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”. 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 music for this production has been arranged from the eighteenth-century folksongs of the original (selected by Johann Christoph Pepusch) by baroque specialists Jeremy Barlow and John Eliot Gardiner, who conducts The English Baroque Soloists, performing on authentic period instruments.
Roger Daltrey, lead singer of The Who and star of the films including Tommy, McVicar and Lisztomania, heads a distinguished cast as the villainous hero Macheath.
This live recording, from London’s Royal Festival Hall, of a performance of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G features two legendary artists – pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (1920-95) and conductor Sergiu Celibidache (1912-96). They perform with the London Symphony Orchestra. An introduction to the programme includes an interview with Celibidache about Michelangeli’s flawless, yet seemingly effortless, technique.
The energy and excitement of performances under the baton of maestro Valéry Gergiev are thrilling. This concert, with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, was recorded live at the city’s Doelen Hall. The programme includes Debussy’s Fragments Symphoniques for D’Annunzio’s mystery play Le Martyre de St Sébastien, Prokofiev’s Scythian Suite, Stravinsky’s Fireworks and his Piano Concerto. The soloist for the concerto is the Georgian virtuoso Alexander Toradze, a singularly imposing figure at the keyboard.
Boris Blacher was one of the most important and most widely performed composers in post-war Germany. In his 1969 opera “200 000 Taler” (200 000 Thalers) he adapted a comedy by famed and popular Jewish author Scholom Aleichem and created a sophisticated milieu study around tailor Schimele Soroker and his family who come to great fortune by winning the lottery.
This 1970 recording of the world premiere production stars a stunning Martha Mödl as Soroker’s wife and Günter Reich in the role of the shrewd tailor. Director Gustav Rudolf Sellner leads his fine cast meticulously through the comic and self-ironic material and supports the cliché-less score that Blacher conceived for Aleichem’s characters. Heinrich Hollreiser conducts the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin with insight and musical mastery. As the Neue Zürcher Zeitung wrote after the premiere, “Blacher discovers forces and notions that move our century within the naive, unpretentious literary material at hand. … Without ever using Jewish melodies this score creates a kind of folklore of a setting that is fully Blacher’s own. Here lives a new style.
As one of the most versatile and best-known contemporary German composers, Wolfgang Rihm has always impressed and shocked with the powerful expressiveness of his music. And his “Oedipus”, originally commissioned by the Deutsche Oper Berlin in 1987 has lost nothing of its musical impact over the years. Rihm’s opera – in an impressive production by the intendant and principal director at the time, Götz Friedrich, with baritone Andreas Schmidt (at the start of his international career) in the title role – was praised by audiences and critics alike. Schmidt was subsequently not only much in demand as a performer of the classical repertoire and a lieder recitalist but also gained a reputation for his interpretations of works by other contemporary composers ranging from Hans Werner Henze to Peter Ruzicka.
In 2012 the Deutsche Oper in Berlin had ist centennial celebrations. Although today’s building was not opened until 1961, the history of the house on the Bismarckstrasse goes further back: it was built in 1912 and opened as Deutsches Opernhaus upon the initiative of a group of people from Berlin–Charlottenburg as the citizen’s opera in opposition to the Königliche Hofoper, now Staatsoper Unter den Linden. The film illustrates all facets of the different eras of this Berlin opera institution from the beginning
until today through interviews with artists closely connected to the Deutsche Oper Berlin as well as a large variety of archive footage that also includes documentations of rehearsals and performances from the last 100 years.
According to the ancient Greek legend, Prometheus brought fire and culture to mankind, thus saving the world from being destroyed by Zeus. Through the ages, this story has inspired countless artists, poets and musicians to some of their grandest creations.
Christopher Swann’s film is based on a 1993 televised concert from Berlin’s Philharmonic Hall.
The program features music by Beethoven, Liszt, Skriabin and Nono based on the legend of Prometheus. The four compositions could not be more diverse in style and conception, representing highly different approaches: from the Prometheus as bringer of plague and destruction to the punished Prometheus chained to a rock.
In this film, Christopher Swann stresses a visual approach to this variety of ideas, using a number of modern film techniques to underscore and illustrate the musical presentation.
Performances by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Claudio Abbado are first-rate, although it is the presence of Argerich that will make this DVD an obligatory purchase.
According to the ancient Greek legend, Prometheus brought fire and culture to mankind, thus saving the world from being destroyed by Zeus. Through the ages, this story has inspired countless artists, poets and musicians to some of their grandest creations.
Christopher Swann’s film is based on a 1993 televised concert from Berlin’s Philharmonic Hall.
The program features music by Beethoven, Liszt, Skriabin and Nono based on the legend of Prometheus. The four compositions could not be more diverse in style and conception, representing highly different approaches: from the Prometheus as bringer of plague and destruction to the punished Prometheus chained to a rock.
In this film, Christopher Swann stresses a visual approach to this variety of ideas, using a number of modern film techniques to underscore and illustrate the musical presentation.
Performances by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Claudio Abbado are first-rate, although it is the presence of Argerich that will make this DVD an obligatory purchase.
Giuseppe Verdi’s Luisa Miller is an opera in three acts based on Schiller’s Kabale und Liebe (Intrigue and Love). Just before Christmas 2012, it was recorded at the Malmö Opera, the leading opera house in the expansive region of Öresund in Sweden. Luisa Miller is the story of the lovers Luisa and Rodolfo. Their love is challenged by class distinctions between their families. Despite the couple’s struggle, the story eventually ends in inevitable tragedy. The Russian opera singer and rising star Olesya Golovneva is breathtaking as Luisa and the Swedish Expressen writes that Luc Robert as Rodolfo “is a gold treasure from Canada. A real tenor!” Conducted by internationally acclaimed Michael Güttler, who works for opera houses and orchestras all over the world, including the Orchestre de Paris and the Wiener Staatsoper, this opera is a must have’.
