La Fanciulla del West, Puccini's penultimate opera is based on a play by David Belasco set at the height of the notorious California gold rush. The composer took three years to complete the work, which, for him, marked a new stylish departure. With more modern harmonic combinations and local melodies, Puccini pieced together a far larger canvas than anything he had tackled before. In this recording, Piero Faggioni's highly detailed staging is matched by Ken Adam's superbly atmospheric sets. Carol Neblett sings the role of Minnie "The Girl of the Gold West," Placido Domingo is as ignitable as ever in the role of Dick Johnson, alias the bandit, Ramirez, and Silvano Carroli sings the sinister sheriff, Jack Rance. Conducted by Nello Santi.
La traviata (Italian: [la traˈviaːta], "The Fallen Woman"[1][2]) is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave.
During World War II, two French civilians and a downed British Bomber Crew set out from Paris to cross the demarcation line between Nazi-occupied Northern France and the South.
37-year-old Italian-American widow Loretta Castorini believes she is unlucky in love, and so accepts a marriage proposal from her boyfriend Johnny, even though she doesn't love him.
Olga Peratyatko and Atalla Ayan star in Rolando Villazón's scintillating production of Verdi's La Traviata at the Festspielhaus in Baden Baden, Germany.
Kristine Opolais is the young woman whose conflicting desires for love and luxury lead to her tragic end, and Roberto Alagna plays the man who falls for her in Puccini’s early hit.
Visually this is a gripping production which captures the drama of this opera perfectly. It's downright exciting! and I found the singing, acting, and orchestral playing reasonably fine.
This live version of Puccini s superbly dramatic opera was recorded in Rome in the exact locations and at the precise times of day as Puccini had written into his score.
There are elements of Eurotrash in this outdoor Aix-en-Provence summer opera production. Nevertheless, the splendid singing and acting transform the story, normally treated as farce, into something considerably more serious.
Joan Sutherland's farewell performance to the operatic stage offsets this story of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre and the magnificence of 16th century France.
Based on a revolutionary play supposedly written by the Eternal President of the Democratic People's Republic, Kim Il-sung, and rumored to have been co-directed by Kim Jong-il.
The story, told partly in flashback to 1968, concerns a clique of English public schoolboys who bully and humiliate an unpopular younger pupil (Cox) who is 'bad at games'.
A guy picks up a girl hitchhiking and starts making advances to her to sleep with her, albeit with the ruse of offering to do a photo shoot so that she can succeed as a model.
When the 'Lowly Ronin' helps an orphaned teenage girl avoid being turned into a prostitute, she then claims he is her father and they start a farm as father and daughter until fate steps in and he must draw his sword.
Mimosa is about a girl growing up in an orphanage who tries to make life fun for all the residents. It's a great Easter story, an animated fairy tale about a witch kid and what she's up to in the orphanage while the mother witch whips around with her broom.
Derek Jarman's film portrait of American writer William S. Burroughs was shot in September 1982 during his first visit to England to attend the legendary Final Academy events at the South London Ritzy Cinema.
Traveling through villages along the Nicaraguan-Honduran border, the filmmakers document the impact of the covert war against Nicaragua's Sandinista government, featuring interviews with mercenaries, soldiers, spies and civilian victims.
