Also available on Blu-ray

Also Available, a two disc set: Love’s Labour’s Lost & Love's Labour’s Won, on DVD and Blu-ray.

Soprano Ermonela Jaho stars as Violetta Valery, with Charles Castronovo as her lover Alfredo and Placido Domingo as Alfredo’s stern father Giorgio Germont, in The Royal Opera’s much-loved production of Verdi’s La traviata. One of the greatest of all operas, La traviata is based on the novel and play La Dame aux camellias by Alexandre Dumas fils, inspired in turn by the life and death of the real Parisian courtesan, Marie Duplessis. The opera tells the profoundly moving story of a courtesan prepared to sacrifice everything for love, and contains some of Verdi’s most beautiful arias and duets. Richard Eyre’s engrossing naturalistic production features stunning designs by his regular collaborator Bob Crowley. Italian conductor Antonella Manacorda conducts Verdi’s sublime score, which offers a wonderful showcase for the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House and Royal Opera Chorus.

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This film is a journey with the famous pianist Yuja Wang. With more than 120 performances a year, she lives a nomadic lifestyle. The exploration of Yuja’s wanderings is a travelogue of exciting venues, glitzy cities and encounters with extraordinary artists, such as Gustavo Dudamel, Gauthier Capucon and Leonidas Kavakos and personalities of other professional horizons but there is also a downside: fatigue, jet lag, pressure, doubts, hostilities, disorientation, and loneliness. With a bittersweet reference to the transience of life, the film reveals the invisible that complements the visible and shows us this artist in a very personal way. “Pianists have to be alone all the time, and it’s hard, it’s lonely. Being a musician is almost like a very isolated life, and the only time you actually get to communicate is on stage with music. It’s not a bad thing. I think being solitary, it really allows us to think about life and to think about why people write this music. [...] It makes you start to wonder about things that are beneath the surface.” (Yuja Wang)

DETAILS:

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Filmed in: High Definition
Sound: PCM Stereo / DTS 5.1
Languages/Subtitles: English; Ger, Fr, KOR, JPN
Region: 0 (Worldwide)

Also available on Blu-ray

Richard Strauss
DER ROSENKAVALIER

Feldmarschallin - Krassimira Stoyanova Baron Ochs - Günther Groissböck
Octavian - Sophie Koch
Faninal - Adrian Eröd
Sophie - Mojca Erdmann
Leitmetzerin - Silvana Dussmann
Valzacchi - Rudolf Schasching
Annina - Wiebke Lehmkuhl
Sänger - Stefan Pop

Salzburg Festival Children’s Chorus
(chorus master: Wolfgang Götz)
Vienna State Opera Chorus
(chorus master: Ernst Raffelsberger)
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Franz Welser-Möst, conductor

Harry Kupfer, stage director
Hans Schavernoch, set designer
Yan Tax, costume designer
Jürgen Hoffmann, lighting designer

Recorded live at the Großes Festspielhaus, Salzburg, 08–14 August 2014

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: PCM Stereo / DTS 5.0
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese Running time: 146 mins
No. of DVDs: 2 (DVD 9)

VVerdi�s opera Attila takes as it's starting point Attila's plans to storm Rome with his army of Huns and the Romans' attempts to prevent him. As with Nabucco and I Lombardi, Verdi spiced up the action with a number of patriotic choruses, guaranteeing that - against the background of the Italian movement for unification - the opera was a great success. "Michele Mariotti owes much to the fact that this evening became a celebration of voices"(Opern-Kritik). Ildebrando D�Arcangelo is "perfect for the serious Verdi roles", Fabio Sartori has a voice of immense brilliance" (Opern-Kritik), "Simone Piazzola was an impressive Ezio" (theoperacritic. Com) and "the real warrior of this Attila is the soprano Maria Jose' Siri... with her voice, touching each primordial sentiment in every note of the opera, she commanded 'Attention' from everybody. " (La Repubblica)

