933 and 1945). The centre stage is taken by the the musicians, the people and their individual fates.Thanks to contemporary witnesses,... More  

The Three Tenors in Concert
Magic was created in July 1990, when Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo and José Carreras met onstage at the Baths of Caracalla in Rome and became the Three Tenors. This greatest musical event ever is an awe-inspiring orgy of the greatest hits for the tenor voice. Zubin Mehta exquisitely captures the largeness of this bonanza through the grandiose orchestra,... More