From the Glyndebourne Touring Opera 1990. Stephen Lawless’s production, conducted by Graeme Jenkins, won universal critical praise, typified by The Financial Times: “One may wonder whether the score has ever sounded fuller, richer in colour and content, more beautiful, than it did in [this] production… It opens a new chapter in the opera’s performance history.” Britten’s final opera, a haunting rendering of Thomas Mann’s story of obsessive, self-deluding love, features outstanding performances by Robert Tear and Alan Opie.” (Sung in English)
The Riddle of the Amphora
The Greek Archipelago is the setting for this six-part thriller series, ideal for family viewing. The story concerns the search for the fragments of a priceless ancient Greek amphora, which, if put together, will show where a long-lost civilsation hid its treasure. When Professor Sarah Nardin sets off from Piraeus, on the yacht Argo, with her teenage daughter Helena and Philip, the son of friends, she is unaware they are being followed by another boat, the Jason, crewed by a trio of shady characters who have wind of their plans. The events that ensue take them all around southern Greece, even to Turkey, and involve many exciting and dangerous adventures, as their pursuers prove to be both relentless and ruthless in their desire to find the treasure first. The story explores the spirit of Greece’s past, visiting ancient sites, and retelling the myths and legends.
Out of the Dark Ages
Written and presented by the eminent art historian and writer Edwin Mullins, this series tells the story of four monarchs – a single dynasty known as the Salians. They were men of extraordinary energy who, for a hundred years, from 1024-1125, forged and held an empire from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. Filmed on location throughout Europe, Out of the Dark Ages visits historic sites and uses dramatic reconstructions to shed light on political, religious, cultural and social aspects of Salic rule. It highlights key events and surveys the magnificent Salian legacy of Romanesque architecture and religious art.
La damnation de Faust
This live recording was made at the Royal Albert Hall during one of London’s famous Promenade Concert seasons. Sir Georg Solti conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in a magnificent performance of Berlioz’s concert cantata. This feast of Berlioz launched Solti’s farewell tour with the orchestra he had directed for twenty years and was described by The Times as “the unsurpassable culmination of two decades of music-making…one that summarised all that has been most admirable about Solti’s long reign in Chicago.
The Sleeping Beauty
The stylish grandeur of choreographer and artistic director Oleg Vinogradov’s production shows the entire company at its best. The superb tradition in dance continues with Larissa Lezhnina, one of Kirov’s stars at that time, brilliant as Princess Aurora, and Farukh Ruzimatov’s performance in the role of Prince Désiré 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. 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 outstanding classic traditions of the Kirov Ballet (now Mariinsky Ballet).
Die Soldaten
Harry Kupfer’s harrowing realisation of Zimmermann’s radical opera reveals the ful compassion and humanity of the work, and harnesses to maximum effect the vast theatrical and musical resources it requires. It tells the story of the degradation of a young girl in the hands of a corrupt and egotistical military aristocracy, and several courses of dramatic action unfold simultaneously, so that past, present and future merge in tableaux of the monstrous, dehumanising effects of war. The cast includes Nancy Shade, Michael Ebbecke and William Cochran. Bernhard Kontarsky conducts.
Orlando furioso
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 thus created 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 staging, the vocal casting of all the roles and the musical quality of the whole opera.
Xerxes
From the English National Opera 1988 Nicholas Hytner’s innovative production has been
much acclaimed and this live recording from the English National Opera features outstanding
performances from a fine English cast, including Dame Ann Murray, Christopher Robson, Jean Rigby,
Lesley Garrett, Rodney Macann and Valerie Masterson. Designer David Fielding adds curious,
surreal touches to his eighteenth-century settings in the London pleasure gardens at Vauxhall,
which heighten the absurdity of the love intrigues in Handel’s comic opera. (Sung in
English)
Billy Budd
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 month. Following the widely acclaimed Peter Grimes, released on Arthaus in May 2003, 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 Langridge as Captain Vere repeats his recently highly-praised portrayal.
L’africaine
Plácido Domingo, as Vasco da Gama, and Shirley Verrett, as the African queen whom he has enslaved, star in Meyerbeer’s spectacular grand opera, in a colourfully exotic production by Lotfi Mansouri, under the sensitive musical direction of Maurizio Arena. The visual splendour of Wolfram Skalicki’s designs matches the vocal distinction of the cast: “Domingo was the honeyed, ringing Gama of everyone’s expectations, Verrett as lustrous and inward a Sélika as ever, Ruth Ann Swenson a gem-like Inès” (Opera Magazine).