BelAir Classiques
144 products
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Weill: Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny / Henschel, White, Heras-Casado [Blu-ray]
BelAir Classiques · Nov 2011Blu-Ray$36.99 -
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Rimsky-Korsakov: Tsar's Bride / Barenboim, Peretyatko, Tomowa-Sinto, Kranzle, Cernoch [Blu-ray]
BelAir Classiques · Sep 2015Blu-Ray$36.99 -
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Offenbach: Les Contes D'hoffmann / Cambreling, Durlovski, Cutler [blu-ray]
BelAir Classiques · Sep 2015Blu-Ray$36.99 -
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Handel: Hercules / DiDonato, Christie, Les Arts Florissants [Blu-ray]
BelAir Classiques · Apr 2016Blu-Ray$31.99 -
Puccini: Turandot / Luisotti, Wilson, Teatro Real [Blu-ray]
BelAir Classiques · Jun 2020Blu-Ray$36.99 -
Wuorinen: Brokeback Mountain / Engel, Randle, Okulitch, Buck, Minutillo [blu-ray]
BelAir Classiques · Mar 2015Blu-Ray$36.99 -
Britten: Billy Budd / Bolton, Teatro Real de Madrid [Blu-ray]
BelAir Classiques · Sep 2018Blu-Ray$36.99 -
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Reich: Rain, Music for 18 Musicians / Opera National de Paris [Blu-ray]
BelAir Classiques · Nov 2015Blu-Ray$36.99 -
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Bizet: Carmen / Nanasi, Arena Di Verona Orchestra And Chorus [blu-ray]
BelAir Classiques · Aug 2015Blu-Ray$36.99 -
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Wagner: Lohengrin / Meister, Staatsorchester Stuttgart
Bessy: Pas de Dieux - Staats: Soir de Fête
Arena di Verona Collection, Vol. 1
Weill: Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny / Henschel, White, Heras-Casado [Blu-ray]
Leocadia Begbick - Jane Henschel
Fatty "the Bookkeeper" - Donald Kaasch
Trinity Moses - Willard White
Jenny Smith - Measha Brueggergosman
Jim Maclntyre - Michael König
O’Brien/Higgins - John Easterlin
Bank-Account Bill - Otto Katzameier
Alaska-Wolf Joe - Steven Humes
Conductor: Pablo Heras-Casado
Stage Direction : Alex Ollé, Carlus Padrissa – La Fura dels Baus
A hard-hitting new production of Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny by the Catalan collective La Fura dels Baus at the Teatro Real de Madrid.
Composed in the 1930s by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, this is a mordant satire on capitalism and the inexorable industrialisation of a society in which the ultimate crime is not having money. In twenty scenes the authors tell the story of a city lost in the middle of a desert and run by three thugs; in Mahagonny food, sex, gambling and violence rule supreme.
The production by Alex Ollé and Carlus Padrissa, both of La Fura dels Baus, combines enormous inventiveness, joy and energy with awe-inspiring ferocity.
Perfect casting brings together a group of singers – Measha Brueggergosman, Michael König, Jane Henschel and Willard White – who are also marvellous actors.
The Teatro Real Orchestra and Chorus are directed by young Spanish conductor Pablo Heras-Casado, who actually began his career at the Teatro Real. In November 2010, he received the “El Ojo Crítico” prize, awarded annually to Spain’s most outstanding artists in the classical music field.
Director: Andy Sommer
Length: 138 min
Subtitles: French / English / German / Spanish
Zones: All Zones - 1 disc
GENIUS IN EXILE
5 PIANO CONCERTOS
Rimsky-Korsakov: Tsar's Bride / Barenboim, Peretyatko, Tomowa-Sinto, Kranzle, Cernoch [Blu-ray]
Also available on standard DVD
Based on an historical case, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride takes place in the suburbs of Moscow during the reign of Tsar Ivan IV, “the Terrible”, during the latter half of the 16th c. Widowed, he is looking for a new wife, his third. He chooses the young Marfa. She loves another man but bends to the Tsar’s will and renounces her love for the other. From this plot, Russian director Dmitri Tcherniakov retains only the frame. A live competition is organized for a virtual monarch, much like the reality shows of today. Here, the characters become the various players of the audiovisual industry bringing an acerbic critic to contemporary television. Daniel Barenboim conducts the Staatskapelle Berlin. With Olga Peretyatko, Anita Rachvelishvili and Johannes and Martin Kränzle. Recorded at Staatsoper, Im Schiller Theater Berlin, in October 2013.
Offenbach: Les Contes D'hoffmann / Cambreling, Durlovski, Cutler [blu-ray]
Also available on standard DVD
'The Tales of Hoffmann' is considered as the masterpiece of Jacques Offenbach’s work and mixes love, pain and whim. The intrigue settles around three stories about a broken love. Told by Hoffmann, narrator and hero, these tales paint a portrait of three feminine figures: Olympia the automaton, Antonia the dying opera singer and Giulietta the courtesan. This triptych allows the development of very different universes, and colour. It’s also a declension of the image of woman and of evil.