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When it comes to Mozartian perfection on the opera stage, one needn't always seek it in Milan, Vienna, Salzburg or New York! At the Sferisterio Opera Festival in the central Italian city of Macerata, a rapt audience was treated to a production of Don Giovanni "that will enter the annals of opera" (ForumOpera. Com). This magnificent reading of Mozart's timeless masterpiece sweeps the viewer into a libertine, 18th- century society dominated by sensuality and erotic impulses. They are acted out on the stage's main prop, a large, unmade bed, not only by Don Giovanni, but also by just about everyone else in the "nearly faultless cast" (ForumOpera. Com). In his role debut as the title hero, Ildebrando D'Arcangelo is "incandescent" (Gazzetta die Parma) and "doesn't do Don Giovanni; he is the Don. Unsurpassable"(24 Ore).

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Christian Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden turn to the symphonic work of Johannes Brahms.

Bonus features include: an extensive 52 minute interview with Christian Thielemann on Brahms’ Symphonies and provides and in-depth look into his interpretation of Brahms.

Recorded live from the Semperoper Dresden (Nos. 2 and 4) and the NHK Hall, Tokyo (Nos. 1 and 3)

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: PCM Stereo / DTS 5.0 / DTS 5.1 Surround
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Language (bonus): German
Subtitles (bonus): English, Korean, Japanese
Running time: 208 mins (symphonies) + 52 mins (bonus)
No. of DVDs: 3

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 opera La campana sommersa (‘The Sunken Bell’) is Respighi’s operatic masterpiece. A symbolist drama on a supernatural theme, it is steeped in beauty, mystery and foreboding, and orchestrated with the Romantic opulence familiar from his sumptuous trilogy of Roman tone poems. Its triumph at the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1928 was repeated at La Scala, Milan, and this most recent production at the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, world-renowned for its staging of rarities, was hailed for its ‘brilliant production’ and magnificent performances. Directed by Pier Francesco Maestrini, this production features a lineup of modern opera stars including Valentina Farcas, Maria Luigia Borsi, Agostina Smimmero, Angelo Villari, and more.

The world's first Blu-ray disc of chamber music featuring the Chamber Music Palisades Ensemble-one one of the oldest performing chamber music groups in LA. The music was recorded in REAL HD-Audio at 96 kHz/24-bit PCM... and is presented in DOLBY TrueHD. Users can select from 3 different audio mixes: 5.1 "Stage", 5.1 "Audience" & 2.0 Channel Stereo Disc contains bonus features including channel identification tones, a photo gallery, liner notes and musicians bios.

Ola Gjeilo was born in Norway in 1978 and moved to America in 2001 to begin his composition studies at the Juilliard School in New York City. Presently a full-time composer and pianist based in the US, his published concert works are performed all over the world. Ola is also very interested in film, and his music draws a lot of inspiration from movies and cinematic music. "Although many of the pieces on this album are free improvisations recorded in one take, the first three tracks are fantasies around three of my own choral works; Ubi Caritas, Tota Pulchra Es and Prelude." - Ola Gjeilo, 2012.

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

Also available on standard DVD

With an outstanding cast including Daniela Dessi, Fabio Armiliato, Alessandro Luongo, and Alida Berti, this incomparable performance is Puccini at his finest.; Directed by Ettore Scola, who has created a great number of award-winning films, this performance is from the Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago.; One of the most represented operas in history, becoming the inspiration for many works to come, La Boheme is a rich, grandiose opera, which is wonderfully represented in this recording.

Picture Format: 1080i, 16:9
Sound Formats: PCM Stereo, DTS-HD MA 5.1
Subtitles: Italian, German, English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese
Region: All
Total Running Time: 123 mins

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With its narrative of buccaneering bravado, exotic opulence, romance and traitorous intrigue, Le Corsaire is one of the most impressive narrative ballets of the 19th century, and it remains one of Adolphe Adam’s best-known works. Director of the Wiener Staatsballett, Manuel Legris, has choreographed a new version that draws on the rich performance traditions of Russia and France, and carefully combines spirited action, Adam’s delightful music, choreography, scenery and costumes into an elegant and impressive production which brings to life the colourful events that surround the leading couple of Conrad and Médora.

