DVD Videos

Subtitles in English, French and German

Produced and directed by Teresa Griffiths

Benjamin Britten (1913-76) was the leading British composer of the twentieth century and his reputation is international. Although his life was marked with many ‘establishment’ honours, he remained at heart an outsider, alienated by his homosexuality, his pacifism, his genius, his uncompromising commitment to his own judgement and even his extraordinary success.

But the story told in this documentary is, above all, a love story, one that tells of Britten’s passion for music and the intensity of his union with the tenor Peter Pears, his companion in life and creativity. It explores his talent, triumph, trials and tribulations by focusing on three of his major works – Peter Grimes, the War Requiem and Death in Venice – and draws on specially-staged and newly-filmed performance extracts; clips from productions recorded in Britten’s day, including several featuring Pears; archive material; and newsreel footage. A picture is drawn of the public’s perception of and reaction to the man and his music, while contributions from friends and close associates reveal much about the very private person he remained in spite of his fame.

Directed by Reiner E. Moritz

Commentary in English with French and German subtitles

The playing of the young pianist Hélène Grimaud has been described as “fire and ice, passion and reason all in one” (Le Monde de la Musique); “coiled energy eventuating in unbridled excitement” (NewYork Times);“superlative technique.. .she unfailingly delivers original inflected conceptions of the music” (Financial Times). But she is not only an extraordinary pianist, she is also an extraordinary woman, consumed by two loves in life -music and wolves. With her partner, photographer J. Henry Fair, she has founded a Wolf Conservation Centre at her home in South Salem, New York.

Grimaud came to music because it was the last resort of her parents, university professors in the South of France. “I was so easily bored. I was a distraction in the classroom. They tried martial arts, they tried sports. Then someone suggested music.” Music cured her boredom and her facility for playing the piano proved to be astonishing. By the age of thirteen she was accepted by a unanimous vote into the Paris Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique. In 1985 she was awarded first prize in Jacques Rouvier’s class and was invited to participate in masterclasses given by Gyorgy Sander, Leon Fleisher and Jorge Bolet, who said of her, “It has been a long time, a very long time, since I have met a natural talent of such quality and musical sensibility.” Her concert career took off in 1987 and now she performs with major orchestras around the world as well as being in demand for recital appearances. In February 2000 she was named ‘Soloist of the Year’ by ‘Les Victoires de la musique’. Still in her early thirties, she is arguably one of the very top pianists of her generation. To be spontaneous, not to be afiaid of taking risks and always to play as though it is the first time is Helene Grimaud’s maxim.

This encounter with Grimaud captures the essence of a musician and woman who is full of surprises. Refi-eshingly open and engaging, she gives an insight into her life and her music and is seen at work in Europe, performing, rehearsing and recording. At home in upstate New York her passion for wolves and her concern to educate people about these top predators is evident as she introduces her charges.

There are extensive performance extracts featuring Helene Grimaud as a concert soloist, a chamber musician and in recital, playing music by Rachmaninov, Bach/Busoni, Beethoven Brahms and Schumann.

Directed by Gernot Friedel

English commentary with English, French and German subtitles

Herbert von Karajan (1908-1989), one of the twentieth century’s most fascinating and complex geniuses, dominated the post-war classical music world like a colossus. He won unprecedented musical power and public acclaim; received far more adulation, sold far more records and made far more money than any other classical musician of his era. He also had many detractors -those alienated by his superstar status; those who found the purity and beauty of his music-making cold and superficial; those repelled by his headstrong ambition and endlessly demanding pursuit of his artistic ideals; and those for whom he was forever tainted by the shadow of the Third Reich.

Yet his musical playboy image was at odds with the private man who was, in reality, a shy, often solitary figure, possessed of great directness, simplicity and wit, who craved inner quiet and concentration, and was deeply loyal to his closest associates. He loved the peace and quiet of lakes and mountains as much as he did his private aeroplane and his fast cars. Charismatic and enigmatic, Karajan was also the construct that was ‘Karajan’. This film reveals the phenomenon of the man and his music. And it is Karajan himself, in archive interviews, who talks of events in his life and relates them to his work as a conductor.

