NABUCCO may be Verdi's first masterpiece, and not just because of that amazing Chorus of Hebrews which is justly beloved by everyone who hears it. Dramatically, this opera is tightly constructed, with believable characters in an intense conflict over values and beliefs. And Verdi's music, however early in his career, however distant from triumphs like LA FORSA DEL DESTINO or AIDA, is highly animated, revealing inner turmoil and outer passions with beauty and economy. The ensembles are especially impressive, building to satisfying heights of emotional release for the singers and the audience. And Placido Domingo is a wonder to behold and hear. Even though his original voice was baritone, which he managed to transform into a tenor voice, he doesn't SOUND like a baritone to me. B-U-T his performance is so committed, so deeply interfused with Verdi's music, so generously integrated to the younger singers around him, that the waters part.
Ismaele
Anna
Abdallo
NABUCCO may be Verdi's first masterpiece, and not just because of that amazing Chorus of Hebrews which is justly beloved by everyone who hears it. Dramatically, this opera is tightly constructed, with believable characters in an intense conflict over values and beliefs. And Verdi's music, however early in his career, however distant from triumphs like LA FORSA DEL DESTINO or AIDA, is highly animated, revealing inner turmoil and outer passions with beauty and economy. The ensembles are especially impressive, building to satisfying heights of emotional release for the singers and the audience. And Placido Domingo is a wonder to behold and hear. Even though his original voice was baritone, which he managed to transform into a tenor voice, he doesn't SOUND like a baritone to me. B-U-T his performance is so committed, so deeply interfused with Verdi's music, so generously integrated to the younger singers around him, that the waters part.
2015-07-26
6
Verdi's NABUCCO, A triumph of Staging, Musicianship and Commitment
In Concert at the Met (DVD) - Highlights Five of the Met's greatest stars - Price, Horne, Troyanos, Domingo, and Milnes - joined James Levine for a series of irresistible concert programs, originally telecast in the 1980s. Featuring works by composers ranging from Handel to Meyerbeer to Puccini and Verdi, these performances include some of opera's favorite moments, delivered by a stunning group of legendary artists. Plàcido Domingo, Tatiana Troyanos (February 28, 1982) Leontyne Price, Marilyn Horne (March 28, 1982) Plàcido Domingo, Sherrill Milnes (January 30, 1983)
A new member has joined Eli and the Shane Gang! Junjie, once the protector of the Eastern Caverns, is a master of the slugslinging art of Slug Fu! But even with the power of five slingers, the Shane Gang find themselves in over their heads as they race across The 99 Caverns in search of the Legendary Elemental Slugs. The five Elementals are ancient slugs of great power, and the forbearers of all slugs found in SlugTerra today. In the wrong hands, they could bring Slugterra to the brink of destruction. So when an evil alliance starts hunting down the Elementals, Eli and his friends — old and new — take off in pursuit of the greatest threat their world has ever faced!
Ko Chun, the God of Gamblers, vows to keep his identity hidden while looking for the gangsters who murdered his pregnant wife.
Flash Back 2012 is Minmay's farewell concert. Featuring some of her best songs, the music is performed over various scenes and events taken from the first Macross television series as well as Macross: Do You Remember Love film. Also included is a newly animated closing sequence showing the launch of Misa's colony vessel, the Megaroad-01, into space.
Internet sensation and old family friend of Aurora Teagarden, Poppy Wilson, has returned to Lawrenceton to start her new embroidery business. But not everyone is happy with Poppy's success when she turns up dead. To find the killer, Roe must follow the unsettling truths that lead her—into the path of the killer.
After the Combiner Wars ended, Cybertron started to be rebuilt. However, an undead Starscream has been reincarnated as Trypticon, wreaking havoc around him. To combat this menace, Windblade gathers up a ragtag team of Transformers, including Optimus Prime and Megatron, to resurrect an ancient ally. And while some may be forever changed by the events, others may not emerge with their sparks intact.