A fascinating version of Mahler’s Tenth. 

There have been two other recordings made of Clinton Carpenter’s completion of Mahler’s 10th (Farberman/Philharmonia Hungarica and Litton/Dallas). Only the Litton is currently listed on ArkivMusic. Furthermore, the Singapore account seems to be the only DVD of  any version of the complete 10th, making it doubly welcome. Following highly successful performances in China in 2009, this live performance was subsequently taped in August in the concert hall of Singapore’s iconic, gleaming, bug-eyed arts complex known as Esplanade, Theatres on the Bay.

Mahlerians have been arguing for decades over the merits and demerits of the various completed versions of the 10th. There are now at least seven of them (counting Cooke twice), all recorded at least once, providing plenty of fodder for Mahlerians (or are we Mahlerites?) to chew over. Lan Shui has thrown in his lot with the Carpenter version, believing it to be “more authentic” than Cooke’s. I will not attempt to take sides on the issue; all have their strong and weak points. Suffice it to say here that, generally speaking, the Carpenter version is more densely scored than the familiar Cooke version(s), incorporates more interpolated contrapuntal lines, and employs far more percussion (the beginning of Scherzo I sounds almost like a timpani concerto). As a result, principal melodic lines sometimes become obscured and the viewer finds the camera zeroing in on an instrument seen but not heard.

Those familiar with Cooke will easily detect numerous differences in the orchestration; again, this is purely a matter of speculation, and each listener must decide for him- or herself as to the judiciousness of each detail. The movement with the greatest departure from Cooke is Scherzo II, where the orchestration sounds downright clumsy at times. But compensating are passages like the transition to the fifth movement, with its dull thuds in the bass drum rather than the brutal whacks Cooke calls for, followed by ghostly muttering and murmuring in the double basses and other low forms of instrumental life. Following all this grisly groveling Cooke assigns the hauntingly beautiful melody to the solo flute, as does Carpenter, but the latter adds an oboe, harp, and horn—a moment of true magic.

Far less contentious is the excellence of the performance at hand. The Singapore Symphony once again shows the world that it deserves to be ranked with the best. Though this is a live performance, there is nary a missed note or imprecise attack to be heard. (Touch-up sessions, I was told, were minimal.) Special commendation goes to the many felicitous touches from principal flutist Jin Ta, principal oboist Rachel Walker, and principal horn Han Chang Chou, though the latter is unfortunately too far from the microphone. In the opening Adagio, conductor Lan Shui emphasizes the music’s inherent lyricism rather than its passionate intensity, drawing forth seamless arcs of sound and tonal beauty from his superb string section. At the other end of the emotional spectrum is the absolutely terrifying scream of anguish near the end of the symphony, with the high trumpets piercing the air like a laser beam. But regardless of whether the passage is a ravishingly beautiful melodic line or a rush of instrumental virtuosity, Lan ensures that it makes musical sense. There is an innate feeling for phrasing and structure to every gesture he makes, and the orchestra responds accordingly. Particularly delicious are the episodes in both scherzo movements, where Lan injects a good dose of old-fashioned Viennese schmaltz, something I’d not heard before in this music.

The visual element has been tastefully considered and imaginatively executed. At the huge explosion of agonizing dissonance near the end of the Adagio, the camera takes us deep into the bell of the tuba, as if peering into the black abyss. During the piercing trumpet screams that immediately follow, the screen slowly goes white as our eyes are led directly into blinding light. There are numerous opportunities to enjoy the sheer visual beauty of the hall, which abounds in gorgeous color and striking textures. There are enough camera angles so that virtually every musician gets quality time in the lens but without the constant, annoying flitting around that mars so many orchestral videos these days.