Herbert von Karajan’s life, both on and off the podium, is charted. From the influential experiences of his childhood and student days; through his emergence as a young conductor with a reputation for being brilliant but difficult; to his years at the forefkont of classical music; and his last decade when, despite failing health, and beset by acrimonious musical politics, he continued to push himself to the limits of his creative and physical powers.

The documentary also touches on the controversial issue of Karajan’s membership of the Nazi Party; his rivalry with FurtwSingler; his fitful association with Walter Legge of EM1 and with the Philharmonia orchestra, founded by Legge in 1945; his fascination with science, technology, art and architecture in relation to music and his conducting style and rapport with his musicians. All are brought into focus and illustrated with a wealth of archive material.

And throughout the film there is Karajan’s music, drawn from the many sound and audiovisual recordings he made during the course of his extraordinary career. Extracts fiom works by Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner, J.S. Bach, Puccini, Johann Strauss II, Mahler, Verdi, Richard Strauss and Schoenberg testify to the vast range of the classical repertoire he mastered and summon up the sublime beauty of his music- making.

Directed by Nigel Wattis

English commentary with French and German subtitles

Marilyn Horne is acclaimed as the finest mezzo soprano of the twentieth century, with a voice known for its brilliant sound and its extraordinary range. Her career has spanned everything from Grand Opera to light entertainment and pirate recordings of pop singles. She started singing in public when she was just three years old and for over thirty years she has been at the top of her profession. Home’s greatest contribution to music has been in developing and popularising the mezzo soprano repertoire of composers such as Rossini and she was the first non-Italian ever to win the coveted Rossini Medal, honouring her as the greatest singer in the world.

This programme looks back over Marilyn Horne’s long and remarkable career, celebrating her formidable achievements and giving an insight into her unique talent. Specially-shot performance items, together with archive footage and recordings, demonstrate her magnificent vocal ability and at the heart of the profile is an interview in which the engaging and dynamic singer talks about her life and her music.

The film visits Marilyn Horne’s home town of Bradford, Pennsylvania, and travels with her to Long Beach, California, where her family moved when she was eleven years old. Here she talks about her early days: singing in church choirs, making recordings for television sitcoms with the Robert Wagner Chorale, cutting pirate pop records and acting as voice double for Dorothy Dandridge in Otto Preminger’s film Carmen Jones. A clip from the movie displays Marilyn Horne’s astonishing powers of imitation. She touches on the rich musical life that existed in California at that time and on her association with Stravinsky. The composer dedicated his last work to Horne and encouraged her to go to Europe to further her career as an opera singer.

It was her work with Dame Joan Sutherland in the bel canto operas of composers such as Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini, that first brought Marilyn Horne major stardom in the mid-1960s. Dame Joan is one of the contributors to the programme and talks about the chemistry that made their performances together so special. Other contributors include her former husband and good friend, the conductor Henry Lewis, fellow American singer Samuel Ramey and her biographer Jane Scovell.

Highlights of the programme include coverage of Horne’s final appearance in a Rossini opera -Isabella in L’Italiana in Algeri recorded at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in 1993 -and of the gala recital at Carnegie Hall in January 1994, which marked her sixtieth birthday and the launch of the Marilyn Horne Foundation, set up to revive the art of the vocal recital in America. Her passion for this cause is matched by her commitment to training young singers and she is seen giving a masterclass during the Cardiff Singer of the World competition. An archive clip recalls one of Horne’s finest moments, when, as President Clinton’s favourite classical singer, she sang at his inauguration in Washington in 1993, a performance watched by hundreds of millions of television viewers. Another side of Horne’s vivacious personality emerges in a clip from the Carol Burnett Show, in which she features in a song and dance routine.

Directed by David Jeffcock

Commentary in English with French and German subtitles

John Adams is America’s most frequently performed living composer. He has managed the considerable feat of writing accessible music that still surprises and challenges its listeners. In the words of the New Yorker, he is “the man who takes the agony out of modern music”. Though he is not the only composer who has combined a classical education with a pop sensibility, he is the one who has made the synthesis stick. Richly harmonic, his music embraces just about every style, from Minimalism to Mahler, rock to jazz, hymns to Liberace, but always winds up sounding like Adams.