Over the course of her stay at the remote residence, Ana becomes more and more familiar with Holden’s idiosyncratic methods that require the participating artists to abandon their own identities and live emotionally and psychologically as their characters. Captivated by her artistic investigation, Ana immerses herself wholly into the method and starts living as Violeta, until her fiction loses control.
BIFA-nominated psychological thriller. “Everyone’s got a secret, something they hide…” When a small time criminal returns to London he unravels a catastrophic secret about the murder of his brother. Twisting and turning, this dizzying journey into the mind of a criminal at his darkest hour keeps the viewer guessing until the final frame. An intense and mind-bending crime noir shot on 35mm.
A gunfighter and a cowboy help a Mexican girl avenge the land-related murder of her parents.
Once again someone from the future has come back to create an army of Trancers, human zombies who do what they're told without question or pause. Now officer Jack Deth, a cop from the future stranded in the past, must once again go forth to stop them. This sci-fi action sequel chronicles his courageous actions as he struggles to save the future. His difficulties are compounded when his boss sends his first wife back from the future to help Deth who has unfortunately, married a 20th-century girl.
A multi-part documentary about the making of the Jurassic Park trilogy. Each part walks through the making of part of one of the films, including the hurricane during the shooting of the first film, and how advances in CGI for Jurassic Park helped change the world of special effects forever. All interviews for these retrospective documentaries come with comments from Spielberg, Johnston, Neill, Dern, Goldblum, the effects crews, the child actors, and Peter Stormare. This documentary is broken into six parts: Dawn of a New Era (25 min), Making Prehistory (20 min), The Next Step in Evolution (15 min), Finding the Lost World (28 min), Something Survived (16 min), and The Third Adventure (25 min).
After Lisa's brother mysteriously dies, she and her college friends go to her family home for answers. They are shocked to discover that his killer was non-other than the Christmas demon, Krampus.
A doomed love affair blooms against the beautiful and exotic backdrop of the deserts of India in this romantic drama. Samantha Hartley (Kelli Garner) is a woman in her early twenties who travels to Rajapur in India to visit a resort where her mother stayed years ago. While tracing the steps of her mother, Sara (Lynn Collins), Samantha learns the true story about her mother's stormy marriage to Jeremy (Justin Theroux), a charming but moody alcoholic. Only a few days after their wedding, Sara began to wonder if marrying Jeremy was a mistake, and while visiting India on their honeymoon, Sara met Jai Singh (Manoj Bajpai), a handsome and sensitive widower living in Rajapur. Jai Singh, who speaks fluent English, soon strikes up a friendship with Sara that quickly grows into a romance, but both are aware of the transgressive nature of their love, and their affair takes a tragic turn, leaving its scars on all parties involved.
Set in the African savannah, the film follows Kion as he assembles the members of the 'Lion Guard'. Throughout the film, the diverse team of young animals will learn how to utilize each of their unique abilities to solve problems and accomplish tasks to maintain balance within the Circle of Life, while also introducing viewers to the vast array of animals that populate the prodigious African landscape.
While fighting for a woman who sits on death row, a lawyer happens upon new information which brings into question the motives of a man associated with her client
Recorded during the band's 2009 sell out UK tour on April 30 at the legendary Roundhouse in London. The Return to Eden tour was the first time that the classic Ultravox line-up of Midge Ure, Billy Currie, Criss Cross and Warren Cann had performed together in over two decades, and was followed by a highly successful European and festival tour that ran through the summer and into the Autumn.
In the summer of 2015, former US Marine and world record weightlifter Janae Marie Kroczaleski was publicly outed as being transgender. The reaction was universal: her sponsors abandoned her, she was disowned by her parents and banned from competing. This film follows Janae as she attempts to find her place in society. Initially wanting to strip off the muscle and become a much smaller looking woman, she found herself unable to lose the muscle she so desperately gained. She now finds herself living one day as an alpha male and the next day as a delicate girl. Will Janae be able to handle her muscle relapses? Will her passage from being a male bring her the peace she's looking for? Will society accept a 250lbs muscular woman? Is her path personal redemption or physical and psychological disaster?