The worthy filler, Five Elements , is a 12-minute suite of five short pieces by Messiaen’s only pupil, the Chinese-born Chen Qigang, now living in Paris. Dating from 1998, it has become one of Chen’s more frequently played works (in this country I know of performances by orchestras in Milwaukee and Los Angeles), and it has been recorded before, on an all-Chen Virgin Classics CD. Didier Benetti’s performance there is good, but Lan is more imaginative in bringing out the exquisite subtleties and colors in this music of Takemitsu-like delicacy and purity. Each of the “elements” (not physical substances, but rather “cyclic movements which constitute the universe”) is scored for a different combination of instruments and is visually framed in a different color (blue for water, red for fire, etc.) while the camera locates the various sources of sound, often using a split screen and resulting in a kind of advanced guide to the orchestra. Mallet instruments and special effects in the strings (harmonics, tapping, col legno , etc.) play major roles in the highly varied and fascinating sound world of Five Elements.

The disc comes with good booklet notes by Marc Rochester in five languages (English, French, German, Japanese, Chinese), brief interviews with Lan about the music, and a small photo gallery. All in all, this is a product well worth watching as well as hearing, and anyone who loves the Mahler 10th owes it to him- or herself to acquire this release.

FANFARE: Robert Markow

Announced as a commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Mahler’s birth, this recording by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra is also apparently the first video/Blu-ray release of his Symphony No. 10 as completed by Clinton Carpenter. This version is less frequently heard than the ‘performing version’ by Deryck Cooke, but as discussed in Tony Duggan’s excellent comparative review of recordings of Mahler’s Symphony No.10, Carpenter was the first to begin working on this project, commencing as he did in 1946. The first edition was completed in 1966, ten years before Cooke’s was published in 1976. As well as these two, there are also versions by Joe Wheeler, and more recently Remo Mazzetti, Rudolf Barshai (1924-2010), Nicola Samale and Giuseppe Mazzuca.
 
Beginning with the Adagio, the only movement completed by Mahler and which has often appeared as a single movement on Mahler symphonic cycles, we get the measure of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and Lan Shui’s conducting. Directing without a score, Shui doesn’t linger or cloy with over-sentimental fussiness. This is perhaps not quite the most gripping of Adagio recordings, but it works well enough – clean and efficient, rather than streaked with the blood and sweat of intense and daring risk-taking. The real passionate work comes later on. The recording is detailed and bright, and although the absolute sheen of the strings may not be quite as glossy as Sir Simon Rattle in his later Berlin Philharmonic recording this is clearly a crack band, standing up well to the edge-of-the-seat scrutiny of microphones and assorted cameras. The impact of ‘that chord’ at 19:15 will make you jump out of your seat, cleverly preceded by some disarmingly innocent celestial ceiling-gazing by the video director.
 
Musically things become interesting with the second movement Scherzo. Carpenter clearly had a different idea to Cooke about what Mahler might have done had he lived to revise his scoring, and there are quite a few extra trills, counter-melodies, darting changes of tempo and other twiddly bits added to what was actually quite a substantially notated original. The overall effect is for this reason not hugely different to the Cooke version, and the extras either add character or pickiness, depending on your mood or point of view. Having become so used to the Cooke version it’s hard to know whether the opposite would be the case were the tables turned, but to my ears the music is eccentric enough without too much extra superimposed material. The rather Hollywood tinsel of the final section, marked ‘Pesante’ with Cooke is a case in point. This does stand very well as a performance in its own right however, and with absolute conviction from the performers as good a case as any is made for Carpenter’s version of this movement.
 