Adams is also one of music’s most controversial figures - thanks to opera. Nixon in China started a whole new genre in modern opera. The Death of Klinghoffer dealt with the 1985 hijacking of a cruise liner by four Palestinian terrorists. Now made into a feature film, it is one of the most contentious operatic works written in over a century. Ironically, Adams started out hating opera but his own musical development made him the perfect composer for it.

This profile of the man who led contemporary music out of the cul-de-sac of the avant-garde and revitalised modem opera centres on a major interview filmed at his home outside San Francisco. There are contributions from stage director Peter Sellars, librettist Alice Goodman and conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, and extensive performance extracts from Nixon in China and El Nino. His orchestral compositions, Shaker Loops, The Chamber Symphony and Gnarly Buttons, are also featured.

Directed by Ross MacGibbon

English commentary with French and German subtitles

Christmas Night. A little boy sits alone by a small, feeble Christmas tree from the branches of which sadly hang garlands salvaged from Christmases past. His mother is dead. Suddenly, in a dream, or by magic, she is there, next to him, and places a small gift at the foot of the tree. The enchanted night begins: the gift grows bigger and becomes a miraculous icon, fiends flood in, the mother appears, alive, followed by two Angels of Light created by Marius-Mephisto. The whole room is dancing and the child begins to laugh. Is it a dream? Reality is that which we feel to be real. Reality is the moment, here and now. Freed from his fear, the boy watches the Pas de Deux from The Nutcracker directed by Marius, his master, and danced by the Prince and Princess.

“I remember! Christmas.. .. Marseille, the tree, the Nativity scene, the presents, the thirteen desserts -among them my favourite -the NUTS! Above all, I loved cracking nuts. My father had shown me that the insides were like a little human brain. I remember.. . My mother. I was seven years old. One evening she said to me, ‘your mother is going on a long journey. Promise me you will be good. I remember. Christmas.’ ”

So wrote Maurice Béjart in his programme notes for his version of the well-loved Christmas ballet The Nutcracker (Casse-Noisette). Béjart’s magical staging transforms the piece into an enchanting and enchanted autobiography and a loving homage to the choreographer’s mother and to his creative hero, Marius Petipa. The first part of the performance is punctuated by Béjart, on a huge video screen, telling something of his childhood. Summing up his approach to creating this ballet, Béjart remarked, “You live a life and you dream a life. When you come to write your own life you tell a lie to build the truth.”

Using Tchaikovsky‘s score in its entirety, augmented with popular waltz and accordion music performed on-stage by the legendary Yvette Homer, Béjart takes the original St Petersburg story as a springboard from which to evoke the memories, emotions and feelings of his own life’s journey: from a Marseille childhood, dominated by the memory of his mother to the passionate commitment to dance, inspired by the father of classical ballet, Petipa. The stage is flooded with allusions to Béjart’s actual and imaginary history: characters both real and symbolic, forests, scouting, bull-fighting, bicycles, old songs and much more, create a universe of feeling reaching its apotheosis in a faithful recreation of the original Pas de Deux -a true declaration of love. The only character in his Nutcracker that relates to the original is Mephisto, who replaces Drosselmeyer as the facilitator of fantastical dreams and happenings. Goethe’s Faust fascinated Béjart when he was still very young and the choreographer’s Mephisto is at the same time his creative hero Marius Petipa. Marius-Mephisto opens up a world to the boy Bim (Béjart) in which his dream life and his desire to dance are intertwined.

Three performances of Béjart’s Nutcracker were recorded live fiom the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris for the purposes of this television presentation.

The showman of modem dance, Maurice Béjart’s work has been provocative, influential and popular in equal measure. His choreography has always been physically thrilling, setting up an immediate emotional combustion between audience and performer, and he attracted huge new audiences for dance with the Ballet of the Twentieth Century productions he mounted in sports stadia, public squares and circus tents. Since founding the Béjart Ballet Lausanne in 1987, he has been working on a more intimate scale but his style has remained just as electric, vivid and direct in its appeal as ever.

Duration: 90’

English commentary with French and German subtitles

No performer on the world stage received so much acclaim and publicity as Rudolf Nureyev, and no one gave away so little about their private life and thinking. In this television biography, made some twelve months before his death in 1993, Nureyev tells his own story in his own words and recalls turning points in his career.

