DVD Videos

In celebration of the creation of 'Le Sacre du printemps' in Paris in 1913, Bel Air present a new edition in a DVD-book of a wonderful Stravinsky night at the Mariinsky with the original Nijinsky version of the 'Rite of Spring' and 'The Firebird' both conducted by Valery Gergiev.

The premiere of 'The Rite of Spring' at the Théâtre des Champs Élysées, Paris, on May 1913 caused a veritable scandal. The audience was shocked by the primitive violence of the ballet. It was so radically rejected that the ballet was taken off after eight performances. Although long forgotten, thanks to the relentless work of Millicent Hodson, Nijinsky’s original choreography was recreated.

'The Firebird' is a Russian folk tale in two scenes commissioned from the young Stravinsky by Diaghilev and premiered at the Paris Opera House in 1910. The ballet was an immediate success. The Ballets Russes enabled the choreographer Fokine to bring to this enterprise the right amount of novelty needed to captivate but not alienate the audience. It was a total success.

CONTENTS: DVD BOOK, 2 ballets 85 min.

Bonus: Documentary on the Ballets Russes (8 min), interviews with Millicent Hodson & Kenneth Archer (30 min), 36pp illustrated in 3 languages

Format: Colour, 16/9, NTSC, Sound: PCM Stereo - Dolby Digital 5.1.

Scenography: Paul Zoller

Costumes: Gideon Davey

Lighting: Franck Evin

The rare biblical opera 'David and Jonathas' is like 'Médée', one of the major works of the French Baroque composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier. The opera has been in the repertoire of Les Arts Florissants since 1988 and was first presented in a stage production by William Christie at the Aix-en-Provence Festival 2012. This DVD release is a special event for all Baroque music lovers.

Written a year after the death of Lully, this lyric tragedy allows Charpentier to develop beyond the religious dimension, a story of male friendship and forbidden love between David and Jonathas. An excellent cast gathered around William Christie and Les Arts Florissants brings young singers to the title roles: Pascal Charbonneau, a tenor and a former student of the European Academy of Music, sings David. The role of Jonathas is given to a woman: soprano Ana Quintans.

The staging by Andreas Homoki (Director of the Zurich Opera since summer 2012) focuses on the psychological aspect of this forbidden love story, giving a moving reading of the drama.

Leading Chopin interpreter Nelson Freire is the soloist in Chopin’s lyrical and brilliant Second Piano Concerto. On the podium the young French conductor Lionel Bringuier makes his Proms debut conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra and gives a sizzling performance of Roussel’s Symphony No.3 and of Ravel’s score for the ballet 'Daphnis et Chloé' - Suite No 2.

Chopin wrote his concerto at the age of 19 while crazily in love with an opera singer, but it's the work itself which is the object of adoration for soloist Nelson Freire who describes himself as having something of a 'crush' on the piece after first hearing it as a teenager.

The three other works on the programme chart French music over a century of changing musical tastes, beginning in 1844 with Berlioz's vivid evocation of a swashbuckling pirate adventure in his overture 'Le corsaire'. By 1912 the tides of modernism influenced Ravel's lavishly scored, pastoral ballet Daphnis and Chloë, with its famous opening soundscape of dawn breaking over the forest canopy, and by the 1930s Roussel's Third Symphony reflected the trends of neo-classicism.

"It was around the beginning of the second movement of Albert Roussel's Third Symphony that the playing of the BBC Symphony Orchestra – under the outstanding 23-year-old French conductor Lionel Bringuier, making his Prom debut – moved into top gear. From that point on, the orchestra's awareness of its own sound, collectively and individually, became heightened to an unusually compelling degree. The playing stayed on this exalted level until the end of the concert, which closed with Ravel's second Daphnis and Chloé suite...shaped with a certainty of direction that never compromised the music's inherent sensuousness. It provided a sensational climax to the evening."

George Hall, The Guardian 13/8/2010

Recorded live at the Royal Albert Hall, 08/2010,

Running time 95 min.

Booklet: French, German, English

Image 1DVD9, Colour 16/9, NTSC

Sound: PCM Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1

Choreography: Heinz Spoerli

Set design: Peter Schmidt

The starting point and destination of Heinz Spoerli's new ballet is the 'Magnificat' by Johann Sebastian Bach.

From the beginning of the 'Allemande' movement of the Partita in A minor for solo flute, through the joy of 'Brandenburg Concerto' No. 3, this is the question of faith, which sparked Heinz Spoerli's interest in this piece.

Heinz Spoerli intensifies the emotions here, by inserting two moving arias from the cantatas "Wo soll ich fliehen hin" and "Ich habe genug".

