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

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

Also available on standard DVD
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!

Also available on Blu-ray

Ballet in three acts
Music : Ludwig Minkus (1826-1917)
Libretto : Marius Petipa / Sergei Khudekov
Redaction : Yuri Grigorovich

With : Svetlana Zakharova, Vladislav Lantratov, Maria Alexandrova, Alexey Loparevich, Andrey Sitnikov

The Bolshoi Ballet
The Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra
Conductor : Pavel Sorokin
Choreography : Marius Petipa
New version : Yuri Grigorovich

Marius Petipa’s exotic ballet, set in legendary and mysterious India, is a story of love, death and vengeful judgement. Yuri Grigorovich’s sumptuous recreation of Petipa’s choreography, with breathtaking sets and costumes designed by Nikolay Sharonov, stars Svetlana Zakharova as the Bayadère Nikiya, Vladislav Lantratov as Solor and Maria Alexandrova as Gamzatti whose alluring presence challenges Solor’s love for Nikiya.

Length: 125 min
Image: NTSC, colour, 16:9
Audio: PCM Stereo, 5.1 Dolby Digital
Zones: All Zones

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

Also available on standard DVD

The purity of classical dance meets the opulent exoticism of the Maharajas’ India in this 150-year-old ballet, glorified by Nacho Duato for the Mikhailovsky Ballet. Of Ancient India, composer Ludwig Minkus made in his La Bayadère the shiny background of the tragic love story between a priestess and a warrior, unable to get together in this world or in the next. For this new production with the Mikhailovsky Ballet, of which he is the artistic director, Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato created a new version extremely respectful of Marius Petipa’s original, preserving the traditional synopsis and the great coups de théâtre of the libretto, and keeping the original choreography for the most famous scenes. But at the same time, he liberates the ballet from the weight of its own anachronism, removes the episodes of pointless pantomime, and relocates it in an extravagant, lavish and colorful set. Before working on La Bayadère, Duato had already tackled some of the great classics of the Russian classical ballet school: his original versions of Sleeping Beauty (BAC131 BAC431) and The Nutcracker, both commissioned by the Mikhailovsky, have since then toured in the whole world and were met with tremendous success – from Milan and Berlin to Novossibirsk. For this new project, he surrounds himself with the excellent Principals Angelina Vorontsova and Victor Lebedev, but also with Andrea Laššáková, outstanding in the role of Gamzatti.

Also available on Blu-ray

The second volume in Bel Air Classique’s collection “Great Ballets from the Bolshoi” is a four-ballet limited edition release, featuring the Bolshoi Ballet’s most recent successes: La Bayadere, Marco Spada, Swan Lake, and The Golden Age. Marius Petipa’s exotic ballet La Bayadere is set in legendary and mysterious India. It is a story of love, death and vengeful judgement. Yuri Grigorovich presents a sumptuous recreation of Petipa’s choreography. Recreated specifically for the Bolshoi by French choreographer Pierre Lacotte, Marco Spada, or the Bandit’s Daughter, is a grandiose and unique ballet both on a technical and dramatic level: it includes complex choreography, five lead roles created for five principals, and several changes in scenery. With Tchaikovsky’s famous, lyrical score, Swan Lake depicts the tragic love between Princess Odette and Prince Siegfried, and is performed to perfection by the unparalleled virtuosity of Russia’s great Bolshoi Ballet. A modern and visionary work, The Golden Age, set to music by Shostakovich, was created in 1930. Its central theme was the highly moralized battle and triumph of the proletariat against the decadent bourgeoisie, set in Europe during the roaring twenties. All performances were recorded in high definition at the State Academic Bolshoi Ballet of Moscow.

Since it was first published in 1731, L’Histoire du Chevalier Dex Grieux et de Manon Lescaut has been the object of numerous adaptations for both stage and screen. In the 19th century, Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber, Jules Massenet and Giacomo Puccini used Abbe Prevost’s novel as the theme for their respective operas. After 1912, cinema transposed the story of Manon and the Knight into varying degrees of melodramatic intensity. In 1974 British choreographer Kenneth MacMillan in turn decided to focus on the two protagonists for an ambitious ballet that could translate the feelings and emotions of two souls abused by the accidents of life and their own personal weaknesses. In short, how a young girl on her way to a convent manages to elope with the young student with whom she has just fallen in love, only to leave him to escape destitution and finally allow herself to be persuaded by her brother Lescaut to yield to the advances of wealthy “protectors.” Rather than reuse the score of Massenet’s opera, MacMillan entrusted Leighton Lucas with the task of arranging a series of extracts taken from a selection of the French composer’s operatic, symphonic and vocal scores. The end result was a huge success from its debut performance in London in 1974 onwards. Sixteen years later, L’Histoire de Manon entered the Paris Opera Ballet’s repertoire.