The programme traces Nureyev’s life, starting out from his home town of Ufa in the shadow of the Ural Mountains, half way between Moscow and Siberia. When filming took place there, Ufa had changed very little since his departure thirty years before. The school was still there and so was the modest wooden house, which his family shared with two others. The green curtains still hung at the old theatre, where he saw the ballet performance which changed the course of his life.

Nureyev’s sister, his head mistress and the dance teacher who first discovered him (101 years old at the time this programme was made), all recall the solitary rebel. At the Kirov Theatre, the prima ballerina who was his first partner remembers the student who emerged as the most brilliant dancer of his generation.

The cameras were also allowed to film Nureyev on his Mediterranean island of Li Galli, which once belonged to another Russian dancer, Massine.

Nureyev’s dancing career has been extensively chronicled on film and television. This definitive biography incorporates extensive archive material and documents Nureyev’s career with footage of his greatest roles and the most important events in his life.

Ninette de Valois, mentor; Margot Fonteyn, partner; Roland Petit, choreographer; and Sylvie Guillem, dancer, are among those who comment on the life and legend of this fiery Tartar. There are extracts from the following ballets: Le Corsaire, The Sleeping Beauty, Marguerite and Armand, Apollo, Aureole, Don Quixote, Cinderella and Pierrot Lunaire.

THE STORY

This is the story of a dancer. It describes the struggle of an impoverished and misunderstood boy against his environment, enfolds a dramatic and romantic success story and reveals unexplored scenes of Russian life. Above all, it traces the development of an exceptional artist who totally changed the face of ballet.

Nureyev was born on a train, in the vicinity of Irkutsk, on 17 March 1938. His mother and three sisters were on their way to Vladivostock to join his father who was a political instructor with the Red Army. Both parents were Moslem Tartars and Nureyev never regarded himself as Russian. His early years were spent in a poverty-stricken village near Ufa. The farnily of five shared one room with an old couple and existed on an irregular diet of potatoes. He was permanently hungry and inadequately clothed. On his first day at kindergarten, he wore his sister’s dress and had no shoes. His mother carried him to school and all the children laughed and called him “the beggar”.

Shortly before hs sixth birthday, his whole world changed. His mother smuggled him into a ballet performance at the local theatre. The impact of the experience had such a magical effect that, from that moment, he resolved to become a dancer. He joined the folk dance class at school and could think of nothing else. At home he danced and sang continuously. His father planned a military career for his only son and found these artistic inclinations frivolous and unmanly. He beat him for dancing. Nureyev was always frightened of his father and, even in his teens, could never look him in the eye.

Nureyev was always a loner. About tlvs time he discovered a small hill near hs home fkom which he could observe the people of Ufa going about their daily lives. It had a good view of the Bath House, which was the social centre on a Saturday morning, but, more important, it dominated the railway station. He was magnetised by the trains and, throughout his childhood, spent hours each day watching them and imagining himself aboard.

It was not until he was 17 that Nureyev took one of those trains. He saved up and bought the cheapest ticket to Leningrad (St Petersbwg). He made his way to the Kirov Theatre and asked for an audition with the Ballet. He was 18 years of age with almost no classical training but was accepted. Within three years, he had become the most outstanding dancer of his generation.

There were constant collisions with authority. He rehsed to become a Party member and in other ways maintained his independence. Matters reached a climax during the visit of the Kirov Ballet to Paris in June 1961. As the Company were waiting at Le Bourget

Airport to board the plane for London, Nureyev was told he would be returning immediately to Moscow. Eluding his two Russian guards, he gave a balletic leap over the barrier to freedom. Overnight, he became the most famous dancer in the world. He was 23.

The following season he made his dkbut with the Royal Ballet, in Giselle, with Margot Fonteyn. This legendary partnership generated international acclaim and they danced all over the world. They were ‘superstars’, bringing ballet to a new and wider audience. Nureyev was equally at home in the classics or modem dance styles, with a repertoire of more than 90 roles.Averaging 200 performances a year, he re-established the importance of the male dancer and his image was comparable with that of a pop idol.

With so much creative energy, Nureyev’s talents expanded beyond dancing. He choreographed five original ballets and remounted 20 more classical productions. He CO-directed films and appeared as an actor. He starred in a stage revival of The King andI. In 1983, he became Artistic Director of the Paris Opera Ballet, transforming it into one of the finest companies in the world, remaining, until his death, their Resident Choreographer.

