Also available on Blu-ray

The “striking interpretation” (Neue Musikzeitung) of Jules Massenet’s operatic rarity Don Quichotte at Bregenz Festival, received an "unanimous jubilation for director Mariame Clément, her outfitter Julia Hansen and the entire stage team: a typical Bregenz Festival orchid flourished!“ (Neue Musikzeitung Online). But this opera is also a musical discovery, not least because of the outstanding cast: “the balsamic sound of well-being of Gábor Bretz, David Stouts mobile Sancho Panza is also wonderfully shaded (Salzburger Nachrichten) and “Anna Goryachova impresses as Dulcinée with vocal clarity and scenic presence”. (Wiener Zeitung) “The Bregenz Festival discovers a dreamlike operatic beauty full of melancholy and farewell” (Salzburger Nachrichten)

Also available on Blu-ray

Violinist Lisa Batiashvili, cellist Gautier Capuçon, Christian Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden present a sophisticated concert program of three great composers: Johannes Brahms, Pyotr I. Tchaikovsky and Franz Liszt. In Brahms´ Double Concerto Lisa Bathiashvili is playing her Guarneri “with tenderness and devotion” (Der Neue Merker). Her lyrical, velvety performance is contrasted by Capuçon’s more throaty and vibrating tone: “The two ways of playing seem to collide sometimes but to match brilliantly at the same time”. Christian Thielemann and his Staatskapelle “are mixing different colors as if they were putting emeralds and rubies on precious metal, creating huge sonority but always retaining clarity in it” (Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten).

REVIEW:

In the Brahms Double Concerto, violinist Lisa Batiashvili is bright and overtly lyrical, cellist Gautier Capuçon tonally full-throated if fairly formal. Tthe Andante is lovely (especially the questioning envoi at its close) and the finale—which follows on from it attacca—really dances.

Thielemann’s perfectly paced, sensitive, and deeply musical Romeo and Juliet is simply gripping. The warring Montagues and Capulets cut through generally mellow sound to create a real sense of tension; the love music is romantic but never soupy; and when it comes to the coda beyond the explosive timpani roll, Thielemann’s chilling grimace tells how the tragedy is affecting him. The coda itself is truly noble.

The programme ends with the variegated world of Liszt’s Les préludes, a performance both vivid and skillfully navigated, with the work’s close suitably majestic.

– Gramophone

The Brahms interpretations of Paavo J�rvi, the Grammy Award-winning Estonian-American conductor, and his Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen have been receiving the highest public and critical acclaim. "A Brahms revelation" was the headline in the New Yorker, for the Zeit it's "a reference recording" and the Hamburger Abendblatt wrote "the greatest experts of Brahms come from Bremen (die besten Brahms Versteher kommen aus Bremen)". The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen perform Brahms nowadays exactly to the size that the composer himself was accustomed to at the time. This interpretation puts Brahms� symphonies in a new light, which is explored in the additional documentary through the eyes of the musicians and their artistic director Paavo J�rvi.

Also available on Blu-ray

The Vienna Johann Strauss Orchestra can rightly claim to be one of the most authentic ensembles for interpreting the music of the Strauss dynasty. Founded in 1966 in Vienna, the aim of the new orchestra was to cultivate both the music of the Strauss dynasty, as well as so-called 'light' Viennese music. This festive concert from the Golden Hall of the Musikverein Vienna is a musical journey across Austria and includes beautiful footage of the Austrian landscape and famous historical monuments, as well as short introductions by the conductor Johannes Wildner. Enjoy the magic of the music of the Strauss family and the accompanying impressions of Austria.

Freedom, fraternity and humanity – this is what Beethoven’s 9th Symphony stands for. It opens the 10th Grafenegg Festival, performed by the Tonkunstler Orchestra, joined by 24 alumni of the European Union Youth Orchestra (EUYO) and “a soloist quartet which no one could possibly imagine to be more prestigious” (Die Presse). “Vogt’s tenor and the Wiener Singverein were especially moving” (Wiener Zeitung) and “the vocal performance by excellent bass René Pape, the fabulous soprano Camilla Nylund and the brilliant mezzosoprano Elena Zhidkova … in Beethoven’s Ninth was just sensational. Bravo!” (Kurier) Composer in Residence Christian Jost’s new work also centres around Beethoven, featuring the song “An die Hoffnung” (“To Hope”), and “convincingly used an impressive orchestra” (Der Standard), with “tenor Klaus Florian Vogt as a well-cast soloist” (Salzburger Nachrichten).