This is an important aspect for Heinz Spoerli in his discourse with the text of the 'Magnificat', in which his deep respect for all religions, or rather every faith, is not about the worship of a certain creator-figure, but more about the conditions and prerequisites of this for the expression of a profound devoutness, which also involves rejection, exlusion, uncertainty and separation.

The Orchestra La Scintilla is conducted by Marc Minkowski. In 1996 it was founded as independent ensemble by specialist musicians of the Zurich Opera Orchestra and soon obtained an excellent reputation. The spark that ignited the enthusiasm for new 'old music' gave its name to the ensemble: "La Scintilla" – The Spark. Performances with eminent authorities in the field such as Nikolaus Harnoncourt, William Christie, Mark Minkowski, Reinhard Goebel and Giuliano Carmignola were so successful that the Opera House Zürich has this ensemble perform all baroque operas and nearly all operas of the classical period.

"La Scintilla" gives concerts with well-known soloists, instrumentalists and singers and has toured North America and Europe with Cecilia Bartoli.

Patrice Chéreau returns to the theatre some 8 years after 'Phaedra', with the play 'Dream of Autumn', written by Jon Fosse. A theatre where the characters are no longer names, but He, She, Man, Woman or The Mother in the 'Dream'.

The unexpected setting is a room in the Louvre Museum. This magestic and mysterious place inspired set designer Richard Peduzzi. When Patrice Chéreau worked on this adaptation he focused on the mystery of human beings and their hidden meanings.

Chéreau decided to work with actors from his 'family': Bulle Ogier is a loyal collaborator from "Les Amandiers", Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi is a former student, Pascal Greggory is his favourite actor for over 10 years and also Michelle Marquais, Bernard Verley and Marie Bunel.

For the costume designs, Patrice Chéreau continues his collaboration with Caroline de Vivaise which began with the movie and continued recently on stage ('From the House of the Dead' in Vienna, 'Tristan und Isolde' in Milan). For the lighting design, he also called an old collaborator : Dominique Bruguière.

The play was filmed on tour at the Théâtre National de Bretagne in Rennes in May 2011 and featured in the Young Vic Season 2011 in an English Language version as 'I am the Wind' by Simon Stephens.

Lighting design Jacques Rouveyrollis

Choreography Igor Moiseyev

The 70 dancers of the Igor Moiseyev Ballet take us on a journey around the world and through the regions of the former Soviet Union, revealing an incredible multitude of folklores, including Moldovan, Belarussian, Ukrainian, Nanai, Kalmyk, Tatar, Adjaran and Caucasian.

14 dazzling, surprising and joyful ballets, including the major works from the repertoire of Igor Moiseyev. A show acclaimed throughout the world.

Igor Moiseyev staged the acrobatic parades on Red Square from the 1930s and established the Theatre of Folk Art. In 1936, Vyacheslav Molotov put him in charge of the new dance company, which has since become known as the Moiseyev Ballet. Among about 200 dances he created for his company, some humorously represented the game of football and guerrilla warfare. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, Moiseyev's work has been especially admired "for the balance that it maintained between authentic folk dance and theatrical effectiveness". In 1955 the company performed in Paris, the first Soviet ensemble to appear in the West after the war, and scored an enormous success. In 1957, they came to London, and in 1958, by then numbering 100 dancers, they made their New York début, at the Metropolitan Opera House – the first major Soviet ensemble to appear in the United States.

Moiseyev was named People's Artist of the USSR in 1953, Hero of Socialist Labor in 1976, received the Lenin Prize (1967, for the dance show A Road to the Dance), four Stalin/USSR State Prizes (1942, 1947, 1952, 1985), Russian Federation State Prize (1996), was awarded numerous orders and medals of the Soviet Union, Spain and many other countries. On the day of his centenary, Moiseyev became the first Russian to receive Order of Merit for the Fatherland, 1st class — the highest civilian decoration of the Russian Federation. In 2001, he was awarded the UNESCO Mozart Medal for outstanding contribution to world music culture. He died in Moscow in 2007. The Moiseyev Dance Company continues under the directorship of Yelena Shcherbakova.

Written in 1797, Cherubini's faithful version of Euripides' ancient tragedy is one of the most savage and powerful works of the opera repertoire, relating the cruel vengeance of a wounded woman for whom infanticide seems to be the only solution to her humiliation in love. As a continuation of Gluck's music, Cherubini's work is of boundless emotion, at once a refined, terrifying and desperate portent of a tragic outcome.