Nureyev’s life-style was exotic but he never put down roots. He had a wardrobe of designer clothes, but invariably wore well-worn garments. He had homes in Paris, Cannes, London, New York and a farm in Maryland, as well as an island between Capri and Positano. The island had previously belonged to the dancer and choreographer Massine and, in a Saracen’s tower, there is a fully equipped dance studio. The island had been unoccupied for ten years and, with a concentration of energy and involvement, Rudolf set about making it habitable. A helicopter pad was made and building materials and furniture began to arrive. A gilded bath was ordered from Paris. Its perilous delivery by helicopter, swinging and glinting in the sun, was for Nureyev a moment of sheer delight. The Bath House at Ufa was far, far away.

Duration: 60'

Live from the Theatre des Champs-Elysees, Paris

With subtitles in Italian, English, French and German

A full-length concert from the Theatre des Champs-Elysees, Paris, featuring beautiful and rare arias from Vivaldi's operas. This Brian Large film showcases the repertoire from the bestselling Vivaldi Album (Decca, 1999) which catapulted Cecilia Bartoli to worldwide stardom. Bartoli's spectacular vocal pyrotechnics are supported by world-class Baroque ensemble and collaborators on the Decca album, Il Giardino Armonico.

Stage production by Robert Wilson

Duration: 104'

filmed in 16:9 widescreen

Sung in French with English and German subtitles

When the historic Theatre du Chatelet in Paris re-opened after a period of extensive refurbishment, the first two productions mounted in the theatre were Gluck’s Alceste and Orphée et Eurydice.

Both operas were sung in their French versions and were mounted and designed by Robert Wilson and conducted by John Eliot Gardiner. This was the first time Wilson and Gardiner had collaborated and their individual credentials combined to produce an exceptional result.

American polymath Wilson was responsible for some of the most ambitious avant-garde performance projects of the 1970s and 80s.Since the mid-1980s he has increasingly brought his prodigious creativity to works fiom the standard dramatic and operatic repertoire, transforming them into his own unmistakably minimalist yet grandiose visions. His styled, classical interpretations of Alceste and Orphée bear his trademarks of an uncluttered stage and the arresting use of colour and light. They are not so much timeless as, in Robert Wilson’s words, “full of time”. With their minutely rehearsed gestures, at once formal and poetic, the singers have the grace and elegance of Balanchine or Martha Graham dancers.

A key figure in the revival of Early Music, John Eliot Gardiner has long been a champion of Gluck’s French operas and is a great Gluck conductor. He received enormous critical acclaim for his musical direction of both Orphée and Alceste at the Chatelet, as did his orchestras and chorus. He sought to rid the operas of any vestiges of remoteness or venerable respectability and to release the huge emotional charge that lies behind the beauty of Gluck’s classical sobriety. The stories are, after all, he says, not only poignant and deeply moving, they have an immediate and contemporary relevance: they portray two married couples striving to protect their union and their love, plumbing the very depths of their emotional strength and summoning the courage to make huge personal sacrifices. “If presented in a way that’s immediate and with tremendous intensity and truth of expression then all the dross and superficiality of the stage action falls away and you’re left with what’s actually a very visceral connection between two living people.”

Television’s top opera director, Brian Large, worked closely with Robert Wilson and John Eliot Gardiner to ensure that the translation of live performance to the small screen is of the highest artistic and techcal standard.

John Eliot Gardiner chose to use Berlioz’s 1859 revision of Orphee, which adapted the tenor role of Gluck’s 1774 score for the contralto voice of Pauline Viardot, adjusting the register for a mezzo-soprano. Underlining his preference for this version, he performed the opera with the nineteenth-century period instruments of his Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique. His regular chorus, the Monteverdi Choir, excelled vocally and dramatically in its elegant contribution to the drama.

The Greek legend of Orpheus has captured the imaginations of many creative artists over the centuries. In this recording Magdalena Kozena brings to the role expressiveness, exceptional virtuosity and a rare emotion. Madeline Bender as Eurydice is possessed of a touching grace and beauty while Patricia Petibon is deliciously mischievous as Amour. All three of these young singers are among the cream of a new generation of operatic talent.