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Salzburg Festival, C Major presents this brilliant box set that features 10 outstanding Operas from the Salzburg Festival history including Simon Boccanegra, Salome, L'italiana in Algeri, Pique Dame, Die Zauberflöte, Otello, Der Rosenkavalier, Vec Makropulos, Fierrabras and Theodora. The Salzburg Festival (German: Salzburger Festspiele) is a prominent festival of music and drama established in 1920. It is held each summer (for five weeks starting in late July) in the Austrian town of Salzburg, the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The festival was initially a counterpart to the Prussian-North German uncompromising worldview, and emphasized the centuries-old Habsburg principles of “live and let live” with regard to ethnic groups, peoples, minorities, religions, cultures, and languages. It was officially inaugurated on August 22, 1920 with Reinhardt’s performance of Hofmannsthal’s Jedermann on the steps of the Salzburg Cathedral. The first festival hall was erected in 1925.

Also available on Blu-ray

At Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, maestro Fabio Luisi gives “a superb performance” (Operawire) of Der Fliegende Hollander (The Flying Dutchman), the forerunner of grand Wagnerian dramas. His Italian Richard Wagner debut is infused with energy and drive, under his direction the orchestra and chorus of Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, together with Coro Ars Lyrica, sparkle “in what was a five star performance” (Operawire). Thomas Gazheli stars as the Dutchman, who has been condemned to endlessly wander the seas until the day of Judgement. Marjorie Owens shines as his savior Senta.

Also available on Blu-ray

This is one of the most beautiful and brilliant recordings of Wagner´s Tristan und Isolde and it´s first time available on video. Leonard Bernstein’s way of conducting this opera is unique and he makes orchestra and singers perform at their very best. The Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks was the only German orchestra with which Leonard Bernstein regularly collaborated for many years and it has numbered among the top ten orchestras in the world. A star cast of singers with Peter Hofmann and Hildegard Behrens in the title roles completes this exceptional semi-staged production. Bernstein’s 1981 recording of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde is still considered an outstanding interpretation and has set the bar until this day. When he heard this performance Karl Bohm said, “Bernstein has conducted Tristan und Isolde the way that Wagner intended it to be conducted”.

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REVIEW:

Bernstein prefers a very personal, emotionally spontaneous approach, and the orchestral playing is, as to be expected, sensational. in all Peter Hoffmann and Hildegard Behrens sound fresh, youthful, and intense, if not highly dramatic or heroic in the more traditional Wagnerian sense.

The resolution of the film falls short of the technical possibilities inherent the Blu-ray format. Away from the grandiose soundtrack, the DVD / Blu-ray is of more historical interest, lacking the modern degree of visual splendor.

– Merker Online
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DETAILS:

Subtitles: G, E, F, Sp, It, Kr, Jp
Booklet: English, German, French
No. of Discs: 3
Run time: 291 minutes
Disc Format: DVD 9
Picture: NTSC 4:3
Audio: PCM Stereo
Region Code: 0 (worldwide)

“During creation, every new ballet seems a possible film. When developing the idea of filming “A Midsummer Night’s Dream“, I insisted on planning a true ballet film which, for me, is completely different than a documentary. Within the three days of recording, we did not schedule a single complete run-through of the work. Instead, we recorded the film in sequences and with exciting camera positions which can be compared to the way one would film a drama. What we really love when watching films, is the immediacy, the vibrancy of the moment. The camera being so close, means that we don’t want the dancers representing something, we don’t want them presenting something, we want them simply being – “now”. We want that spark of truth that springs towards us and that touches us.” John Neumeier

Also available on Blu-ray

The Vienna Johann Strauss Orchestra can rightly claim to be one of the most authentic ensembles for interpreting the music of the Strauss dynasty. In 1966 — nearly 120 years after Johann Strauss I had founded the Strauss Orchestra, the great demand for high-quality interpretations of light music led a group of musicians in Vienna who belonged to the small ensemble of the Austrian Radio Orchestra to found the Vienna Johann Strauss Orchestra. The aim of new orchestra was to cultivate the music of the Strauss dynasty, together with so-called ‘light’ Viennese music. It was formed of fortytwo musicians, that it to say the ensemble was the same size as that which, according to authentic accounts, was preferred by the members of the Strauss family.

