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Giuseppe Saverio Mercadante was a contemporary of Donizetti and Rossini, and his prolific output of operas proved influential in founding dramatic techniques that were taken on by Verdi. Set in the ancient and besieged city of Carthage, Didone abbandonata is the dramatic and tragic tale of ill-starred lovers whose decisions ultimately place an entire populace in peril. A genuine rarity in the theatre, Didone has strong ties to the 18th century but also points towards the bel canto innovations that were to come. This carefully researched and critically acclaimed production presents the work in the sound and playing style of Mercadante’s time.

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Based on real events and drawing on Georg Büchner’s revolutionary play, Alban Berg’s Wozzeck turns a grimly tragic narrative of violence and murder into one of the most powerful and original operas of the 20th century. Berg’s uncompromising portrayal of brutality and madness generated much controversy, but the significance of Wozzeck was soon recognised; its compelling lyrical expansiveness, large-scale dramatic gestures and remarkable musical structures producing music of overwhelming emotional intensity. The Financial Times declared this to be "a beautiful, moving, engrossing production… this is a consummate Wozzeck, blending clarity, lyricism, compassion and crushing force."

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REVIEW:

Marc Albrecht embeds Wozzeck within a lineage of lyrically sprung, dance-driven operas from Weber’s Oberon to Der Rosenkavalier, taking in Lortzing and Die Fledermaus along the way. The singing is accomplished with style, especially the astonishingly secure Captain of Marcel Beekman and the engagingly sinister comic turn of Willard White as the Doctor. Even were it not among the most beautifully played and sung accounts on record and film, this Wozzeck would command attention for Krzysztof Warlikowski’s staging.

– Gramophone

Pixel is a stunning contemporary dance performance for 11 dancers in a virtual and living visual environment. A work on illusion combining energy and poetry, fiction and technical achievement, minimal music and hip-hop. It opens a dialogue between the synthetic world of digital projection and the real bodies of dancers. Pixel appeals to fans of contemporary dance, urban and hip-hop moves, with elements of circus too. Artistic Director and choreograper Mourad Merzouki, together with his Compagnle Kafig has elevated hip-hop to the world stage. In doing so he has created a multicultural contemporary dance form which takes equal place with modern dance and other idioms of the genre. He has incorporated circus elements, martial arts, contemporary dance and puppetry, and brought in performers from Algeria, Brazil and Taiwan in order to develop his ideas. The music was composed by French composer Armand Amar won a Cesar award for his original soundtrack.

Based on stories by Henri Merger but also infused with the composer’s own experiences as a penniless graduate, Puccini’s powerful opera La Boheme portrays its youthful characters’ romantic outlook on life and the brutally tragic end to their innocence. The story is set around 1930 but director Orpha Phelan sees Puccini’s characters as equally at home in our times: “their story is universal, all that is needed is to understand what it is like to be young and in love!” This Malmo production was acclaimed in the Svenska Dagbladet as “one of the most moving renditions of Puccini’s opera I have ever seen.” In this production, we are in Paris. The wonderfully romantic city, made for falling in love. “Anyone who has been in Paris in a slushy winter knows there is nothing especially romantic about it!” Orpha Phelan states. She does not want to idealize bohemian life. “Nor is there anything particularly romantic about choking to death… in a poor, ugly, cold neighborhood… In the opera this misery is enacted against such oh-so-beautiful music. It’s that contrast that makes the opera great.”

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The collaboration of the poet John Dryden and Henry Purcell marked a conspicuous leap forward for English opera. Their greatest project, King Arthur, is a five-act ‘dramatick opera,’ the text of which had its origins in a patriotic musical play Dryden had written in 1684 but which he radically overhauled. The result was a work that appealed to the audience’s enthusiasm for fine costumes, lavish sets, ingenious stage machinery and a cast of singers, dancers and instrumentalists, containing vocal show-stoppers such as the imperishable ‘Frost Scene’ and ‘Fairest isle.’ This critically acclaimed staging uses a new performing edition by Rene Jacobs, and is sung in English with German dialogue. Bachtrack.com greatly admired the 2017 performance: “The singing cast- all of which played up to six parts each- were strong throughout Soprano Anett Fritsch marveled as Merlin’s trusty spirit Philidel and Cupido, her coloratura agile and light, her singing and speaking impressive both on stage and whilst airborne. Bass Johannes Weisser played a suitably repulsive Grimbald and convinced vocally in the Cold Genius’ staccato aria “What Ho,” Soprano Robin Johannsen and Altus Benno Schachtner delighted particularly during their touching love duet.”