There is some structural adjustment going on in the ‘Purgatorio’, unnamed as a movement in this version. However, in essence the extra thematic flights and different approach to texture don’t create as much of a ‘new’ movement when compared to Cooke as you might think. It is with the fourth movement Scherzo that the sense of an alternative vision becomes most immediately apparent. Cooke’s version is rich and effective, but for me always leaves the sense of an unfinished work – the realisation that Mahler would certainly have done more had he lived to create a definitive and complete piece. Carpenter’s working of the material doesn’t sweep away all of the musical idiosyncrasies left by the bare bones of Mahler’s short score, but at least gives a more immediate impression of something established and rooted in its own tradition. There are some magical moments, and the Singapore players if anything warm to their task in this movement even more than in the rest of the piece. There are too many differences between Carpenter and Cooke to mention, and I have to admit to getting lost while trying to follow Carpenter using the Cooke score, but the overall effect is more important than the technical analysis in my view. I found myself sold on this version the more I listened.
 
The fifth movement Finale opens with that now famous damped bass drum, and sounds suitably funereal. Carpenter uses the keener edge of trumpets to top the brass chorale at bar 23, and the flute solo from 30 has a nice harp accompaniment illustrated well in a split view on the video. There is a certain amount of schmaltz in the orchestration which might take a bit of getting used to, but these sorts of things are questions of taste. The orchestral colourings to my ear sometimes have a Tchaikovsky-like flavour: the joviality of the Nutcracker drawn into pits of despond by the mood of the Sixth Symphony amplified by overwrought early 20 ^th century late-romanticism. There is no doubting the effectiveness of Carpenter’s orchestration, but there are moments where Cooke’s closer alliance to what historical Mahler research might consider a more ‘authentic’ realisation allows a clearer window into what Mahler actually left, rather than what someone else feels he might have done. This doesn’t quite tip into over-working of the material, but sails close enough at times. I don’t dislike the result, but am rather glad this plush cast of extras isn’t the only Mahler 10 we have.
 
The programme of this DVD also gives us Wu Xing or ‘The Five Elements’ by Chinese composer Chen Qi-gang. The five short movements each represent a different element: Water, Wood, Fire, Earth and Metal respectively. Clever camerawork helps the ear identify some of the effects which arise, but as with most pieces with such clear themes, the music is not difficult to interpret and follow. There is plenty of interesting percussion with Wood for instance, Britten-like brass chimes and licking flames rising from the double–basses and bass drum in Fire. This is all highly effective stuff, essentially romantic in idiom, but with some gorgeous melting harmonies and sonorities. Bonus features for the DVD include some introductions on both pieces in English from conductor Lan Shui and some photographs including backstage souvenirs, and some of the orchestra’s other concert performances.
 
With good booklet notes by Marc Rochester and clever use of Klimt’s ‘Der Kuss’ to illustrate Mahler’s marital crisis at the time he was working on the symphony, this is a very nicely produced DVD and an excellent recording of Clinton Carpenter’s completion of Mahler’s Symphony No.10. I have to admit to being far more used to hearing the Deryck Cooke version in a variety of recordings, and so accept any comments I may have on the Carpenter version will be compromised by having this as an ingrained reference point. I accept the validity and effectiveness of Carpenter’s version, but ultimately feel closer to Mahler’s intentions in the piece – at the state in which he left it – with Cooke. What this DVD shows is that there is most certainly more than one way to deliver this remarkable piece, and having the choice is most certainly more of an enrichment than a distraction from any one ‘true’ version of the score – something which can never exist in any case.
 
-- Dominy Clements, MusicWeb International  

SCHMANN; LISZT; SCHUBERT; WAGNER/LISZT; RACHMANINOV: Lazar Berman, piano; Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, January 14, 1988.NTSC All Region; LPCM 2.0; Dolby Digital 5.1; 16:9; Approx. 100 mins. LAZAR BERMAN - THE 1988 TOKYO RECITAL - ROBERT SCHUMANN: Piano Sonta No. 1 in F sharp minor, Op. 11; FRANZ LISZT: Selections from"Annees de Pelerinage": deuxieme annees, Italie; FRANZ SCHUBERT/F. LISZT: Ave Maria; RICHARD WAGNER/LISZT: Isolde Liebestod; SERGEI RACHMANINOV: Moment musical in E minor, Op. 16 No. 4.