Also available on Blu-ray

Giuseppe Verdi’s masterpiece Rigoletto – compelling, blood-curdling and beautiful – is being performed for the first time on the Bregenz lake stage. The stage director and designer Philipp Stölzl, known for his successful productions at Salzburg Festival as well as music videos for the German band Rammstein, highlights the striking contrasts between spectacle and intimate chamber drama in his production of Verdi’s opera. “Breathtaking, tight and thrilling arrangement, extremely beautiful. Philipp Stölzl delivers a superlative Rigoletto to Bregenz lake stage.” (Frankfurter Rundschau Online) “The performance of the three main characters has been outstanding.” (Der Standard Online) “Rigoletto becomes a Hollywood spectacle on Lake Constance.” (Handelsblatt) “Nothing but a sensation.” (SWR 2)

Also available on Blu-ray

On the occasion of the 200th birthday of Giuseppe Verdi, Teatro Regio di Parma and Unitel Classica have joined forces to create a truly unique project – for the first time ever, and just in time for the composer’s 200th brithday, Verdi’s Operatic oeuvre, which comprises the labour of more than 50 years, will be available in High Definition and Surround Sound. All of the composer’s 26 Operas, as well as the Requiem – which is closely related to the Operas – will be performed and audio-visually recorded in and around Parma, and released on DVD and Blu-ray. Verdi’s Nabucco is presented here staged by Daniele Abbado. Bonus features include a 10 minute introduction of the opera.

"As last year, the musical direction was entrusted to Michele Mariotti, whose immersion in the score has deepened further allowing him to provide a very remarkable reading. Simply seeing the warmth that all the singers offered him from the stage was enough realize that this young maestro has managed to develop genuine team work producing very good results. His interpretation of “Va pensiero” was unique: a very personal reading, slow, solemn and moving from which the Teatro Regio Chorus rewarded him with spectacular and truly unusual performance. I had never heard a chorus singing this passage at such a pianissimo complete with real diminuendos. This only can be done by an exceptional choir... Similarly, the music from of the Teatro Regio Orchestra was everything to be expected from this excellent group. The protagonist Nabucco was Leo Nucci, the Verdi Festival’s true star... Abigaille was the Greek soprano Dimitra Theodossiou... The cheers she received were not even true cheers, but spectacular screams, so loud that it seemed as if her life might be at risk. At her final bow she was almost completely covered by flowers, thrown from the upper floors, with none left at all for any other artist... As might be expected there was a completely full house for this almost gala performance. 'Va pensiero' was encored at popular request and at the final bows, there were triumphs for Leo Nucci, Dimitra Theodossiou and Michele Mariotti." -- José M. Irurzun, MusicWeb International reviewing a live performance of this production

Nabucco – Leo Nucci
Ismaele – Bruno Ribeiro
Zaccaria – Riccardo Zanellato
Abigaille – Dimitra Theodossiou
Fenena – Annamaria Chiuri
Il Gran Sacerdote di Belo – Alessandro Spina
Abdallo – Mauro Buffoli
Anna – Cristina Giannelli

Teatro Regio di Parma Chorus and Orchestra
(chorus master: Martino Faggiani)
Michele Mariotti, conductor

Daniele Abbado, staging
Caroline Lang, stage director
Luigi Perego, set and costume designer
Valero Alfier, lighting designer

Recorded live from the Teatro Regio di Parma, 2009

Bonus:
- Introduction to Nabucco

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: PCM Stereo / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: Italian, English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese
Running time: 137 mins (opera) + 10 mins (bonus)
No. of DVDs: 1

