Aida

Any performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida at La Scala, Milan, is guaranteed to be an experience – but, when it’s a new production, it becomes a major event, especially given the theatre’s notoriously critical audience. Legendary stage director Peter Stein succeeds in delivering a lucid production acclaimed in equal measure by the press and public: “a perfect coup de théâtre” (Giornale della musica). A “stellar cast” (La Stampa) contributes to the production’s success under the musical direction of Verdi specialist Zubin Mehta, who leads the o...

Verdi: Simon Boccanegra

Giuseppe Verdi's one prologue, three act opera featuring libretto by Francesco Maria Piave and Arrigo Boito is performed before a live audience at Florence's Teatro Comunale in this release featuring the music of the Orchestra and Chorus of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino under conductor Claudio Abbado, and starring Carlo Guelfi, Julian Konstantinov, and Karita Mattila.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Faust I

Crise de nerfs

Simon Boccanegra

One of the lesser known works by Giuseppe Verdi, Simon Boccanegra is regarded by most opera lovers as one of his finest. The action takes place in the 14th century and deals with the political and personal rivalry between the corsair Simon Boccanegra, who has been elected Doge of Genoa with the help of the plebeian vote, and the local nobleman, Jacopo Fiesco. Arthaus presents a visually alert, musically sensitive and disturbingly coherent (Der Standard) production of the piece on DVD. The staging was directed by one of the giants of the Euro...

Fierrabras

Fierrabras of 1823 is the last of Franz Schubert’s stage works. Rarely performed to this day, this heroic-romantic opera has now been staged for the first time ever at the Salzburg Festival by famous director Peter Stein. Based on an old French 12th-century epic, the plot depicts the military conflict between Christians and Moors at the time of Charlemagne – as a backdrop to stories of love and friendship that prove to be stronger than war and hatred of otherness. The strong cast includes the “marvellously expressive miracle Dorothea Röschma...

Class Enemy

Berlin-Kreuzberg in the early 1980s. The film is essentially a one-set piece, taking place in a beat-up, graffiti-decorated schoolroom where six teen-age delinquents argue and fight as they await the latest in what has been a series of terrified teachers.

Can You Hear Me?

A boy rescues a Border Collie and the two go through many adventures over the years.