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Valery Gergiev, fresh from his appointment as chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra in 2015, takes his new ensemble to the BBC Proms for a concert of the utmost in drama and vivid musicianship. The brilliant young Uzbek pianist Behzod Abduraimov performs Rachmaninov’s thrillingly virtuosic Piano Concerto No. 3, while the Russian stage and film actor Alexei Petrenko recites the text in Galina Ustvolskaya’s resonant and profound Symphony No.3 ‘Jesus Messiah, Save Us!’. The programme also features a hypnotic Ravel Boléro, an alternately tender, florid and witty Rosenkavalier Suite, and the rousing Hungarian March by Berlioz.

This Blu-ray Disc is only playable on Blu-ray Disc players and not compatible with standard DVD players.

Also available on standard DVD

Polychoral music is so synonymous with 16th century Venice that it is easy to forget that the longest flourishing of this style- possibly even its invention- took place in Germany. Whether or not it was in Munich with the works of Orlande de Lassus that the Gabrielis first encountered its effects, polychoral music came to define German textures and techniques for over a century. Both apprentices and rivals to their Italian counterparts, composers such as Hieronymus Praetorius, Schutz, Hassler and Scheidt, as well as Austria’s Biber, fostered a tradition whose influence would extend all the way to the motets of Bach. This performance places a giant of Baroque choral music, Biber’s Missa Salisburgensis, alongside the Venetian choral works of Monteverdi from which it takes its inspiration. The combination is a heady one, a triumphal musical celebration uniquely appropriate to mark the 200th anniversary year of Salzburg’s affiliation with Austria.

Schumann at Pier2 is not a usual documentary, it explains the whole idea behind the project and it contains footage from rehearsals, comments from Paavo Järvi about the symphonies and the interpretation, biographical information about R. Schumann and footage of musicians who explain and play key themes and more. Stars of the film are the conductor Paavo Järvi and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and it´s filmed at „Pier2“, a former dockyard in the harbour of Bremen.

“Järvi's Schumann is most notably extremely exciting, performed with a lot of enthusiasm.“ -- Fono Forum

"Since their great Beethoven-Cycle Paavo Järvi and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie are one of the top ensembles." -- Crescendo

Repertoire:
Excerpts from
Symphony No. 1, Spring, Op. 38
Symphony No. 2, Op. 61
Symphony No. 3 Rhenish, Op. 97
Symphony No. 4, Op. 120

Bonus:
- The making of Schumann at Pier2

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: PCM Stereo (whole DVD) / DTS 5.1 (concert film only)
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: English (whole DVD) / German, French, Spanish, Korean, Chinese (concert film only)
Booklet notes: English, German, French
Running time: 98 mins (concert film) + 18 mins (bonus)
No. of Discs: 1 (DVD 9)

The opening concert of the Salzburg Festival, for many regarded as the world's most renowned music festival, is by tradition a high-profile event and the 2011 gala presented here was one of the best in memory. Pierre Boulez, the "grand seigneur of subtle minimalism and exquisitely beguiling sounds" (Der Standard), assembled a cast of tremendous distinction to join the Vienna Philharmonic for this prestigious concert, conceived as a tribute to Gustav Mahler: Dorothea Roschmann, Anna Larsson, Johan Botha and rising star Anna Prohaska. After two works by Mahler's pupil Alban Berg, featuring Roschmann and Prohaska, the main event of the concert if Mahler's large-scale cantata Das klagende Lied - a "great spectral opera for the mind's eye" (Vienna Zeitung).