Also available on Blu-ray

“The cast is a dream team,” wrote the Financial Times after the premiere of this production of Verdi’s La forza del destino at the Wiener Staatsoper. Verdi’s 1862 opera is regularly performed and the overture is part of the standard repertoire for orchestras, but this production stands apart from the rest. Powerful performances by Nina Stemme, who gives a fullblooded portrayal of Leonora, Alastair Miles as her father, Salvatore Licitra as Alvaro, Carlos Álvarez as Don Carlo and Nadia Krasteva as Preziosilla resulted in one of the Viennese ensemble’s most celebrated achievements of recent years. Zubin Mehta leads the Staatsoper Orchestra with agility, subtleness and relaxed mastery, and right from the start David Pountney establishes an atmosphere of entrapment by fate. “A perfect utopia.” (Süddeutsche Zeitung).

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REVIEW:

Tenor Salvatore Licitra as Don Alvaro in La forza del destino, captured in Vienna 10 years ago - his singing is admirably clean, his tone noble. Alongside him, Nina Stemme is a gutsy Leonora, assiduously following the score’s markings, Carlos Álvarez an outstanding Don Carlo, Alistair Miles a firm and cleanly- sung Padre Guardiano.

– Opera Now

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DETAILS:

Subtitles: Italian, Eng., Ger., Ff., Sp., Kr,Cn
Booklet: English, German, French
Run time: 161 minutes
Disc Format: DVD9
Picture: NTSC 16:9
Audio: PCM Stereo, PCM 5.1
Region Code: 0 (worldwide)

Also available on Blu-ray

With more than 50 years of experience as film director, Peter Greenaway (Nightwatching, Eisenstein in Guanajuato, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover) combines the worlds of film and opera at the Festival Verdi in Parma with an all new approach to Verdi’s Giovanna d’Arco, staged and edited by himself and Saskia Boddeke. Turning the auditorium into part of the set, Greenaway includes the unique architecture of the Teatro Farnese into his staging. With the help of spectacular video and light installations, he creates a completely new opera experience, using a striking imagery that includes depictions of the Madonna, modern manga girls and the real faces of refugee children. “It is a thrilling moment when threads of light spread over the darkened arches during the overture, shaping the architecture and flooding the whole area with changing light patterns.” (Daily Express)

Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca is one of the most dramatic thrillers in the history of opera. In the revived, legendary historic staging of Margarethe Wallmann, Piotr Beczala (“one of the extraordinary singers of our time”, Der Standard) celebrated his acclaimed role debut as Cavaradossi and is “overwhelming” (Wiener Zeitung). At his side is Karine Babajanyan as Primadonna Floria Tosca, making her house debut at the Vienna State Opera and Carlos Álvarez, whose “Scarpia is an ambassador of evil like no other.” (Wiener Zeitung) - a performance of unique and lasting quality!

Also available on Blu-ray

In 2018, Yo-Yo Ma began a two-year journey, setting out to perform Johann Sebastian Bach’s six suites for solo cello in one sitting, across 36 locations on 6 continents. For Yo-Yo, Bach’s 300-hundred-year-old music is one extraordinary example of how culture connects us and can help us to imagine and build a better future. In an unforgettable experience the 19 times Grammy ® Award winner and internationally acclaimed cellist performed the Cello Suites at the overwhelming Odeon of Herodes Atticus in Athens. Yo-Yo Ma says: “These suites are so meaningful. They’re not only companions and friends, but they’ve also been reference points in my life.” “Soft sounds around me suggested that others were caught up in similarly strong emotions. How Ma has this effect on people is a mystery: I suspect it has to do with the warmth he brings to music that is fundamentally beyond comprehension. He makes the godlike human.” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker)


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REVIEWS:

He doesn’t ‘ham-up’ his Bach, but there is more spontaneity here than I’ve heard from Ma before in his studio recordings, and playfulness and profundity alike are communicated with more directness and a feel of risk which is quite bracing. Every recording is a captured moment in time, and this is a unique document of a consummate artist performing the greatest of music composed for his instrument. If you are a fan of Yo-Yo Ma and/or of Bach’s Six Suites then you will want this.

