DVD Videos

Gustavo Dudamel, Gramophone magazine’s "Artist of the Year" 2011 and Grammy award winner 2012, leads the classical summer live and TV event of 2012: The Summer Night Concert with the Vienna Philharmonic.

The concert takes place on June 7th in the gardens of Schönbrunn Palace. Last year’s Summer Night Concert was a huge success.

In 2012 a total of 62 countries on five continents will share in the spectacle, including a BBC4 broadcast in the UK.

This year the main theme is Dances and Waves, a programme showcasing symphonic and operatic highlights.

As is now customary, the first part of the 2012 New Year‘s Concert from Teatro La Fenice is exclusively orchestral, with Symphony No.5 by Pyotr Tchaikovsky. The second part, with soloists Jessica Pratt, Walter Fraccaro and Alex Esposito as well as the choir, is dedicated to melodrama, ending with the traditional chorus “Va pensiero” from Nabucco and the toast “Libiam ne lieti calici” from La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi.

The twenty-seven year old conductor and violinist Diego Matheuz is a graduate of the internationally known Venezuelan Sistema and is already widely known as one of the most promising developing talents from the Americas. In 2005 he began studying conducting and soon attracted the attention of Sir Simon Rattle and Claudio Abbado, with whom he worked in Caracas, Lucerne and Bologna.

In September 2011 he was appointed as Principal Conductor of the Teatro La Fenice.

Sound Format: PCM Stereo, DD 5.1

Picture Format: 16:9, 1080i High Definition

Format: DVD 9, NTSC

Running Time: 108 mins + 27 mins (bonus)

FSK: 0

Region Code: 0 (DVD)

Worldwide available

Sets & Costumes by PIER LUIGI PIZZI

Arthaus presents a new production of La Gioconda recorded at the renowned opera house in Barcelona. The staging was realized in cooperation with the Arena di Verona and successfully shown in the famous opera festival’s 2005 programme. The Barcelona production features internationally acclaimed singers as well as celebrated soloists and ballet dancers from the Gran Teatre del Liceu – all showing a musically and dramatically impressive performance of this melodrama. The title role is sung by American soprano Deborah Voigt, one of the most important dramatic sopranos in her generation. Critics have praised her „lyricism, beauty of tone and dramatic acuity“ and her „impressive aura and voice.“ Polish contralto Ewa Podle appears as her blind mother, delighting the audience with the overwhelming warmth and broad range of her voice while convincingly conveying her character’s suffering. The Canadian tenor Richard Margison takes the role of the exiled nobleman Enzo and the Italian baritone Carlo Guelfi sings the spy and agent provocateur Barnaba. Both excel opposite the two female characters. The ballet – set to the famous “Dance of the Hours” – deservedly received extended ovations. The choreography – danced by two star dancers of the Barcelona ballet – tells a love story in view of ongoing time, symbolised by the twelve hours.

La Gioconda is a typical Romantic opera reflecting various strands of 19th-century European melodrama. Even though it rests on the foundations of French grand opera, most obviously in its third-act ballet, the work follows the Italian and especially the Verdian tradition with its inspired arias, wonderful choruses and impressive orchestration. At the same time the vocal writing and a number of its dramatic effects point the way forward to verismo. The sets and costumes of the present production are the work of the distinguished Italian architect and director Pier Luigi Pizzi, whose staging is classical in its nobility.

Sound Format: PCM Stereo, DD 5.1, DTS 5.1

Picture Format: 16:9

DVD Format: 2 x DVD 9, NTSC

Subtitle Languages: IT (Original Language), GB, DE, FR, ES, Catalan

Running Time: 174 mins

FSK: 0

This unique DVD package includes excerpts from the operas by Verdi, Rossini and Ponchielli from the successful New Year’s Day Concert in the Teatro La Fenice in 2004. Eight years after a huge f re burned down the grand opera house of Venice in 1996 the reopening was celebrated with a series of amazing concerts. The highlight was certainly the final concert which was broadcasted live by the Italian state television channel RAI and is now eternalized on this DVD. During the programme of great opera choruses and arias, orchestral music and ballet scenes the audience can not only admire the delightful music but also the restored glorious interior decoration.

