
Live performance from Zürich Opera House, 2001. “Vesselina Kasarova’s Rosina turned this Barber into a major event. Pearling coloratura, endless resources of vocal colour and nuance and phenomenal acting versatility became mere means to an end: that of making Rosina into a human being of flesh and blood, with heart, humour and considerable brains.

Figaro
Berta
Fiorello / An officer of the law
Ambrogio

Live performance from Zürich Opera House, 2001. “Vesselina Kasarova’s Rosina turned this Barber into a major event. Pearling coloratura, endless resources of vocal colour and nuance and phenomenal acting versatility became mere means to an end: that of making Rosina into a human being of flesh and blood, with heart, humour and considerable brains.
2001-04-30
0
7.4New Zealand’s 4th Most Popular Parody Duo are back for a mutha-uckin’ special concert live at the London Apollo.
7.3Bo Burnham is back with a new one-man show full of his patented songs and wordplay, as well as haikus, dramatic readings, blasphemy, and so much more in his first hour-long special, shot live in his home town of Boston.
7.4The Marx Brothers take on high society and the opera world to bring two lovers together. A sly business manager and two wacky friends of two opera singers help them achieve success while humiliating their stuffy and snobbish enemies.
7.8Left brain and right brain duke it out and then belt out a tune in comedian Bo Burnham's quick and clever one-man show. As intelligent as he is lanky, Burnham cynically pokes at pop entertainment while offering unadulterated showmanship of his own.
8.0Combining his trademark wit and self-deprecating humor with original music, Bo Burnham offers up his unique twist on life in this stand-up special about life, death, sexuality, hypocrisy, mental illness and Pringles cans.
6.6This film follows the remarkable and inspirational true story of Paul Potts, a shy, bullied shop assistant by day and an amateur opera singer by night.
7.8In this unique and dynamic live concert experience, Louis C.K.'s exploration of life after 40 destroys politically correct images of modern life with thoughts we have all had...but would rarely admit to.
6.8Three eclectic, never-quite-famous folk bands come together for the first time in decades following the death of their manager to put on an reunion concert in his honor, at the request of his son.
6.4Mickey Moran, son of two vaudeville veterans, decides to put up his own vaudeville show with his girlfriend Patsy Barton. But child actress Rosalie wants to make a comeback and replace Patsy both professionally and as Mickey's girl.
6.0In this special live event, giants of stand-up come together to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Russell Simmons's groundbreaking "Def Comedy Jam."
7.1Adam Sandler takes his comical musical musings back out on the road, from comedy clubs to concert halls to one very unsuspecting subway station.
6.2A detective is hired to protect the life of a singer, who has recently inherited a department store, from the store's crooked manager.
5.8The Marx Brothers help young Broadway hopefuls when they get mixed up with gangsters due to a tin of sardines containing Romanoff diamonds.
6.1Two former backup soul singers, Louis and Floyd, have not spoken to each other in 20 years, and reluctantly agree to travel across the country together to a reunion concert to honor their recently-deceased lead singer. Cleo, a beautiful young woman who is believed to be Floyd's daughter, accompanies them as a new singer.
6.8A fledgling producer finds himself at odds with his workers, financiers and his greedy ex-wife when he tries to produce live musicals for movie-going audiences.
7.9Bruce Springsteen shares personal stories from his life and acoustic versions of some of his best-known songs in an intimate one-man show.
6.1When an aspiring rapper goes viral for the wrong reasons, he thinks his career is sunk. But a wild party gives him one more chance to make it right.
8.6Lady Gaga Presents The Monster Ball Tour at Madison Square Garden is a 2011 concert special documenting the February 21 and 22, 2011 shows of Lady Gaga's The Monster Ball Tour. It features concert footage as well as pre-concert and backstage content.
6.3The story of seven scholars in search of an expert to teach them about swing music. They seem to have found the perfect candidate in winsome nightclub singer Honey Swanson. But Honey's gangster boyfriend doesn't want to give her up.
7.3Fresh off the heels of appearing in movies like Superhero Movie and The 40 Year-Old Virgin, fast-talking comedian Kevin Hart stars in this live stand-up performance where he makes fun of everything and everybody - especially himself.
