The Abduction from the Seraglio(2006)

La Traviata(it)

This superb 2006 production of the Los Angeles Opera's La Traviata stars Renée Fleming, who joins the ranks of the elite handful of sopranos whose vocal and acting talents make their portrayals memorable. Her Violetta Valéry is a vulnerable figure torn between self-indulgence and love, sacrificing personal happiness to become a victim of the social mores of mid-19th-century bourgeois France. Fleming's acting captures the complexity of the character and her vocalism is flawless. She negotiates the wild coloratura of Act One with aplomb, and is stunning in the lyric passages that pervade the opera, and touching in her scenes with her lover, Alfredo, and his father. Her singing is free of the mannerisms that have sometimes crept into her work and at the same time she brings countless personal touches to the role, phrasing and verbal emphases that shed fresh light on the character.

12(en)

After blowing his professional ballet career, John's only way to redeem himself is to concoct the demise of his former partner, Leah, who he blames for his downfall; he rehearses his salvation in his mind in the way that he rehearses a dance, but being able to break from the routine will be the key to his success.

Gertrud(da)

Hopeless romantic Gertrud inhabits a turn-of-the-century milieu of artists and musicians, where she pursues an idealized notion of love that will always elude her. She abandons her distinguished husband and embraces an affair with a young concert pianist, who falls short of her desire for lasting affection. When an old lover returns to her life, fresh disappointments follow, and Gertrud must try to come to terms with reality.

The Last Night of Sandra M.(es)

Freely inspired by the life of the actress Sandra Mozarowsky, who died in 1977 when she fell from the terrace of her house in Madrid, the story will focus on the day before the accident, in which loneliness, fear and anguish in the face of a situation desperate mix with his dreams and ambitions.

23(ru)

Jura is 23 years old - and Lena is 23. They live in Budennovsk, play computer games, walk and learn. They live in a city where Shamil Basayev entered 23 years ago with militants, and know almost nothing about the events of that time.

Star(en)

When Crystal Wyatt was 16 her father passed away. From that time her life would never be the same. Crystal is banished from the family ranch, and starts a new life as a singer in a San Francisco nightclub.

Johnny Guitar(en)

On the outskirts of town, the hard-nosed Vienna owns a saloon frequented by the undesirables of the region, including Dancin' Kid and his gang. Another patron of Vienna's establishment is Johnny Guitar, a former gunslinger and her lover. When a heist is pulled in town that results in a man's death, Emma Small, Vienna's rival, rallies the townsfolk to take revenge on Vienna's saloon – even without proof of her wrongdoing.

The Year I Started Masturbating(sv)

Ambitious overachiever Hanna just needs one more kid before her life is perfect. Instead, her baby daddy unexpectedly dumps her. Suddenly, she finds herself without a place to live, job or family. With every fiber of her being set for victory, Hanna refuses to give up and decides to win him back. But to get there means having to win something much more important, love and desire for herself and who she is.

Close Your Eyes(es)

Years after his mysterious disappearance, Julio Arenas, a famous Spanish actor, is back in the news thanks to a television program.

Spare Keys(fr)

Nancy, East of France. Summertime. Seeking to escape her troublesome family environment, Sophie, 15, jumps at the chance to get the spare keys to her wealthy friend Jade's house. While enjoying the spacious home she thought deserted for summer, she bumps into her friend's older brother Stéphane, who, as fate would have it, was also planning on staying. But instead of chasing her out, Stéphane will choose to leave the door open as an invitation to a summer Sophie never expected.

Rio Lobo(en)

After the Civil War, a former Union colonel searches for the two traitors whose perfidy led to the loss of a close friend.

Diary of a Chambermaid(fr)

Celestine has a new job as a chambermaid for the quirky M. Monteil, his wife and her father. When the father dies, Celestine decides to quit her job and leave, but when a young girl is raped and murdered, Celestine believes that the Monteils' groundskeeper, Joseph, is guilty, and stays on in order to prove it. She uses her sexuality and the promise of marriage to get Joseph to confess -- but things do not go as planned.

Dead Sea(en)

Stranded in the open sea after a fatal accident, a young woman and her two friends are rescued by a fishing vessel's captain, unaware that the ship harbors a chilling secret.

No Regrets for Our Youth(ja)

Over more than a decade, the daughter of a Kyoto Imperial University professor comes of age as she witnesses her father fired for opposing the rise of fascism in Japan and becomes involved with two of his students.

Change(en)

I was somewhere between the beggining and the end of life. After winter became spring, and summer became fall, and fall winter again. I always knew change would be constant.

Viva! Django(it)

Django is on the trail of some renegade outlaws who raped and killed his wife. En route, he rescues a horse thief from an impromptu hanging. He discovers the man knows who committed the murder. The men team up and head west for revenge.

Detective Knight: Independence(en)

Detective James Knight 's last-minute assignment to the Independence Day shift turns into a race to stop an unbalanced ambulance EMT from imperiling the city's festivities. The misguided vigilante, playing cop with a stolen gun and uniform, has a bank vault full of reasons to put on his own fireworks show... one that will strike dangerously close to Knight's home.

Les SEGPA au ski(fr)

SEGPAs are in their last year in high school. They have to get their diploma, and to win the inter-high schools' Olympic Winter Games.

Star(en)

In this experimental short film, a young man and woman enter into a relationship with one another and quickly learn the ups and downs of intertwining their life with the one they love.