After being away for awhile, Andy Taylor returns home to Mayberry to visit Opie, now an expectant father. While there he ends up helping Barney Fife mount a campaign for sheriff.
A man taking the train to work one morning is overcome by melancholy memories and morbid fantasies.
With more than 50 years of experience as film director, Peter Greenaway (Nightwatching, Eisenstein in Guanajuato) combines the worlds of film and opera at the Verdi Festival in Parma, demonstrating what magic those two can do together with an all new approach to Giuseppe Verdi's Giovanna d'Arco, staged and edited by himself and his wife, Saskia Boddeke. The opera's libretto is based on Friedrich Schiller's 'The Maid of Orleans'. It tells the story of the French national hero Jeanne d'Arc, who defends her country against the English troops during the Hundred Years' War. Constantly torn between her humble roots, her love for King Charles VII and her heavenly task to fight for France, she gains eternal glory by giving her life in the final, victorious battle against England.
During World War II, two French civilians and a downed British Bomber Crew set out from Paris to cross the demarcation line between Nazi-occupied Northern France and the South. From there they will be able to escape to England. First, they must avoid German troops – and the consequences of their own blunders.
The production bears the imprint of the conductor, Marko Letonja, and the director, Tobias Richter, whose understanding is ideal: both breathe a troupe spirit - specific to comedy - into this heterogeneous cast, which brings together young and old. Both give as much importance to recitatives as to arias and ensembles.
A man who accused a catholic bishop of abusing him when he was a child dies in the Austrian city Salzburg. Everyone except his widow and the eccentrical detective Simon Brenner keeps silent and believes that the man killed himself.
Alone in the woods, a young man is pursued by a horrifying specter and by visions of his deceased sisters. A meditation on the precarious uncertainty of the American Dream and the role that uncontrollable forces play in our lives, The West is a Land of Infinite Beginnings is inspired by a harrowing scene from the opera Proving Up, by composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek.
Between two Thanksgivings, Hannah's husband falls in love with her sister Lee, while her hypochondriac ex-husband rekindles his relationship with her sister Holly.
Franco Zeffirelli directs these two legendary La Scala productions telling tragic tales of jealousy. Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana features performances by Elena Obraztsova, Plácido Domingo, and Renato Bruson. Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci stars Teresa Stratas, Plácido Domingo, and Juan Pons. Both are conducted by George Pretre. This production of Pagliacci earned director Franco Zeffirelli the coveted Emmy as Best Director in the category of Classical Music Programming.
This film takes us behind the scenes of the magical events of the world famous Vienna State Opera. These one-of-a-kind scenes and fast-paced, brilliant moments are intense, vivid, full of passion and captivating music.
This production was originally staged for the Pepsico Summerfare Festival, The International Performing Arts Festival of the State University of New York at Purchase. Leaving the lyrics in their original Italian, acclaimed American director Peter Sellars transports Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Don Giovanni" to a modern-day metropolis, nestling the opera's beloved characters among the brownstones of New York City's Harlem. Sellars's contemporary retelling of a classic musical tale is one of three performances in a Mozart series that also includes "Le Nozze di Figaro" and "'Così Fan Tutte."
The historic Toscanini television concerts with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. This concert, broadcast in two parts, on 26 March and 2 April 1949, from NBC Studio 8H, features the opera "Aida" by Giuseppe Verdi. (Both broadcasts were released as "Vol. 3" in the DVD series.)
It took Anna 10 years to recover from the death of her husband, Sean, but now she's on the verge of marrying her boyfriend, Joseph, and finally moving on. However, on the night of her engagement party, a young boy named Sean turns up, saying he is her dead husband reincarnated. At first she ignores the child, but his knowledge of her former husband's life is uncanny, leading her to believe that he might be telling the truth.