In October 2013 Martha Argerich and the Chamber Orchestra of Lausanne led a team of talented pianists - major figures as well as young soloists at the edge of a promising career - from all around the world in a gathering to glorify in Bach. Among the pianists heard on the nine-concerto concert program of works for one, two, three and even four pianists are Nicholas Angelich, Frank Braley, Michel Dalberto and Nelson Goerner, the master Stephen Kovacevich, the great Russian pianist Lilya Zilberstein, the South Korea native Dong-Hyek Lim as well as the talented and sensitive David Kadouch, among others.

One of, if not the foremost ballet company in the world, the Bolshoi Ballet dates its history to 1825, and its pre-history to the original company founded in 1776. Over the course of the entire 20th century the company vaulted to the pre-eminent status it has for the most part retained to this day.Its historic legacy in names and achievements of its brilliant dancers, choreographers and productions has long since become the stuff of legend, a legacy that continues today as this 4DVD Bel Air Classiques amply proves. The four productions, Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty, Adam’s Giselle and Asafiev’s The Flames of Paris, all filmed at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow in 2010, feature some of the greatest of recent or current company dancers: Svetlana Zakharova, Natalia Osipova, Nina Kaptsova, Maria Allash, Svetlana Lunkina, David Hallberg and Artem Ovcharenko.

•THE NUTCRACKER: 103 MINS | AUDIO: 2.0 PCM, 5.1 DOLBY DIGITAL | 1 DVD 9 NTSC 16:9
• THE SLEEPING BEAUTY: 138 MINS | AUDIO: 2.0 PCM, 5.1 DOLBY DIGITAL | 1 DVD 9 NTSC 16:9
• GISELLE: 109 MINS | AUDIO: 2.0 PCM, 5.1 DOLBY DIGITAL | 1 DVD 9 NTSC 16:9
• THE FLAMES OF PARIS: 103 MINS (BALLET) & 21 MINS (BONUS) | AUDIO: 2.0 PCM, 5.1 DOLBY DIGITAL | 1 DVD9 NTSC 16:9

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

Also available on standard DVD
The second volume in Bel Air Classique’s collection “Great Ballets from the Bolshoi” is a four-ballet limited edition release, featuring the Bolshoi Ballet’s most recent successes: La Bayadere, Marco Spada, Swan Lake, and The Golden Age. Marius Petipa’s exotic ballet La Bayadere is set in legendary and mysterious India. It is a story of love, death and vengeful judgement. Yuri Grigorovich presents a sumptuous recreation of Petipa’s choreography. Recreated specifically for the Bolshoi by French choreographer Pierre Lacotte, Marco Spada, or the Bandit’s Daughter, is a grandiose and unique ballet both on a technical and dramatic level: it includes complex choreography, five lead roles created for five principals, and several changes in scenery. With Tchaikovsky’s famous, lyrical score, Swan Lake depicts the tragic love between Princess Odette and Prince Siegfried, and is performed to perfection by the unparalleled virtuosity of Russia’s great Bolshoi Ballet. A modern and visionary work, The Golden Age, set to music by Shostakovich, was created in 1930. Its central theme was the highly moralized battle and triumph of the proletariat against the decadent bourgeoisie, set in Europe during the roaring twenties. All performances were recorded in high definition at the State Academic Bolshoi Ballet of Moscow.

Also available on Blu-ray

Choreographer Mark Morris garnered international fame for "L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato", considered a landmark achievement, and set to Handel's Baroque masterpiece, in which a colorful array of dancers embody the ecstasy of art that transforms. "L'Allegro" was Mark Morris's premiere work as Director of Dance at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, Belgium in 1988, and in the intervening years, has been performed to critical and audience acclaim all over the world. Winner of numerous awards including a Laurence Olivier Award, "L'Allegro" uses Milton's text and features sets inspired by William Blake's later watercolors. Founded in NYC in 1980, the Mark Morris Dance Group (MMDG) is considered one of the preeminent modern dance companies, its members praised repeatedly for their technique and musicality. Live music and community engagement are vital components of the Dance Group, which has toured with its own musicians, the MMDG Music Ensemble, since 1996. Through Access/MMDG programming, the Dance Group provides educational opportunities in dance and music to people of all ages and abilities while on tour internationally and at home at the Mark Morris Dance Center in Brooklyn, NY. The performance was filmed July 2014 at the Teatro Real in Madrid, Spain.