– MusicWeb International

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma brings a lifetime of experience and sensitivity to the works, maintaining their intimacy even within this vast arena, and not a note is out of place. If you don’t know the suites well just listen to the third which is so full of life and joy. A recording to treasure.

– Lark Reviews (Dr. Brian Hick

The concerts that occur each year at the Salzburg Festival are undoubtedly some of the finest performances in the world. Established in 1920, the Festival is held each summer in the Austrian town of Salzburg, the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In addition to the various concerts that are performed each year, operas and plays are presented as well. This unique and extensive release features six concerts from the Salzburg Festival that were recorded between 2007 and 2013. The fine orchestras featured include the Wiener Philharmoniker, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, and the National Children’s Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela under the batons of Pierre Boulez, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Daniel Barenboim, and Sir Simon Rattle.

On Saturday October 6, 2018 at the Philharmonie de Paris, Nicolas Horvath sat down to perform Erik Satie's complete works for piano without a break. The event was captured in this fascinating film by acclaimed director Thierry Villeneuve and features selections from Horvath's marathon eight-hour performance, filmed in black and white. This immersive visual experience sees Satie's mysterious and timeless music brought to life in a dreamlike conflation of past and present in front of a captivated audience. Horvath wrote of the evening: "This concert was remarkable, the press coverage was incredible (all of the main media previewed it as a 'must see concert'). Curiously, and unlike everything I had prepared, or even in my very own recordings - performing all of a composer's music with no break at the very same concert takes you to unexpected territories. I was very surprised at the risks I took from time to time, both musically and technically. But listening to the whole eight hours of musical evolution makes clear that each decision was a logical part of a larger unity, as it was mirrored in other later pieces..."

Umberto Giordano’s opera Siberia with its libretto by Puccini’s successful librettist Luigi Illica (La bohème, Tosca) premiered in 1903 at La Scala as a replacement of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, which was not finished at the time. Madama Butterfly came out in Milan shortly after Siberia and flopped completely. Umberto Giordano, however, briefly became a public favorite.

Shortly after successful re-runs on important theatres, including Buenos Aires, New York and São Paulo, Siberia could not maintain its position in repertoire although Gabriel Fauré designated the second act as “one of the most remarkable and captivating that modern dramatic music can offer.“ This opera rarity performed at Bregenz Festival “is musical narrative theatre in perfection“ (Süddeutsche Zeitung) in which “Uryupin leads the agile Wiener Symphoniker through the score with a sense for delicately tinted colours. Ambur Braid sings the challenging part of Stephanas with bravour“ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung).

Winner of the 2021 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition!

“A vivid Orlando makes history in Vienna” (New York Times International): Olga Neuwirth’s opera Orlando, based on Virginia Woolf’s novel of the same name, is the first full-length opera by a woman celebrating its premiere at the Vienna State Opera. Olga Neuwirth, for a long time one of the great composers of the present, succeeds with this opera in creating a captivating arc across many musical genres. It’s an exciting, socially critical production by Polly Graham who puts a fantastically singing and playing Kate Lindsey in the center of the action. For Orlando, Neuwirth won the prestigious Grawemeyer Award; it became “world premiere of the year” by Opernwelt magazine, and for Die Zeit, the Hamburg-based national German newspaper, it was “the premiere of the season.”

Acclaim:

"Neuwirth’s score, fusing orchestral, electronic and sampled sounds, is often bewitching...while the use of musical quotations, from Elizabethan polyphony to Lady Gaga, is certainly entertaining.

"The Vienna production...clearly didn’t stint on anything. Some of the sense of grandeur may be lost on a small screen, but the use of video, with texts projected on to the set, as well as the sumptuous costumes by Comme des Garçons, is certainly lavish...

"As Orlando, the mezzo Kate Lindsey is outstanding in what is a hugely demanding role...Constance Hauman provides a telling cameo as the Queen. Matthias Pintscher is the conductor, efficiently coordinating everything[.]"

--The Guardian (Andrew Clements)