Claude Debussy - Pelléas et Mélisande (2012)

Memoirs of the Italian Opera by the singers and musicians of the Casa Verdi, Milan, the world’s first nursing home for retired opera singers, founded by composer Giuseppe Verdi in 1896. This documentary, which has achieved cult-like status among opera and music lovers, features former singers who reminisce about their careers and their past operatic roles.

Maria Callas’ legendary live performances from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, from 1962 and 1964 celebrate her triumphant return to the Covent Garden stage. Repertoire from these performances include Verdi: Tu che le vanità (Don Carlo), Bizet: Habanera & Séguedille (Carmen) and Puccini: Tosca (Act II complete). Her vivid portrayals of the tragic Elisabeth de Valois, the tantalising Carmen, and her vulnerable Tosca (directed by Franco Zeffirelli) captured the hearts of the London audiences. This is Maria Callas as the world remembers her. Renato Cioni, Tito Gobbi, Robert Bowman, Dennis Wicks Orchestra & Chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden- Conducted by Georges Prêtre & Carlo Felice Cillario.

Nikki Martin (Lily Pons), a beautiful French opera star, stows away on an ocean liner in hopes of escaping her jealous fiancee. Once aboard, she joins an American swing band and falls in love with its leader, who, after hearing her sing, eventually comes to reciprocate her feelings.

Opera student Annette Monard meets composer Jonathan Street, and in a buoyant, alcohol-fueled evening, the couple marries. Sincerely falling in love, Jonathan encourages the talented Annette to sing — yet when his own attempt at an opera fails, Jonathan lashes out at Annette's success. Despite her husband's jealousy, Annette embarks on a successful career that allows her to secretly fund Jonathan's opera, bringing their marriage to a crisis.

In this musical, an enigmatic masked woman catches the roving eye of a wily playboy gambler at a masquerade ball. If he knew that she was using her wiles as bait and was planning to reform him of his gambling womanizing ways after catching him, he may have head for different waters.

At the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, the stage director Nikolaus Lehnhoff signs a remarkable production of Wagner's LOHENGRIN, the third of the German composer's main operas. This production stars an incredible cast, including Hans-Peter König, Klaus Florian Vogt, Solveig Kringelborn, Tom Fox and Waltraud Meier, accompanied by the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under Kent Nagano's baton.

This opera revolves around the demonic collective possession suffered by the Ursuline nuns in the convent of Loudun in 1634. The story concentrates on the handsome but doomed Urbain Grandier who fights against fanaticism and evil.

Matthew Eberhardt brings 1950s suburbia to life in Leonard Bernstein’s colourful criticism of American consumerism. This performance stars Wallis Giunta, winner of the Young Singer Award at the 2018 International Opera Awards, in the role of Dinah.

Spectacular! Opera in three acts. Filmed at a series of outstanding performances at the Teatro Real de Madrid in December 2016, this recording will especially delight lovers of Wagnerian music drama with its faithful reflection of the grandiose staging of Alex Olle, a member of La Fura dels Baus, whose earlier productions have attracted widespread attention. A conductor equally at home in Monteverdi, Boulez, Praetorius and Schumann, Pablo Heras-Casado can rely on a cast totally committed to this breathtaking musical hurricane!

This recording of the opera Ariane et Barbe-Bleue by Paul Dukas was staged at the Liceu in Barcelona in 2011, with Claus Guth as director, Stéphane Denève as conductor and José van Dam and Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet in the leading roles.

A one-off production of Boris Godunov was staged by Andrei Konchalovsky at the Teatro Regio in Torino in 2010, with Orlin Anastassov in the leading role and Gianandrea Noseda conducting the Orchestra del Teatro Regio.

A superb adaptation of Purcell's the Indian Queen, staged and directed by Peter Sellars and performed in 2013 at the Teatro Real in Madrid. Peters Sellars combines John Dryden and Robert Howard's libretto with a short-story written by the Nicaraguan writer Rosario Aguilar, La niña blanca y los pájaros sin pies.

The story of a Chinese-trained opera singer living in a remote Kazakh village with her grandmother and her ailing young niece. The bulk of the action consists of the steadfast heroine trying to make enough money to get the rare and costly medicine that may save her niece's life. What makes the film so thrilling is that this elemental situation allows the director and his cast of non-actors to illuminate the details of everyday life: reality and fiction dissolve into each other, and the audience achieves a heightened awareness of simple activities like the cooking of a meal, teaching a child to count in Chinese and English, visits to the doctor or the marketplace. Entirely improvised by the filmmaker and his actors.

"Rosa", with a libretto by Peter Greenaway and score by Louis Andriessen, is the first in a projected series of 10 operas, each dealing with the death of a famous composer - some real, others fictional. "Rosa" falls into the latter category; it tells the story of Juan Manuel de Rosa, a Brazilian who went to study music in America but spent most of his time in the cinema instead, becoming particularly entranced by Westerns. Now 32 years old and residing in an abandoned Uruguayan slaughterhouse, Rosa has become one of Hollywood's foremost composers, specialising in Westerns. He also has a beautiful 19-year-old fiancee, Esmeralda, but he pays her little heed, instead lavishing his attentions on a black mare named Bola. One day, a group of men attired as cowboys arrive at the abattoir and kill both Rosa and Bola; an investigation is conducted, with particular suspicion!

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 its principal conductor Maxim Emelyanychev. May and June 2018 bring further performances in Portugal, France, Germany, Turkey and Hungary.

A spectacular production of Aida filmed at Bregenz Festival's lakeside stage in 2009, with Carlo Rizzi conducting the Vienna Symphonic Orchestra and the Polish Radio Choir.

Glyndebourne's Saul stole the summer and had critics raving. The Guardian (****) applauded virtuoso stagecraft from director Barrie Kosky in his debut production there, calling the show a theatrical and musical feast of energetic choruses, surreal choreography and gorgeous singing. For The Independent, which ranked it amongst five top classical and opera performances of 2015, there was no praise too high for the cast. The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under Ivor Bolton sparkles from the pit with period panache, and designer Katrin Lea Tag's exuberant costumes (The Times ****) set the Old Testament story in Handel's time, with a witty twinge of the contemporary.

Aurora Meredith is the daughter of the village blacksmith. Because she has a promising voice, her family does everything they can to develop her talent. A wealthy New York woman hears her sing and sends her to Europe to study. But the woman dies, and Aurora borrows money for her last year from a hot-blooded Italian man. Instead of being paid back financially, the Italian wants her love, and she rejects him.

A Farcical Dissertation on Woman's Rights