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Christian Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden are continuing their internationally acclaimed Bruckner cycle with the Symphony No. 5. For Anton Bruckner, his Fifth Symphony was a glorious confrontation with the music of the past – from a personal, biographical angle, but also as a departure from the composition techniques he preferred up to this point. Not for nothing is this tremendous opus magnum regarded as Bruckner’s “contrapuntal masterpiece”. In this universally lauded performance, Christian Thielemann, already the leading Bruckner interpreter of our times, has once again proven himself to be a “magician of the Bruckner sound”. (Kurier)

Anton Bruckner
SYMPHONY NO. 5


Dresden Staatskapelle
Christian Thielemann, conductor

Recorded live at the Semperoper, Saxon State Opera, Dresden, 2013

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: PCM Stereo / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: English, German, French
Running time: 89 mins
No. of DVDs: 1

UNIKO features the Kronos Quartet together with the Finnish Duo - accordion adventurer Kimmo Pohjonen and sampling guru Samuli Kosminen. They create a new, multi-dimensional sound world. Commissioned by Kronos in 2003 and premiered at the Helsinki Festival in 2004, UNIKO has drawn sellout crowds. The spectacle is as visual as it is aural, and is a must-see on DVD.

The funeral of Louis XIV mirrored his reign: grandiose and filled with pathos. For this video, Raphaël Pichon has chosen the setting of the Chapelle Royale in Versailles, built for the Sun King, to present a musical reconstruction of the event, with chiaroscuro lighting designs by Bertrand Couderc. Solemn motets like the De profundis and Dies irae of Michel-Richard de Lalande and the poignant Marche funèbre pour le Convoy d Roy by André Danican Philidor are juxtaposed with rarely heard music by Jean Colin, Louis Chein and Charles d'Helfer. This outstanding performance by Pygmalion was filmed on the occasion of the tercentenary of the event in November 2015.

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REVIEW:

The tercentenary of the Sun King's exequies was a perfect opportunity for a commemorative concert filmed at Chapelle Royale in Versailles. In numerous ways, this is not a reconstruction but instead a quasi-liturgical presentation that places two magnificent grands motets by Lalande among plenty of plainchant.

This conjectural fantasy affords creative license for Pygmalion and Raphael Pichon to create a beguilingly musical experience. The elegantly sensual orchestral playing and choral singing are sensational from start to finish. Five soloists sing with impeccable gracefulness and fluency.

– Gramophone

Recorded live in June 2017 at the magnificent Liceu Theatre in Barcelona, this DVD is the companion to Joyce DiDonato's award-winning album In War and Peace: Harmony through Music. Seeking answers to the existential question "In the midst of chaos, how do you find peace?", it makes a compelling piece of music theatre as DiDonato journeys through arias by Handel, Purcell, Monteverdi, Leo and Jommelli with Il Pomo d'Oro and conductor Maxim Emelyanychev. On stage, In War and Peace: Harmony through Music makes a compelling piece of music theatre. In Barcelona, as on the European and North American tours she made in late 2016, DiDonato was joined by the baroque orchestra Il Pomo d'Oro and it's principal conductor Maxim Emelyanychev. May and June 2018 bring further performances in Portugal, France, Germany, Turkey and Hungary. Includes Bonuses: Joyce DiDonato presents "In War & Peace" project. Joyce DiDonato in Athens with el Sistema Greece directed by Josh Allott. Video Clip Lascia ch'io pianga directed by James Darrah.

If you see one opera this year, make it The Exterminating Angel, ran the headline in the New York Times after the US premiere of Thomas Ades' "stunningly inventive" opera based on Luis Bunuel's surreal and satirical 1962 film El angel exterminador. Like the British composer's score, Tom Cairns' production is both spectacular and surprising. "Ades keeps the listener on edge," wrote Opera magazine, "because one never knows where his dazzling palette of possibilities will take him next." Thomas Ades TITLE: Ades: The Exterminating Angel (MET)(DVD) Label: PRX/Warner Classics/Parlophone

Nelson Eddy, Gale Sherwood, John Conte, Otto Kruger. A wonderfully-done adaptation of Romberg's famous operetta as it was performed live for a 1955 TV telecast. Unlike earlier film versions, the live performance now captured on film illuminates the story in a much truer format to Romberg's original. 1955/b&w/76 min/NR/fullscreen.