The life and work of stage designer ADOLPHE APPIA, originator of the most profound agitations in contemporary theatre. Through the dynamic alternation of animated drawings and choreographies specially conceived for the film, we discover the steps of his artistic evolution.
Franco Zeffirelli's magnificient staging of Puccini's final opera - a fairy tale set in a mythical China - is one of the most popular in the Met repertory. In this Live in HD production, Maria Guleghina takes on the title role and Marcello Giordani is Calaf, the unknown prince. Marina Poplavskaya and Samuel Ramey co-star, and Andris Nelsons conducts in his Met debut.
An animated opera version of "Goldfish". In this modernised version of the fairy tale of the Goldilocks, everything is absurdly modern - turned upside down. It's the story of a man who lives underwater and a fish who lives above the water in the air and can grant people's wishes. The man catches the fish and starts wanting all sorts of things, but...
A version of Benjamin Britten's opera based on the Melville story. Will the virtuous young sailor Billy Budd be hanged for murder?
Deep in a forest where druids and warriors seek revenge against the conquering Romans, Norma is scorned by the Roman proconsul Pollione, with whom she has two children. Her kindness turns to fury when she discovers that Pollione has taken Adalgisa, a novice priestess, as his new lover. When Pollione loses his high rank in the army and is offered as a sacrifice, Norma promises him freedom under one condition.
After the acclaimed Met premiere of Thomas Adès's "The Tempest" in 2012, the composer returned with another masterpiece, this time inspired by filmmaker Luis Buñuel's seminal surrealist classic "El Ángel Exterminador", during the 2017–18 season. As the opera opens, a group of elegant socialites gather for a lavish dinner party, but when it is time to leave for the night, no one is able to escape. Soon, their behavior becomes increasingly erratic and savage. The large ensemble cast tackles both the vocal and dramatic demands of Adès's opera with one riveting performance after another. Tom Cairns, who also penned the work's libretto, directs an engrossing and inventive production, using a towering wooden archway to trap the characters onstage. And Adès himself takes the podium to conduct the frenzied score, which features a host of unconventional instruments, including the eerie electronic ondes Martenot.
Sir David McVicar’s bold new staging of Tosca, Puccini’s operatic thriller of Napoleonic Rome, thrilled Met audiences when it rang in the New Year in 2018. Only weeks later, the production was seen by opera lovers worldwide as part of the Met’s Live in HD series of cinema presentations. In this performance, Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva is the passionate title diva, opposite charismatic tenor Vittorio Grigolo as her lover, the idealistic painter Mario Cavaradossi. Baritone Željko Lučić is the menacing Baron Scarpia, the evil chief of police who employs brutal tactics to ensnare both criminals and sexual conquests. On the podium, Emmanuel Villaume conducts the electrifying score, which features some of Puccini’s most memorable melodies.
An introspective dentist's suspicions about his wife's infidelity stresses his mental well being and family life to the breaking point.
What happened to Figaro and his friends after the events told in Rossini’s and Mozart’s operas? One possible sequel is told in John Corigliano’s “grand opera buffa” The Ghosts of Versailles—an uproariously funny and deeply moving work inspired by Beaumarchais’s third Figaro play, La Mère Coupable, and commissioned by the Met to celebrate its 100th anniversary. This telecast captures its world premiere run, conducted by James Levine. Håkan Hagegård is Beaumarchais, Figaro’s creator, who is deeply in love with Marie Antoinette (Teresa Stratas in a heart-searing performance) and determined to rewrite history and save her from the guillotine. A young Renée Fleming, at the beginning of her international career, sings the unfaithful Rosina. Gino Quilico is the wily Figaro who tries to take matters in his own hands, and Marilyn Horne stops the show as the exotic entertainer Samira.