Othello

Noble Moroccan Othello finds his life with beautiful, fiercely loyal Desdemona thrown tragically out of balance when secretly jealous, scheming confidante Iago begins an insidious campaign of lies and treachery.

D-Day 75: A Tribute to Heroes

Live from Southsea Common in Portsmouth, Huw Edwards introduces coverage of the National Commemorative Event taking place to mark the 75th anniversary of D-Day.

Wagner Die Walküre

Amahl and the Night Visitors

One night in Judea, a disabled shepherd boy-turned-beggar and his mother are visited by three strangers. They are the Three Kings, and they are on their way to Bethlehem to visit the Christ Child, who has just been born.

The Damnation of Faust

The three main soloists have voices on a scale that can compete with these flashy production values – White and Kasarova, in particular, sing at a level of intensity that would swamp anything less; the climactic seduction trio has rarely been sung so well or with such an overpoweringly polymorphous eroticism. Cambreling marshals his forces effectively, giving full rein to the work's showstoppers like the "Hungarian March" but not neglecting the subtler less kinetic Gluckian side of Berlioz's vocal writing. Recorded live at the Salzburger Fes...

Mozart: La clemenza di Tito

How do we live together in an age of conflict? How do you heal a divided and angry people? In their 2017 production of Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito, Peter Sellars and Teodor Currentzis examine these questions through the story of a warrior-emperor who brings peace to his divided land and pardons his own would-be assassins. Written under a time crunch (legend has it that it was written in only 18 days, although it is likely an exaggeration) during the last year of Mozart’s life, the opera is based on a libretto written more than half a centur...

Alban Berg - Wozzeck

Based on real events and drawing on Georg Büchner's revolutionary play, Alban Berg's Wozzeck turns a grimly tragic narrative of violence and murder into one of the most powerful and original operas of the 20th century. Berg's uncompromising portrayal of brutality and madness generated much controversy, but the significance of Wozzeck was soon recognised; its compelling lyrical expansiveness, large-scale dramatic gestures and remarkable musical structures producing music of overwhelming emotional intensity. The Financial Times declared this t...

Porgy and Bess

The story of a disabled beggar in Charleston,S.C. who falls in love with a prostitute, this is the first filmed version of Gershwin's opera which uses Gershwin's own orchestrations and practically all of the music, with only one major cut.

Die Walküre

Simon Rattle conducts the Berliner Philharmoniker in Stepháne Braunschweig's production of Richard Wagner's Die Walküre. A Festival d'Aix-en-Provence 2007 production, in coproduction with Osterfestspiele Salzburg. Directed for HDTV and video by Don Kent.

Berlioz La Damnation de Faust

Musically, this is a superlative performance: Paul Groves is a sympathetic Faust, Willard White is an appropriately menacing Mephistopheles, and Vesselina Kasarova is an exquisite Marguerite. Sylvain Cambreling sensitively conducts the Staatskapelle Berlin, and two excellent choirs' vocal contributions should not go unnoticed. (However, condolences to those choir members stuck in that ludicrous cylinder.) Both visual presentation and sound are, as usual for Arthaus Musik discs, first-rate; only the staging itself comes off as less than worth...