8.0Disciplined Italian composer Antonio Salieri becomes consumed by jealousy and resentment towards the hedonistic and remarkably talented young Salzburger composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
0.0A Ukrainian comic opera with spoken dialogue in three acts with music and libretto by the composer Semen Hulak-Artemovsky (1813–1873). The orchestration has subsequently been rewritten by composers such as Reinhold Glière and Heorhiy Maiboroda. This is one of the best-known Ukrainian comic operas depicting national themes.
0.0Adapted from the opera written by the composer Semen Hulak-Artemovsky.
0.0At the beginning of 1964, the music world experiences something completely unexpected. Maria Callas returns to the opera stage as the prima donna. Her “Tosca” at the Royal Opera House becomes a sensation. Maria Callas wants to show everyone once again that she deserves the title of “prima donna assoluta.” On the condition that star director Franco Zeffirelli take over the direction, the exceptional singer agrees to sing the role of Tosca. The BBC recorded the 2nd act of the opera for television. It is one of the most dramatic acts in opera history: in order to free the painter Cavaradossi from the hands of torturers, Tosca ends up murdering the police chief Scarpia. The film footage is one of the rare opportunities to see Maria Callas in an opera performance and to experience her highly emotional performance art and vocal abilities...
0.0As Christof Loy put it: Così fan tutte invites us to embrace the complexity of life and face the future with heads held high. In his staging of the version he abridged with Joana Mallwitz for the Salzburg Festival 2020 the focus is wholly on the figures and the subtle choreography of their emotional states — in a space that like a magnifying glass exposes the intricate mechanisms between the characters. In this way the production leads the protagonists and the audience to experience the ‘serene calm’ that can perhaps indeed cure our own ‘distempers’.
7.0A musician is offered a job in Vienna as stage director, but his disagreements with the aristocratic opera manager end in abrupt firing in spite of a mutual attraction. He's quickly engaged by another theatre and becomes famous for his lavish stage productions and fine acting, which begins their golden age with Suppé and Strauss.
0.0This telecast offers a rare opportunity to see the legendary Joan Sutherland in the role that first catapulted her to international stardom. She drove audiences wild by the way her opulent voice caressed the music’s long phrases and sprinted effortlessly through the fiendish runs, trills, embellishments and stratospheric high notes. One of the glories of the operatic world, her portrayal of Donizetti’s hapless heroine is a multifaceted and moving characterization. The incomparable tenor Alfredo Kraus is Edgardo, the man Lucia loves but cannot have. (Performance taped November 13, 1982. Broadcasted September 28, 1983.)
6.9When it comes to crime, Belgrade is same as any other modern metropolis, except for having its own serial killers. That blank is filled when a flower salesman begins strangling women. A popular, but very disturbed rock star soon becomes telepathically connected with the killer.
0.0This DVD of a live 2005 performance from the Zürich Opera under the musical direction of Franz Welser-Möst has many things to recommend it -- the young tenor Piotr Beczala as Alfredo, the marvelous Thomas Hampson as Giorgio Germont, the playing of the Zurich Opera orchestra, the simple but effective sets by by Erich Wonder, the uncluttered stage direction by Jürgen Flimm. It also has some flaws: strangely variable volume level of the recorded sound sometimes coming on so loud as to make one reach for the volume control, and the uneven performance of the Violetta, Eva Mei who, for all her merits, gives a dramatically effective performance marred by occasional difficulties with vocal production. Still, overall I felt this was a moving production, one that I would recommend, although perhaps not as an only DVD of one of Verdi's most popular operas.
0.0Set around a classic case of broken vows – the defendant having literally left the claimant at the altar – the trial bubbles over with emotion, humour, and downright chaos, leaving the jury divided.
7.0This production was originally staged for the Pepsico Summerfare Festival, The International Performing Arts Festival of the State University of New York at Purchase. Leaving the lyrics in their original Italian, acclaimed American director Peter Sellars transports Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Don Giovanni" to a modern-day metropolis, nestling the opera's beloved characters among the brownstones of New York City's Harlem. Sellars's contemporary retelling of a classic musical tale is one of three performances in a Mozart series that also includes "Le Nozze di Figaro" and "'Così Fan Tutte."
