DVD Videos

Set during the Second World War, this live recording of Ermione opened the Rossini Opera Festival in 2008.

An exceptional vocal cast, in particular Sonia Ganassi in the title role, described by David Blewitt in The Stage as “deploy[ing] an astonishing vocal armoury to searing effect. Her fury during the Act I finale is hair-raising”

This production sees a collaboration between cousins Roberto and Daniele Abbado, nephew and son respectively of celebrated conductor Claudio Abbado.

Lovingly restored, using the finest state-of-the art technology, Classic Archive features great performances from legendary artists, offering a unique historical glimpse into our classical heritage, in this case, a beautifully crafted biography of the legendary Hungarian-born conductor, Ferenc Fricsay, whose tragically early death in 1963 prevented him from earning the celebrity of the likes of Karajan or Bernstein. This film portrays the maestro conducting rehearsals and concert performances of works by Kodaly, Smetana, Dukas and Mozart. Tamas Vasary, Kurt Masur,Yehudi Menuhin and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, all of whom worked closely with him, talk about the man and his remarkable artistry. From archive footage, we discover the marvellous technique of this passionate and elegant conductor, who was compared to Toscanini, and the imaginative language he used to bring music to life during his rehearsals with various orchestras from Budapest to Berlin via Munich.

Recorded in concert in Madrid in 1984, Alfredo Krauss sings a predominately opera focused recital of arias from Massent’s “Manon” & “Werther”, Gounod’s “Romeo et Juliette” and Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” & “La Favorite”. Krauss is still considered to be one of the finest vocal technicians ever. His superb abilities enabled him to sing the bel-canto repertoire, for which he was so justifiably famous, well into his 70’s. This DVD release is a must for all fans of this great tenor and anyone interested in great singing!

Renata Scotto, one of the greatest and most famous sopranos of the post-war period, is here recorded in her full artistic maturity and, through this vast and varied programme, demonstrates her solid technique and absolutely extraordinary musicality.

The performance of this recital ended an eleven-year absence of Scotto from the Japanese stage – a return she clearly relishes as she dedicates the rare musical gems in her performance to the Tokyo audience.

Together with famous arias from renowned operas she performs some rare and neglected works, notably Edgar (Puccini’s first opera) and Sole e Amore (written before the success of La Bohème) as well as Respighi’s songs and five unpublished songs by Verdi.

The DVD also features a two-minute forward by Renata Scotto (sub – E/G/F/Sp) and a thirteen-minute video featuring the madness scene, Lucia di Lammermoor, Tokyo, 1967

Director: Guido De Monticelli

Sets: Paolo Bregni

Costumes: Santuzza Cali

Lighting: Guido Mariani

Premièred at La Scala, Milan, in 1814, Il turco in Italia is a madcap ensemble opera with an inspired score that boasts music of both comic genius and extraordinary beauty, inspired perhaps by Mozart’s Così fan tutte, which was produced there immediately before Rossini’s drama buffo.

Set in Naples, it spins a crazy tale around a poet who uses the romantic entanglements of the inhabitants with a Turkish prince as inspiration for the plot of his next play. Ultimately, life imitates art as all ends happily, but not before a planned abduction leads to a chaotic situation of mistaken identity …

Subtitles: English, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese

The ’All Saints Day Concert’ - besides the New Year´s concert the most important Viennese music event - from the Musikvereinssaal, Vienna from 1986 with sacred music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Franz Schubert.

Superb soloists like Karita Mattila, Marjana Lipovsek, Robert Holl, Jerry Hadley and Jorge Pita, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the Vienna State Opera Chorus under the baton of maestro Abbado.

Rossini's wonderful comic opera, written when he was only 21, to an Italian libretto by Angelo Anelli, was first performed in Venice on May 22, 1813. Since then audiences have thrilled to such mezzos as Teresa Berganza and Marilyn Horne, in the title role of Isabella, the Italian girl who torments the Pasha into loving his own wife. Here rising star Christianne Stotijn, a BBC Young Generation Artist, moves into new repertoire in this production from Aix-en Provence, 2006, conducted by Rossini specialist Riccarda Frizza and directed by Toni Servillo.

The title La Gazza Ladra is translated as ‘The Thieving Magpie’, which as expected is a story based around the theft of some silverwear which a magpie has absconded for its nest, a crime which a servant girl is wrongly accused of. La Gazza Ladra is an "opera semiseria", a genre from Rossini’s time which was used to define a drama with a happy ending in which the innocent victim, unjustly condemned, should be saved from the scaffold at the eleventh hour and the rascal persecutor punished.