DVD Videos

First release on DVD of the classic Met gala with Pavarotti and Sutherland

The unforgettable Metropolitan Opera gala from 1987.

Two of the greatest opera stars of the time, and long-term singing partners, Luciano Pavarotti and Joan Sutherland, come together to perform four famous scenes from Acts I and III of Lucia di Lammermoor, Act III of La Traviata and Act III of Rigoletto.

Joined by the great Italian baritone Leo Nucci and conducted by Richard Bonynge.

The scenes are complete and fully staged, making this different from other DVDs of individual arias and ensembles.

This DVD box combines the most known and beloved works in sacred music of the three greatest composers of all time.Those works were, are and always will be essential to music.

NTSC · 16:9, PCM Stereo · DD 5.1 · DTS 5.1

Region Code: 0

Booklet Notes: GB, D, F

Subtitles: DVD 1 & 2: Lat, GB, D, F, E / DVD 3: GB, D, F / DVD 4: Lat, GB, D, F

Running Time: 419 mins in total

FSK: all audiences

Sliding marble walls, a mosaic-like floor, a leafless tree centre-stage, elegant costumes – with its young cast and a superlative performance by Roberto Frontali as Simon Boccanegra, this production has all the ingredients to leave a lasting impression.

The Italian baritone is a regular guest at the world’s major opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala Milan, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Zurich Opera House, the Staatsoper Berlin and Dresden’s Semperoper. Born in 1979 and already principal conductor in Bologna, Michele Mariotti directs the ensemble in a bravura performance.

Simon Boccanegra is perhaps not one of Verdi’s best-known operas. The composer himself returned to revise the work on several occasions. The original opera was premiered in Venice in 1857, this revised version not until 1881. Although never considered one of Verdi’s crowd pullers, it remains one of the composer’s most beautiful creations. Verdi’s music underpins this human drama in all its surprising twists and turns …

Nabucco was premièred at Milan’s La Scala on March 9th 1842. It met with enormous success, crowned by as many as 75 performances at La Scala before the end of that year. With Nabucco Verdi finally found his own stance, attaining linguistic and expressive means that, in the space of a decade, would make him the undisputed master of Italian opera theatres.

The present, interesting production, staged at the Carlo Felice theatre in Genoa, features young but already internationally renowned interpreters: Alberto Gazale, as a solid and convincing Nabucco; Susan Neves as an Abigaille by the beautiful and powerful vocal means; Orlin Anastassov as a greatly authoritative Zaccaria, which lets foresee for him a radiant career.

Subtitled in 7 languages (Italian, English, German, French, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese)

16:9

Il Corsaro is still one of Verdi’s less known and performed operas. Chronologically speaking, it belongs to the famous ”years in the galley”, even though it dates from a period (the autumn of 1848) when the composer’s name, in Italy, could already be considered established. Although this is considered one of Verdi’s minor works, there are many exciting and poignant passages in it, and the tight dramatic action makes for music that has a pressing and incisive rhythm. The renowned baritone Renato Bruson and conductor Renato Palumbo stand out in the cast. The video recording makes the most of Lamberto Puggelli’s beautiful sets. Subtitles in 7 languages (Italian, English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese).

Les Vêpres siciliennes, a five-act opera on a libretto by Auguste Scribe and Charles Duveyrier with music by Giuseppe Verdi, was first staged at the Paris Opéra on 13th June 1855. The subject of the opera was nothing other than an adaptation of a libretto that Scribe had written some years before, Le Duc d’Albe. At first the opera was greeted with great success, even Hector Berlioz, usually far from kind to Italian musicians, exalted the grandeur of its conception and its masterly composition.

However its Parisian success was to be short lived, and after 1865 Les Vêpres siciliennes disappeared from the repertoire of the Opéra. The Italian première, in Arnaldo Fusinato’s translation, was held in Parma on the evening of 26th December 1855; shortly afterwards the opera was taken to La Scala in Milan, on 4th February 1856, but this time in a new translation by Ettore Caimi. Before definitively becoming I Vespri Siciliani in the Italian edition too, the opera circulated for some time under various titles. Les Vêpres siciliennes/I Vespri Siciliani is in many senses an intimist opera, all based on the contrast between the duties imposed on, and sorrowfully accepted by, all the leading characters by their political roles, and their private feelings which, of course, do not correspond to the demands of politics. All of this set against the backdrop of a very demanding stage and choral set-up. Filmed by RAI at Teatro Verdi in Busseto, main interpresters of this production are Vladimir Stoyanov (Monforte), Renzo Zulian (Arrigo), Amarilli Nizza (Elena) e Orlin Anastassov (Procida), under the baton of Stefano Ranzani and with the direction of Pier Luigi Pizzi.

The Italian tenor Franco Corelli was born in Ancona on 8th April 1921. In his long artistic career 1971 (the year of the recordings featured in the present DVD) was an important one. The tenor, who was famous all over the world, turned fifty; twenty years of his life had been spent on stage. Few opera singers, in the 20th century, could compare with him for passion, variety of repertoire and quality of interpretation. In 1971 Corelli sang at the Metropolitan in Ernani, Lucia di Lammermoor, Andrea Chénier, Bohème and Werther. That intense year saw him also visit the Far East with a triumphant series of recitals (Tokyo, Osaka and Seoul), the first of which is documented in the present DVD. The year ended with a successful Norma in Parma (with Cristina Deutekom) and equally glorious appearances in Forza del Destino, Ernani, Aida and Roméo et Juliette. This wonderful recital comes at the conclusion of a fabulous career, in which the Italian tenor sang side by side with all the greatest protagonists of the operatic world. The Tokyo concert, with the Japanese audience in raptures and a Corelli in great form, is the chronicle of a veritable triumph.

Director and Costume Designer: Pier Francesco Maestrini

La Forza del Destino was one of Verdi’s more tormented operas in the making, and its first version is quite different from the one we are used to hearing today. In its definitive version, with the changes to Act three, Act four and the finale, it was first performed at Teatro alla Scala on 7th February 1869, and was well received both by audiences and critics. A few people expressed doubts about the mixture of the plot’s tragic elements and some characters’ comic traits; Verdi always defended this choice, which was almost Shakespearean but had no tradition in Italy. La Forza del Destino is, indeed, an experimental creation, by a composer who was already mature but still looking for new incentives and challenges. The composer’s choral writing is quite extraordinary; far from being conceived as a monolithic bloc, the chorus is treated in a variegated and complex way. Throughout the first half of the 1900s La Forza del Destino was one of the more neglected of Verdi’s operas, but from the 1950s it entered the repertoire, and became a land of conquest for all the best lyrical singers of the post war period. Lucas Karitynos conducts the Orchestra Filarmonica Veneta and Susanna Branchini (Leonora), Marco Zulian (Don Alvaro) and Marco Di Felice (Don Carlos) in the main roles.