Also available on CD

Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) is one of the most remarkable achievements in all music, and Siegfried, the third in the cycle, contains some of the greatest moments in Wagner’s entire output. Wagner conceived Siegfried as a heroic ‘man of the future,’ and his fantastical tale is one in which the human dramas of treachery and violent struggles for power become magnified in a world of gods, dragons and magic. The previous opera in this cycle, Die Walkure, was acclaimed in The Guardian as “thrillingly vivid… easily maintains the high standard and promise of Das Rheingold.” (Naxos NBD0049).

Featuring: Marc Clear; Gideon Singer; Evelyn Schorkhuber; Anton Steingruber; Mirjana Irosch; Wilhelm Gartner; Ingrid Habermann; Christian Baumgartel; Markus Heinrich; Christine Bath; Chor und Statisterie der Seefestspiele Morbisch; Ballett der Seefestspiele Morbisch

Live performance from 1999
Language: German
Subtitles: English
Run Time: 126 minutes

Richard Strauss’s opera at the Salzburg Festival, staged by Romeo Castellucci at the Felsenreitschule, was nothing short of a sensation! Debuting in the title role, Asmik Grigorian propelled herself to international stardom with her mesmerizing singing and acting abilities. The exceptional soprano recently won the International Opera Award as best singer. To witness Maestro Franz Welser-Most performing together with the Wiener Philharmoniker and an outstanding cast “makes you think you are hearing the piece in its most perfect incarnation yet” (Financial Times). “Asmik Grigorian sweeps all in her wake in the title role of Strauss’s opera. […] Here is a Salome to end all Salomes. […] In total, it is stunning…" (Financial Times) “thrilling” (Spiegel Online) “A breathtakingly dense, musically epoch-making […] Salome, which brought the house down!” (Neue Zurcher Zeitung)

 

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Hans Neuenfels, the luminary of modern director’s theatre, provides a compelling, multi-layered staging of Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame at Salzburg Festival. In the stark, mostly abstract sets by Christian Schmidt, Neuenfels “draws gripping performances from a strong cast” (The New York Times) including Brandon Jovanovich and Evgenia Muraveva in the title roles of Herman and Lisa and legendary singer Hanna Schwarz as Countess. Mariss Jansons, “a compelling director in his element” (The New York Times) makes his rare appearance as an opera conductor, at the helm of the Wiener Philharmoniker – “Another triumph in this hot festival summer!“ (Neue Zürcher Zeitung). Mariss Jansons, “maybe the best connoisseur of this unjustly neglected opera” (Süddeutsche Zeitung), turns this Queen of Spades with as much verve as sensitivity into a “captivating musical drama” (Die Zeit).

The Tuscan region stretches from the Apennines to the Tyrrhenian Sea and includes, among its nine provinces, Pisa, Siena and Lucca. The music chosen for this tour of Tuscany is largely Italian, ranging from the sixteenth-century Milanese lutenist Francesco Canova da Milano to the Venetian Vivaldi, the Genoese-born violinist Paganini and the opera composers Donizetti, Verdi, Catalani and Puccini. Place is also found for appropriate music by the Italian-trained Gluck and from Mozart’s Italian opera Don Giovanni.

The master pianist performs material by Chopin and Rachmaninoff.

In 1786 Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach presented the greatest musical achievements of his century to a captivated audience and enthusiastic reviewers. The music director from Hamburg arranged a remarkable program for a charity concert, including not only his own music, but also popular and forgotten works by his father J S Bach and works by George Frideric Handel.