Throughout the world, international opera stages have recently discovered the sheer talent of Italian soprano Stefania Bonfadelli and tenor Roberto Aronica who both contribute to the concert’s distinctive atmosphere. Ballet stars Greta Hodgkinson and Roberto Bolle glamorously supported the event through their beautifully expressive dancing. Besides the amazing performances of the singers and dancers, Lorin Maazel’s delectable conducting is highly enjoyable and makes this concert an unforgettable event.

Sound Format: PCM STEREO, DD 5.1, DTS 5.1

DVD Format: DVD 5, NTSC

Picture Format: 4:3

Running Time: 59 mins

FSK: 0

Produced and Designed by Filippo Sanjust.

Amilcare Ponchielli’s sole operatic work La Gioconda made him a major figure in Italy. It was not just the title that made it such a success – “La Gioconda” is the Italian term for the famous Leonardo da Vinci painting that is better known to the Englishspeaking world as “Mona Lisa” – but rather its music and the poetic quality of Arrigo Boito’s score.

Amilcare Ponchielli‘s opera La Gioconda was recorded for this DVD at the Vienna State Opera in 1986 Direction and set design were by Filippo Sanjust, choreography by Gerlinde Dill and Adam Fischer conducted the choir and orchestra of the Vienna State Opera. The international stars Eva Marton und Plácido Domingo guarantee an opera experience to remember, lending the two main protagonists in the drama a powerful vocal presence on the stage. The Italian set designer and director Filippo Sanjust, (1925-1992) worked on Luchino Visconti‘s Don Carlos in 1958 in London; he also designed the sets for the world premieres of Hans Werner Henze‘s operas The Young Lord (1965) and Bassariden (1966). He made his debut as a director with a production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart‘s Die Zauberflöte and subsequently went on to direct operas at major houses all over the world. For the most part, Sanjust showed a preference for historicist solutions or classically severe representations.

Subtitles: English, French, Italian, Japanese

Gioconda is rarely performed, except for the famous Dance of the Hours, which became popular also thanks to Walt Disney’s Fantasia.

This co-production of Arena di Verona, Barcelona’s Teatro Eliseo and Madrid’s Teatro Real, directed by Pier Luigi Pizzi, is quite stunning. In the cast are Andrea Gruber, Carlo Colombara, Marco Berti, Ildiko Komlosi, Elisabetta Fiorillo and, debuting in the Dance of the Hours, Roberto Bolle, star of La Scala who has appeared in the most important theatres of the world. This music, on which Ponchielli worked for twenty-six years, seems to prefigure Puccini while, at the same time, echoing Verdi. To date Gioconda is one of the works most loved by audiences.

The opera was filmed in High Definition (HDTV).

Special Features:

Donald Voorhees in conversation with Birgit Nilsson, Leontyne Price, and Renata Tebaldi (from the program “First Ladies of Opera”, originally telecast 01/01/67

Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Colour, DVD-Video, PAL

Language English

Region: All Regions

Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1

Number of discs: 1

Classification: Exempt

DVD Release Date: 24 Sep 2007

Running Time: 51 minutes

Renata Tebaldi’s numerous appearances on television made her unique among her contemporaries. Four complete operatic performances as well as televised concerts and guest appearances on major variety programs in the U.S. and abroad have made their way to home video. The soprano’s glowing physical presence made her a natural for the TV cameras while the sumptuousness of her voice asserted itself through even the flimsiest of television speakers.

Tebaldi made three appearances on the Bell Telephone Hour between 1959 and 1967. As collected here, the six arias demonstrate the soprano at the height of her powers in five of her greatest roles. (Though Tebaldi never performed Cavalleria Rusticana on stage, she did make a stunning studio recording of the opera.) The two Butterfly arias from 1959, radiantly sung, are amongst Tebaldi’s first TV appearances, taken from a program that also holds the distinction of being one of the earliest extant color telecasts. By 1967, Tebaldi was clearly comfortable in the spinto-dramatic repertoire with an awesome use of the chest register in the Cavalleria and Gioconda arias. This collection will delight the myriad fans of one of this century’s most beloved divas.