Three years after the creation of 'Médée', Krzysztof Warlikowski and Christophe Rousset were reunited at La Monnaie for this memorable production. The spoken dialogue, has been modernised here in the Polish stage director's interpretation: dialogues being rewritten in contemporary French and with contemporary candour. Warlikowski reconstructs Médée as a contemporary, postmodern patchwork in which the 18th century musical numbers are just one element among others in a nearly-new work. As usual with Warlikowski, there are videos: 50s and 60s home videos of happy marriages, happy families, happy schoolkids accompanied by pop songs of the period – Oh Carol, (I am but a fool) being an example. The chorus are the period bourgeoisie, in superbly reproduced 60s costumes and hairstyles. Médée and Jason are strictly contemporary: she, at first as Amy Winehouse: the signature black hair, tattoos, eyeliner, black patent dress),he with long, heavy dreadlocks bunched down the back of his dinner jacket (and tattoos, once he is down to his vest).

The themes are marriage and separation, motherhood and children, the symbols are Médée as a dangerous, unconventional outsider (Amy Winehouse); as the Virgin Mary: as a weary modern mother folding her sons’ bloodstained pyjamas and putting them in a drawer at the end before, in absolute silence, walking off and slamming the metal door behind her.

Choreography by Yuri Grigorovich, Nov 2011

Sets Designed by Ezio Frigerio

Costumes Designed by Franca Squarciapino

Classical ballet release event for this year!

Tchaikovsky’s ballet in a new production for the reopening of the historic Bolshoi Ballet stage. It also celebrates superstar David Hallberg's Bolshoi debut, the first American principal soloist ever to be hired by the Bolshoi Ballet. The choreographer, Yuri Grigorovich presents a new version of his most famous choreography for a breath taking experience in splendid sets designed by Ezio Frigerio and more than 400 new costumes designed by Franca Squarciapino.

The American superstar dancer David Hallberg is Prince Désiré. Hallberg is the first main american soloist ever to be hired by the Bolshoi Ballet. Princess Aurora is danced by the principal Svetlana Zakharova, well known to Parisian audiences thanks to her many performances at the Palais Garnier. She is also the soloist on the best seller 'Pharaoh's daughter' DVD released by Bel Air Classiques in 2004. They are joined by a great cast : Maria Allash (Lilac Fairy) , Artem Ovcharenko (Bluebird) and Nina Kaptsova (Princess Florine). The Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra is conducted by Vassily Sinaisky.

Stage direction and set design: Dmitri Tcherniakov

In 2010, for the first time in its history, the Bolshoi Opera presented Alban Berg’s masterpiece 'Wozzeck'. Dmitri Tcherniakov’s truly historic production is now available in this DVD. The Russian director’s aim with this bold, sensitive transposition was “to highlight the hidden sorrows of a late 20th-century man dwelling in a megalopolis.” The redoubtably complex title role was entrusted to Austrian baritone Georg Nigl. Nigl studied with Kammersängerin Hilde Zadek. Over the last few years he has worked with, among others, Thomas Hengelbrock and his Baltasar Neumann Ensemble, Jordi Savall and his Hesperion XXI Ensemble, and Giovanni Antonini and Luca Pianca and their Il Giardino Armonico.

American soprano Mardi Byers plays Marie. A native of Colorado, she made her international debut as 'Tosca' in Lübeck and Elisabetta in 'Don Carlos' in Wiesbaden and Basel. She has also sung Donna Anna and Suor Angelica at the New York City Opera, as well as Elisabeth in 'Tannhäuser' and Ariadne. The Proms audience saw her in Mahler 8 in 2010 with Jiri Belohlavek.

Greek conductor Teodor Currentzis directs the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra and Chorus. Artistic director of the Perm Opera and founder and musical director of the Musica Aeterna ensemble, Currentzis is now to be seen in the world’s leading venues: the Opéra de Paris, Opernhaus Zurich, Bayerische Staatsoper Munich, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and the Teatro Real in Madrid.

Stage direction and lighting design: Giorgio Strehler

The legendary production by Giorgio Strehler filmed at the Paris Opera with a cast that unites the finest Mozartians of our time.

A revival of Strehler's 'Marriage of Figaro' is always an event. In 2010, 37 years after its creation, it rose again in triumph at the Opera Bastille with a new generation of performers: Ludovic Tézier (Count Almaviva), Barbara Frittoli (Countess), Ekaterina Siurina (Susanna), Luca Pisaroni (Figaro) and Karine Deshayes (Cherubino).

Conductor, Philippe Jordan directs the Orchestra and Chorus of the Paris Opera.

Also in this bonus edition, there is an interview with Humbert Camerlo who has worked extensively with Giorgio Strehler and achieved this staging for the revival, which continues from September 15 to October 25, 2012 at the Opera Bastille for 14 special performances.