Christoph Marthaler signed this creation for the Teatro Real. This was Gerard Mortier’s last commission for this stage: the Swiss director has proven his ease in many different registers. An essential capacity needed for a work as rich and subtle as 'The Tales of Hoffmann'. Music is conducted by Sylvain Cambreling and the cast includes Eric Cutler, Anne Sofie von Otter, Measha Brueggergosman and Jean-Philippe Lafont.
Running time: 193 minutes
Subtitles: French, German, English, Spanish
Format: 16/9, NTSC, Sound Dolby digital 2.0/5.1
Rimsky-Korsakov: Le Coq d'Or (The Golden Cockerel)
AIDA (BLURAY)
Les Freres Morozov [DVD]
Moscow, 1917. The wind of the Bolshevik Revolution blows away the old Russian society and brings along a new order. Lenin decides to nationalize the great private art collections, one of which belongs to the formidable collectors, brothers Mikhail and lvan Morozov. For more than two decades, these two Muscovite patrons, textile billionaires, acquired an astonishing collection of paintings, masterpieces by Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso, Gauguin, Serou and Vroubel. This film tells the story of these two flamboyant characters, bath major figures in the modern art scene, and follows the destiny of their fabulous collections
Handel: Hercules / DiDonato, Christie, Les Arts Florissants [Blu-ray]
Also available on standard DVD
This outstanding live recording is the first ever collaboration between director Luc Bondy, conductor William Christie, and mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato. This recording was taken in December of 2004 at the Opera National de Paris. Les Arts Florissants, conducted by William Christie, does a beautiful job of performing the score by G. F. Handel.
Picture Format: 16:9
Sound Formats: PCM Stereo, 5.1 DTS HD Master Audio
Subtitles: English, French, German, Spanish
Region Code: 0 (Worldwide)
Puccini: Turandot / Luisotti, Wilson, Teatro Real [Blu-ray]
Also available on standard DVD
Giacomo Puccini wrote what was supposed to be his last opera at a time where, riddled with disease and old age as he was, he felt like his own turmoil was reflected in the outside world: itself staggering, unsteady, overwhelmed and smashed by the chaos of European diplomacy. In spite of these obstacles, he persevered and worked until the very end of his life on this opera that he left unfinished but that proved to be a “way out” for him in many ways. Drawn from an ancient Persian epic from the 13th century, Turandot was indeed an excuse to escape into a new dramatic universe, one made of unexpected sounds and symbols. Here, in a world removed both geographically and chronologically from his own reality, he gave into the seductive powers of exoticism and eroticism, just as his own heroin Princess Turandot abandons herself to the mysteries of love and forgiveness. After twenty years of absence, Puccini’s Turandot was revived on the stage of the Teatro Real in a new production by American stage director Robert Wilson. One of the most important theatre and visual artist of our times, the director who gave life to Philip Glass’s Einstein of the Beach and who reinvented Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande hadn’t worked on a Puccini opera in twenty-five years, since his ground-breaking Madama Butterfly commissioned by the Paris Opera in 1993. This new encounter between his powerful visual universe and Puccini’s evocative music was bound to be an outstanding event. Carried out by a brilliant cast of singers, dominated by Irene Theorin as Turandot, Gregory Kunde as Calaf and Yolanda Auyanet as Liù, this magnificent production is conducted by the Teatro Real’s associate musical director Nicola Luisotti - and has been met with universal acclaim.
Wuorinen: Brokeback Mountain / Engel, Randle, Okulitch, Buck, Minutillo [blu-ray]
Also available on standard DVD
A modern Opera adaptation by Charles Wuorinen based on Annie Proulx's short sorty previously adaptated by Ang Lee for the Oscar-winning film Brokeback Mountain.
Brokeback Mountain marks Wuorinen's return to the opera stage with one of the major works of his career, equally ambitious in its beauty and momentous tragedy. Brokeback is the story of ranch hand Ennis del Mar and rodeo cowboy Jack Twist, two young men who meet and fall in love on the fictional Brokeback Mountain in Wyoming in 1963. Wuorinen says "It's a story of doomed love, in this case a complex homosexual relationship taking place in a very homophobic society."
In a decidedly different approach than the film adaptation, Wuorinen creates a grittier atmosphere. The story and characters have been tightly condensed by Proulx. In reference to the genesis of the story Proulx has written "'Brokeback' was constructed on the small but tight idea of a couple of home-grown country kids, opinions and self-knowledge shaped by the world around them, finding themselves in emotional waters of increasing depth. I wanted to develop the story through a kind of literary sostenente."
In approaching the work for the stage Wuorinen writes "The music of Brokeback Mountain conveys the harsh magnificence of the Mountain where the protagonists first meet. Visiting Annie in Wyoming, seeing the land where the story is set and the characters shaped was invaluable, and it made a deep impression on me. Sometimes the score evokes the icy clarity of the high-altitude freedom the characters enjoy there. But the Mountain also breathes and storms, and the music projects this turbulence as well - especially when it transfers into the interior lives of the characters and their interactions in the human world. And the tragedy of the two principals, their doomed love, calls forth the most lyrical flights in the score."
With bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch and tenor Tom Randle. Staged by Ivo van Hove and conducted by Titus Engel.
Britten: Billy Budd / Bolton, Teatro Real de Madrid [Blu-ray]
800 liters of water, two sails, thirty pulleys, sixty hammocks : for the Bicentenary of the Teatro Real of Madrid, Deborah Warner coined a colossal production of Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd. “Oh, what have I done?” Captain Edward Fairfax Vere, former commander of the H.M.S. Indomitable asks himself with horror at the beginning of the opera, before recounting the tragic events that took place aboard his ship in 1797. The story revolves around a young model sailor, Billy Budd, and John Claggart, the unscrupulous master-at-arms obsessed and crazed by Billy’s angelic beauty; and follows the characters in their fall down to the most infernal depths of perversion and psychosis, exploring the themes of innocence, culpability, individual responsibility and justice. In this ambiguous and symbolic tale, drawn from Herman Melville’s last masterpiece, the composer Benjamin Britten, who returns for the occasion to symphonic opera and its infinite possibilities, unsettles and disturbs us by revealing the complexity and universality of human experience. Far from writing the characters as allegories of Good and Evil, the opera shows us instead the remorseless logic followed by the surge of one’s darkest desires. But in this opera dominated by masculinity, Deborah Warner goes beyond the story of violence, jealousy and hatred and chooses to focus instead on the collateral beauty produced by comradeship, friendship and forgiveness. Tenor Jacques Imbrailo, who knows the title role perfectly, delivers a stunning rendition of the young sailor’s part, while British singers Toby Spence and Brindley Sherratt provide solid interpretations of Captain “Starry” Vere and of John Claggart. In the pit, Ivor Bolton masterfully deploys, along with the Orchestra of the Teatro Real, all the energy and power of Britten’s fifth opera.
Reich: Rain, Music for 18 Musicians / Opera National de Paris [Blu-ray]
A Blu-ray video of a stunning 2014 performance choreographed by Belgian modern great Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, performed by members of the Paris Opera Ballet and set to Music for Eighteen Musicians, Steve Reich's major score composed in 1976. In tandem with the score rendered here by Ensemble Ictus and the Synergy Vocals ensemble, ‘Rain’ draws its spatial polyphony which manifests on the stage in a glorious pastiche of dancers and rhythm. Created by De Keersmaeker’s company, Rosas in 2001, “Rain” entered the Paris Opera Ballet's repertoire ten years later and reinforces her key role not just in the world of modern dance but in the worlds of contemporary art.
Bizet: Carmen / Nanasi, Arena Di Verona Orchestra And Chorus [blu-ray]
Also available on standard DVD
Georges Bizet’s “Carmen”, one of the world’s most beloved operas and a staple of the operatic since its premiere a mere three months before the composer’s death in June, 1875 was staged at the world-famous Arena di Verona in June, 2014 in an opulent production directed by the flamboyant Franco Zeffirelli and filmed in High Definition. The cast is an international lineup of excellent singers: Russian mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Semenchuk (“This gorgeous mezzo-soprano is gifted with an amazing voice… captivating timbre and good pronunciation… - Operaclick), soprano Irina Lungu ([her] voice has the brightness you associate with most coloraturas, but also bloom and warmth, which are more unusual qualities…” – New York Times), tenor Carlo Ventre (“I regard Ventre as one of the finest spinto tenors singing today.” – Opera Warhorses) and baritone Carlos Álvarez (… ample, virile voice…” – Opera News). Conductor Henrik Nánási leads the Arena di Verona Orchestra and Chorus.
Rossini: Il Barbiere di Siviglia
Karlsson: Play / Opera National de Paris
A sparkling personality on the contemporary dance scene, Swedish choreographer Alexander Ekman has been invited for the first time to work with the dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet. His language, both visceral and tinged with humor, combining theatricality, and classical and contemporary vocabulary alike, perfectly resonates with the incredible versatility and stage presence of the Ballet: the result is Play, a piece that evokes the world of childhood and its careless pleasures. But beyond pure entertainment, this performance contemplates the meaning and the importance of play when we become adults. Best known for the spectacular quality of his pieces and their dreamlike imagery, like for instance his Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Swedish choreographer fills the stage of the Palais Garnier with an entrancing energy. The metallic structures, dancers suspended in space, and the elevations are but a few of the powerful images that will strike the audience’s imagination! For this new creation, Alexander Ekman worked with his acolyte composer Mikael Karlsson, but also with a talented team of instrumentalists not often seen on the stage of the Palais Garnier, among which gospel singer Callie Day, or the incredible percussionist Adelaïde Ferriere. An unexpected performance, carried along by enticing rhythms and communicative energy!