Car Men is a collaboration between the renowned choreographer Jíri Kylían and filmmaker Boris Paval Conen. Based on the opera 'CARMEN' by Georges Bizet they shot a hilarious and poetic short film in the destroyed landscape of a Czech brown coal mine. The actors in this film are older dancers from Kylían's troupe (around 50 years old) and the main prop is a 'TATRA 87', a famous car from 1937.
0.0All the throbbing eroticism—and ultimate heartbreak—of Puccini’s youthful score is unleashed by James Levine and his top-flight cast. Plácido Domingo is Des Grieux, the handsome, headstrong young aristocrat who falls head over heels for the enticing, impetuous Manon Lescaut (Renata Scotto). Manon returns his love, but her obsession with luxury ruins them both. Gian Carlo Menotti’s opulent production, with sets and costumes by Desmond Heeley, superbly captures the colorful world of 18th century France.
0.0Simon Keenlyside smolders dangerously in the title role of Mozart’s version of the legend of Don Juan, creating a vivid portrait of a man who is a law unto himself, and all the more dangerous for his eternally seductive allure. Adam Plachetka is his occasionally unruly servant Leporello. It’s when Giovanni tangles with Donna Anna (Hibla Gerzmava) that things start to unravel, aided by the reappearance of Donna Elvira (Malin Byström), who is determined not to let her seducer go. With Paul Appleby as Don Ottavio, Donna Anna’s eternally steadfast fiancé. Principal Conductor Fabio Luisi leads the Met Orchestra and Chorus.
10.0Two years prior to the opening scene, the nobleman Florestan has exposed or attempted to expose certain crimes of the nobleman Pizarro. In revenge, Pizarro has secretly imprisoned Florestan in the prison over which Pizarro is governor. The jailer of the prison, Rocco, has a daughter, Marzelline, and a servant (or assistant), Jaquino. Florestan’s wife, Leonore, came to Rocco’s door dressed as a boy seeking employment, and Rocco hired her. On orders, Rocco has been giving Florestan diminishing rations until he is nearly starved to death. Place: A Spanish state prison, a few miles from Seville; Time: Late 18th century.
7.5Between two Thanksgivings, Hannah's husband falls in love with her sister Lee, while her hypochondriac ex-husband rekindles his relationship with her sister Holly.
7.4Christmas is now more beautiful and cosy than ever! Experience Christmas in London, together with André Rieu. Decorated Christmas trees everywhere you look, beautifully lit streets, tempting Christmas window displays... Combine the unique London Christmas atmosphere with a magnificent Christmas concert by André Rieu, and you have all the ingredients for a lovely party in the dark December days. Together with fantastic soloists and his always joyful Johann Strauss orchestra, André Rieu provides a fabulous evening with the most beautiful and moving Christmas carols, but also with emotional songs such as Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, The Holy City and the classic Concierto de Aranjuez. Christmas in London means an evening enjoying lovely music, beautiful costumes and plenty of London cosiness.
0.0A collectively made filmic opera in 35 parts. The Black and predominantly queer art collective, an evolving line up of poets and artists from across the world, abstracts and reimagines opera in any traditional conception. Set to hip-hop, blues, noise, R&B and electronica, the piece uses the voice (chanting, singing, screaming; written by poet and activist Dawn Lundy Martin) as its primary tool, verbalising centuries of alienation, vulnerability and protest in the global African diaspora through its disruptive libretto.
0.0At the Folies Bergère, Roberto Alagna celebrates several anniversaries in music: his 60th birthday and 40 years of artistic life. Genuinely popular and loved by a wide audience, captivated by all aspects of singing, and insatiably passionate about the voice, he has always explored new artistic territories. His career defies the boundaries between musical styles; it is truly extraordinary. To celebrate this anniversary in music, Roberto Alagna offers us a unique concert composed of the arias that have marked his exceptional career. A concert with the Odyssey Symphony Orchestra conducted by Roberto Alagna's friend and close collaborator, Yvan Cassar.
8.0Soprano Anna Netrebko appears in her highly anticipated Met role debut as Leonora, the tortured heroine who sacrifices her own life for the love of the Gypsy troubadour. Dmitri Hvorostovsky sings Count di Luna, Yonghoon Lee is Manrico in his Met role debut as the title character, Dolora Zajick sings her signature role of the gypsy Azucena, and Štefan Kocán is Ferrando. Marco Armiliato conducts Sir David McVicar’s Goya-inspired production.