DVD Videos

Legendary Broadway stars Alfred Drake and Doretta Morrow head the cast of this made-for-TV musical about the adventures of Marco Polo, with songs and dance numbers based on themes by Rimsky-Korsakov. Hailed by the The New York Times as “an eye-filling version of a fascinating story, accompanied…by superior music”. Marco Polo is rich in songs and exotic numbers, offering a rare opportunity to see Alfred Drake and Doretta Morrow (the stars of the Broadway hit Kismet) together on screen.

This special edition DVD presents two complete productions of Victor Herbert’s beloved operetta Babes in Toyland, both produced for television by Max Liebman. Barbara Cook stars in the 1955 version, and Jo Sullivan in the 1954 one.

Live Telecasts of December 18th, 1954 and December 24th, 1955 (152 minutes)

Charles Ferdinand Ramuz wrote 'Souvenirs sur Igor Stravinsky' several years after collaborating with the composer on his ballet 'Les Noces' in Switzerland in 1916.

Today, on the shores of Lake Geneva, two women, an actress and a conductor, meet to rehearse the piece. Drawing on Ramuz’s reminiscences of that unique collaboration and on the work of two artists grappling with a masterpiece of modern music today, 'Weddings' (Noces) speaks of the strength of musical friendship.

BONUS

Special Features :

- 4 deleted scenes

- Audio excerpts from Stravinsky's Soldier's Tale read by Charles Ferdinand Ramuz

BOOKLET

An interview with the film director, some excerpts from Les Noces and unpublished photos and articles.

French-speaking programme. English subtitles available

Total running time 1h32

32-page 4-colour booklet

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.

Production by Robert Lepage

This is a re-release – on our own label for the first time – of our prize-winning DVD, We Want the Light.

The title is taken from a poem by a 12-year-old girl, Eva Pickova, written in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Her words provide both the title and the climax – in a setting for two choruses and orchestra by the American composer Franz Waxman, in his touching work The Song of Terezin. It is a film is about many things. It is about freedom and captivity, about emancipation, acculturation and assimilation; it is about the roles played by Moses and Felix Mendelssohn in the dream of fruitful, unproblematic integration of the Jews into German society after their liberation from the ghettos; it is about Richard Wagner, his ferociously anti-Semitic essay Das Judenthum in der Musik (The Jews in Music) and his influence on the thinking of the Third Reich but, most of all, it is a film about how much music can mean to people, even in the direst of circumstances, or particularly in the direst circumstances.

Picture format: 16:9 anamorphic

Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo

Subtitles: EN/FR/DE/ES

Running time: approx 330 minutes

Production by Robert Lepage

Production by Robert Lepage