Relationships, rehearsals, performances, hobbies, and family life of the members of the Guarneri String Quartet.
Mozart: Idomeneo Teatro Real de Madrid
In the early 1900s, the fictional Catfish Row section of Charleston, South Carolina serves as home to a black fishing community. Crippled beggar Porgy, who travels about in a goat-drawn cart, loves the drug-addicted Bess, who lives with stevedore Crown, the local bully.
This program captures a live performance of the Richard Wagner opera Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg, recorded at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany, under the direction of Katharina Wagner. Some of the vocalists featured in the performance include Franz Hawlata, Artur Korn, Michael Volle, and others.
Internationally acclaimed Chinese film-maker Chen Kaige delivers an opulent staging of the fairy-tale story of Chinese Princess Turandot, who will only marry a prince capable of solving her riddles. With sumptuous costumes and palace sets designed in China, Kaige's production adds a compellingly authentic accent to Puccini's exotic orchestral palette. Zubin Metha and his brilliant Orquestra de la Comunitet Valenciana offer "genuine foreworks of sound" (Wiener Zeitung), Maria Guleghina triumphs as Turandot. Recorded in 2008 at the Palau de les Arts in Valencia. Zubin Mehta (conductor).
Anna Netrebko as the beautiful and wealthy Adina leads the cast in Barlett Sher’s production of Donizetti’s charming comedy, first seen on Opening Night of the Met’s 2012–13 season. Matthew Polenzani is Nemorino, the poor but good-hearted country boy who wins her love—with the help of the magic “elixir” sold by the quack Dulcamara, played by Ambrogio Maestri. Mariusz Kwiecien is the swaggering Sergeant Belcore and Maurizio Benini conducts.
Il tabarro is a tale of jealousy and murder between Michele, his young wife Giorgetta and her lover Luigi, set aboard a barge on the Seine. Suor Angelica tells the story of the nun Angelica’s familial loss, sacrifice and suicide. Gianni Schicchi is an opera full of trickery, greed and romance as a family dispute breaks out over a missing will. The Olivier-nominated Royal Opera production featuring a trio of one-act Puccini operas was first performed together on the same bill at Covent Garden in September 2011, and was acclaimed by the Telegraph as "an operatic treat... three hours of gorgeous music that allows big voices to let emotion rip" and by the Evening Standard as "a triumphant vindication of the social awareness and dramatic power of Puccini's triptych". The trio of operas offers a panorama of emotions, with the dark and foreboding Il tabarro and comic Gianni Schicchi bookending a heart-wrenching Suor Angelica.
Following the success of his first foray into opera, Einstein on the Beach, revolutionary American composer and musician Philip Glass soon turned to another great figure of the 20th century for inspiration. Set to lines from the Hindu Bhagavad Gita, Satyagraha depicts scenes from the life of Gandhi as he developed his philosophy of non-violent resistance in South Africa between 1896 and 1913. The opera became the second installment of Glass’s Portrait Trilogy, focused on innovators from across history. Satyagraha arrived at the Met during the 2007–08 season, when director Phelim McDermott made his debut with a production that employed everyday materials like newspaper and corrugated tin to create towering puppets and striking tableaus. In 2011, his staging returned, this time recorded live in HD. In this performance, tenor Richard Croft gives a moving performance as Gandhi, leading a remarkable ensemble cast conducted by Dante Anzolini.
Live recording from Oper Zurich, 2008, DVD release 2014. Jonas Kaufmann, 'the Prince of Tenors', appears with international star Vesselina Kasarova in Zürich Opera's starkly palpable staging of Bizet's ever-popular Carmen. The production sees Don José (Kaufmann) abandon his teenage attitudes in pursuit of Kasarova's free and independent Carmen - realising too late that his self-control has vanished, along with his youth.
Vilém Veverka a Ensemble Opera Diversa
New tenor star Vittorio Grigolo takes on the title role in Offenbach’s fantastical opera, giving a tour-de-force performance as the tortured poet unlucky in love. He is joined by a trio of leading ladies: Erin Morley sings the mechanical doll Olympia, Hibla Gerzmava is the fragile Antonia, and Christine Rice sings Giulietta, the Venetian courtesan. Bartlett Sher’s colorful production, seen here in its second Live in HD presentation, also stars Thomas Hampson as the sinister Four Villains and Kate Lindsey as Niklausse, Hoffmann’s friend and muse. Yves Abel conducts.
La Sonnambula is an idillic, classical and intense melodramma with an extremely fine, lyrical musicality and tense with pure "canto", suspended between Arcadia and Romanticism. It is a combination of tender and melancholic sentiments and of tragic and moving passion, in a natural uncontaminated and innocent atmosphere and humanity which clearly represent the artistic experience of the composer. The charming staging by Hugo de Ana, at the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari goes back to January 2007. Through fascinating tableaux vivants, references to 17th century Romantic painting and refined visual projections, it is a tribute to Luchino Visconti. Visconti produced the memorabile performance of Sonnambula in March at the Scala di Milano with the magnificant Maria Callas.
Lucerne Festival 2011: Claudio Abbado conducts Bruckner's Symphony No. 5
Giuseppe Verdi's opera "Macbeth" staged by Dario Argento, directed by Marco Scalfi.
Třetí koncert na kurtech
Druhý koncert na kurtech
Lazebník sevillský
Bedřich Smetana: Má vlast
Abbado Conducts Mahler No. 1 & Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3
Krumlovské divertimento