On the historical stage of the Bolshoi Theatre, Mikhail Glinka’s opera “Ruslan and Lyudmila” is revived in its reopening show, conducted by Vladimir Jurowski and directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov. This particular opera has a long history with the Bolshoi Theatre. The legendary venue has been home to nine different productions of the work, totaling more than 700 individual performances. This recording beautifully shows the remarkable staging of the Bolshoi Theatre, including its two massive screens which are both fully exploited. Tcherniakov brings the opera into the twentieth century by bringing attention to the “modernity of the subject” and “the deep feelings of the characters.” This particular production has received critical acclaim for its musical quality and its staging. Jurowski, the Orchestra, and soloists Albina Shagimuratova, Mikhail Petrenko, and all the rest deliver a performance which is a firework display of passion and skill.

Picture Format: NTSC 16:9
Sound Formats: PCM 2.0, DD 5.1
Subtitles: English, French, German (Opera), English French (Bonus)
Region Code: 0 (All)
Running Time: 197 mins (Opera), 35 mins (Bonus)

In the last and most dramatic aria in “Roberto Devereux,” one of the four Tudor period operas composed by Donizetti in 1837 (along with “Anna Bolena,” “Maria Stuarda,” and “Il Castello di Kenilworth,”) the protagonist, Queen Elizabeth I of England, exclaims: “I do not reign, I do not live.” This statement encapsulates great operatic themes, and it is the culmination of an opera that reveals the passions of characters who live among palace intrigues. Written in the mature period of the leader of Italian romanticism, the opera displays a great vocal virtuosity, and is an example of Donizetti prizing the voice above all in the genre. The staging, by South African director Alessandro Talevi, who has been very successful in great opera houses as well as with more experimental theatre, places the play in an undetermined period, focusing on the chiaroscuro. Bruno Campanella conducts the production with Mariella Devia in the lead. “This was a most promising start to the season, a first-class rendition of a neglected work and a joyful confirmation of Mariella Devia’s well-deserved place in bel canto history.” (Bachtrack.com)

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

Also available on standard DVD

This new Pelléas et Mélisande from the Opernhaus Zürich should be remembered as one of Dmitri Tcherniakov's most innovative production. Forget about the fountains, the caverns, the forest, the castles and the towers : here, the density of Maurice Maeterlinck’s and Claude Debussy’s symbolism becomes the starting point of an analytical journey into the human mind : it is now the psychoanalyst, ‘‘doctor’’ Golaud, who has to uncover the secrets of Melisande, an unfortunate and traumatized creature he brings home, and whose silence and puzzling attitude eventually bring him on the verge of insanity. But this production is also the occasion for a reunion between Dmitri Tcherniakov and French conductor Alain Altinoglu, after the tremendous success of the Tchaikovsky diptych Iolanta / The Nutcracker - arguably one of the most successful titles of the Bel Air Classiques catalogue. Their artistic complicity is intact : the precise, analytical but also nuanced and poetic baton of Altinoglu proves to be the best possible response to Tcherniakov’s subtle exploration of the human psychology. Corinne Winters, as Melisande, Jacques Imbrailo, as Pelléas, and especially Kyle Ketelsen, as Golaud, embody with an incandescent realism these characters plagued by a form of evil and violence that we will never quite understand.

The nuptials of eros and thanatos unveil their irresistible attraction in Alban Berg’s unfinished ‘Lulu’, based on the work of German playwright Frank Wedekind, considered one of the major works of the 20th c. in general, and of opera in particular. + Krzysztof Warlikowski delves the innermost depths of the human psyche and chooses to tackle "Lulu" as a deeply moving requiem ‘to the memory of an angel’. + Featured in the title role is Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan. + Paul Daniel conducts the Orchestre symphonique de la Monnaie. + “…a genuinely fresh take on Alban Berg’s work.” (Financial Times)

“Like no other, Bach’s music carries within itself movement and dance, managing to combine the greatest abstraction with a concrete, physical and, subsequently, even transcendental dimension.” (Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker) During her 1980 stay in New York, in which she first rehearsed her celebrated Violin Phase to the music of Steve Reich, the only other recording playing in Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s studio was the Brandenburg Concertos by J.S. Bach. Thirty-five years later, De Keersmaeker continues her work with the piece. The Brandenburg Concertos consist of six concerti grossi, in which Bach deploys the instruments from the baroque orchestra in different, often audacious constellations. Against this backdrop, De Keersmaeker sets sixteen dancers originating in different Rosas generations. Following her usual method, and as she did in Rain (after Steve Reich), she approaches the music as if it were a ready-made score for a dance piece, embodying Bach’s polyphonic mastery. The concertos are played live by the baroque ensemble B’Rock, conducted by violinist Amandine Beyer.