Good Morning(ja)

A lighthearted take on director Yasujiro Ozu’s perennial theme of the challenges of inter­generational relationships, Good Morning tells the story of two young boys who stop speaking in protest after their parents refuse to buy a television set. Ozu weaves a wealth of subtle gags through a family portrait as rich as those of his dramatic films, mocking the foibles of the adult world through the eyes of his child protagonists. Shot in stunning color and set in a suburb of Tokyo where housewives gossip about the neighbors’ new washing machine and unemployed husbands look for work as door-to-door salesmen, this charming comedy refashions Ozu’s own silent classic I Was Born, But . . . to gently satirize consumerism in postwar Japan.

Gloriana(en)

Performed at Madrid's historic Teatro Real in 2018, Ivor Bolton conducts Benjamin Britten's opera based on Lytton Strachey's 1928 Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History. In her repeated clashes with the Earl of Essex-a longtime favorite of the queen who was ultimately put to death for treason-Elizabeth I is depicted as flawed and vain, human and sympathetic.

Puccini: Turandot(it)

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.

Arena di Verona: Il Trovatore(it)

It's an event that draws many thousands of music lovers to one of the most beautiful cities in the world every summer: the opera season at the ancient Arena di Verona. The 2,000-year-old roman amphiteatre with its gigantic stage dimensions is one of the largest and best preserved Roman construction of its kind, and with over 22,000 seats it is undoubtedly one of the most spectacular open-air venues of the world! The revered master of opera Franco Zeffirelli, who died shortly before the premiere of Il Trovatore, created a legendary scenery with groups of giant sized armoured knights, a fortress turning into a luminous cathedral, an enormous choir, horses, breathtaking fights: “his perhaps best arena production” (Opernglas). It brings Anna Netrebko to the Arena of Verona where she is giving her much-anticipated debut in one of Giuseppe Verdi’s most popular operas.

Cavalleria rusticana(it)

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.

The Phantom of the Opera(en)

The deformed Phantom who haunts the Paris Opera House causes murder and mayhem in an attempt to make the woman he loves a star.

Siegfried(de)

Siegfried is the third of the four operas that constitute Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), by Richard Wagner.

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk(ru)

A young woman, married to a wealthy man, but miserably lonely; trapped within a world ruled with an iron fist. Katerina is driven by a lust for life and for love. Her husband, though, is impotent; her father-in-law a tyrant. No wonder, then, that she longs to free herself from this yoke. When Sergei starts work on the family estate, she sees in him a chance for salvation. However, their subsequent affair marks the beginning of a descent into crime.

Giovanna D'Arco(en)

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.

Amadeus(en)

Disciplined Italian composer Antonio Salieri becomes consumed by jealousy and resentment towards the hedonistic and remarkably talented young Viennese composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

The West is a Land of Infinite Beginnings(en)

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.

Così fan tutte - Salzburger Festspiele 2020(it)

As Christof Loy put it: Così fan tutte invites us to embrace the complexity of life and face the future with heads held high. In his staging of the version he abridged with Joana Mallwitz for the Salzburg Festival 2020 the focus is wholly on the figures and the subtle choreography of their emotional states — in a space that like a magnifying glass exposes the intricate mechanisms between the characters. In this way the production leads the protagonists and the audience to experience the ‘serene calm’ that can perhaps indeed cure our own ‘distempers’.

The Marriage Of Figaro - Grand Théâtre de Genève(it)

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.

Tosca(it)

Madama Butterfly(it)

Opera at La Scala Milan

Rigoletto(en)

Rigoletto is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the play Le roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo. Despite serious initial problems with the Austrian censors who had control over northern Italian theatres at the time, the opera had a triumphant premiere at La Fenice in Venice on 11 March 1851. This 1994 recording, directed by Riccardo Muti, stars Roberto Alagna, Renato Bruson and Andrea Rost.

The Metropolitan Opera: Idomeneo(it)

Mozart’s early masterpiece returned to the Met for the first time in more than a decade with Music Director Emeritus James Levine, who led the work’s company premiere in 1982, again on the podium. Tenor Matthew Polenzani brings both steely resolve and compassionate warmth to the title king of Crete, who is faced with an impossible decision. With her rich mezzo-soprano, Alice Coote sings the trouser role of Idomeneo’s son Idamante, who loves the Trojan princess Ilia, sung with delicate lyricism by Nadine Sierra. Elza van den Heever gives a thrillingly unhinged portrayal of the jealous Elettra. Jean Pierre-Ponnelle’s timeless production blends the grandeur of ancient myth with the elegance of Enlightenment ideals.

Rossini: La Cenerentola(it)

La Cenerentola, ossia La bontà in trionfo (Cinderella, or Goodness Triumphant) is an operatic dramma giocoso in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. The libretto was written by Jacopo Ferretti, based on the fairy tale Cendrillon by Charles Perrault. The opera was first performed in Rome's Teatro Valle on 25 January 1817.---- IMDB id refers to Great Performances: Season 24, Episode 12 La Cenerentola (3 Apr. 1996) from Houston Grand Opera so release date is misleading.

The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh(ru)

Opera lies at the heart of Rimsky-Korsakov's colourful idiom, but performances are few and far between; this realisation of his penultimate and grandest stage work is a very rare and special experience. Kitezh is known as "the Russian Parsifal", which encapsulates its mystical flavour and steady unfolding of a legend of redemption

Farinelli(fr)

The life and career of Italian opera singer Farinelli, considered one of the greatest castrato singers of all time.

Puccini: Manon Lescaut(it)

All the throbbing eroticism—and ultimate heartbreak—of Puccini’s youthful score is unleashed by James Levine and his top-flight cast. Plácido Domingo is Des Grieux, the handsome, headstrong young aristocrat who falls head over heels for the enticing, impetuous Manon Lescaut (Renata Scotto). Manon returns his love, but her obsession with luxury ruins them both. Gian Carlo Menotti’s opulent production, with sets and costumes by Desmond Heeley, superbly captures the colorful world of 18th century France.