As a tribute to the 300th anniversary of CPE Bach, the RIAS Kammerchor and the Akademie für Alte Musik in Berlin revive the memorable concert from April 9, 1786 and reawaken a great historic moment in music history.
C.P.E. BACH: THE 1786 CHARITY CONCERT – A Revival

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach:
Introduction to the Credo of J.S. Bach’s Mass BWV 232, H. 849
Sinfonia in D Major, Wq. 183/1, H. 663
Magnificat, Wq. 215, H. 772
Heilig, Wq. 217, H. 778: Herr, wert, dass Scharen der Engel / Heilig ist Gott

Johann Sebastian Bach: Mass in B Minor, BWV 232: Credo

George Frideric Handel: Messiah, HWV 56: Ich weiss, dass mein Erloser lebet / Hallelujah!

Christina Landshamer, soprano
Wiebke Lehmkuhl, alto
Lothar Odinius, tenor
Thomas E. Bauer, bass

RIAS Chamber Chorus
Berlin Akademie für Alte Musik
Hans-Christoph Rademann, conductor

Recorded live at Konzerthaus Berlin, 15 June 2014

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: PCM Stereo / Dolby Digital 5.1 / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: Latin, German, English, French, Japanese, Korean
Running time: 109 mins
No. of DVDs: 1 (DVD 9)

Riccardo Chailly pays tribute to Maurice Ravel with a program of waltzes and wild reveries of ecstasy and elegance. He ushers us into Ravel's musical worlds filled with ever-changing colors, scents, and flavors: the pulsating three-quarter time of waltzes that reflect just how much the Great War transformed European culture, the ancient love story of Daphnis and Chlo�, and the relentless rhythms of Bol�ro. Magnifique! Riccardo Chailly, who was born in 1953 in Milan, studied at the Conservatories of Perugia, Rome, and Milan and at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana, beginning his career as an assistant to Claudio Abbado at La Scala in Milan. Chailly was appointed Music Director of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1980, and in 1988 he moved to the same position with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, which he helmed for sixteen years. From 2005 to 2016, Riccardo Chailly served as head of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; starting in 2015, he became Music Director of La Scala in Milan, and since the summer of 2016 he has held the position of Music Director of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra.

Riccardo Chailly pays tribute to Maurice Ravel with a program of waltzes and wild reveries of ecstasy and elegance. He ushers us into Ravel's musical worlds filled with ever-changing colors, scents, and flavors: the pulsating three-quarter time of waltzes that reflect just how much the Great War transformed European culture, the ancient love story of Daphnis and Chlo�, and the relentless rhythms of Bol�ro. Magnifique! Riccardo Chailly, who was born in 1953 in Milan, studied at the Conservatories of Perugia, Rome, and Milan and at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana, beginning his career as an assistant to Claudio Abbado at La Scala in Milan. Chailly was appointed Music Director of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1980, and in 1988 he moved to the same position with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, which he helmed for sixteen years. From 2005 to 2016, Riccardo Chailly served as head of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; starting in 2015, he became Music Director of La Scala in Milan, and since the summer of 2016 he has held the position of Music Director of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra.

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

Also available on standard DVD

“Nothing is harder to put on stage than lightness. And humor is the sharpest weapon of the desperate. That is why it is an obligation, indeed a must, to enjoy this Figaro by Jürgen Flimm at the Staatsoper to the fullest.“ (ARD Radio) This production of “Le nozze di Figaro” is directed by the former artistic director of the Staatsoper Berlin, Jürgen Flimm, who characterizes it as follows: “Figaro is by far the best work ever devised for the stage; it combines everything that moves the human heart and mind – forlorn hope, pleasantry, satire, profound significance, also much ado about nothing and vain amours.” This production with a star-studded ensemble of soloists was Flimm’s third staging of this musical masterpiece, and this time he places the plot in Count Almaviva‘s summer residence – a place where the count spent his childhood, a place full of memories where time has left its marks. It is in this hot atmosphere of summer that the great day unfolds: holidays, sun, sea, pretty women take a fancy to pretty men and pretty men take a fancy to pretty women. A midsummer night‘s dream full of tangled paths and futile longing where the women pull the strings of intrigue with their gentle hands.