DVD Videos

Directed by FRANÇOIS ROUSSILLON

Choreography and Stage Direction by RUDOLF NUREYEV after Marius Petipa

Set & Costume Design by NICHOLAS GEORGIADIS

When Nureyev took up the position of Artistic Director of the ballet of the Paris opera in 1983, his words to the dancers of the ensemble so rich in tradition were, “Don’t talk, work”, and only two months later he presented his magnifi cent new production of Marius Petipa’s oriental ballet Raymonda. This production was of great importance both for Nureyev and for the ensemble, because it was his first choreography as newly-appointed director of the Paris ensemble. It laid the foundation for his personal relationship as choreographer, teacher and director with the dancers. There could not have been a better ballet than Raymonda to show to advantage the qualities of this ensemble, which is one of the foremost in the world of ballet. It is not only the three leading parts which are shown to advantage in numerous pas-de-deux, in a dramatic sword duel and in dream scenes, but there are also impressive solos for a dozen other dancers as well as many spectacular ensemble scenes, among them the splendid Hungarian dances, an exciting Spanish dance, a wonderful polonaise and fascinating pas-de-quatre and pas-de-six.

The documentary by François Roussillon examines the various aspects of this ballet, which has become a classic in the repertoire of the ballet ensemble of the Paris opera through Rudolf Nureyev’s choreography. Nureyev’s innate talent for dancing and the perfection of his rehearsal work made Raymonda one of the greatest masterworks of ballet history.

Directed by FRANÇOIS ROUSSILLON

Choreography and Stage Direction by RUDOLF NUREYEV

Set & Costume Design by EZIO FRIGERIO

Romeo and Juliet, composed by Sergei Prokofi ev in 1935, is one of the few long great ballets that are also known to a broader public. In contrast to Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, and the Nutcracker, however, there are not many original choreographies for Romeo and Juliet which are acknowledged as masterworks of ballet history and are passed on with only a few tactful alterations.

Nureyev’s choreography for Romeo and Juliet was created for the London Festival Ballet in 1977, and in 1984, shortly after he had taken over as director of the ballet of the Paris Opera, he produced the large-scale and gloriously colourful fresco for the company of the Paris Opera. His version, which takes into account all parts of the score, follows Shakespeare’s original very closely, and it is said that he read and studied the text again and again. The numerous crowd scenes, folk dances and fencing scenes, which are danced with extraordinary vitality, are proof of Nureyev’s outstanding talent as a dancer and choreographer. In 1995, two years after Nureyev’s death, the production with its exciting and innovative choreography and the almost too over-ornate décor was resurrected once more for the ballet of the Paris Opera and adapted to the prevailing taste. With its magnifi cent renaissance décor by Ezio Frigerio and the luxurious costumes, the ballet is one of the most magnifi cent productions of the Paris Opera. The title roles, which were danced by Monique Londoérs and Patrick Dupond in 1984, were given to the dancers Elisabeth Maurin and Manuel Legris , who had begun their careers in the corps de ballet under Nureyev. With the help of Nureyev’s long-time assistant Patricia Ruanne they tried to recapture the energy, passion and staying power for this new production, which is the prerequisite for the breathtaking aura of Nureyev’s choreography.

Aspect Ratio: 16:9 - 1.77:1

Subtitles: German, English

All regions

The Salzburg Festival has hosted every great star of the opera and concert hall, from Toscanini to Anne-Sophie Mutter, from Fischer-Dieskau to Barenboim, from Pollini to Mitsuko Uchida. In this film, the first to tell the story of this remarkable Festival, set in the birthplace of Mozart, director Tony Palmer has been granted unprecedented access to Austria’s film archives. Highlights include performances of Jedermann from 1920 to the present day featuring actors such as Maximilian Schell and Klaus Maria Brandauer; Don Giovanni (with Furtwängler in 1954 and a controversial performance directed by Peter Sellars in the 90s); a wealth of footage of Herbert von Karajan, including performances and never-seen-before home movies; and film of the Nazi hierarchy at the Festival during the Second World War. Alongside this historical footage, the film interviews contemporary stars such as Placido Domingo, Valery Gergiev, Lang Lang, James Levine, Anna Netrebko, Riccardo Muti and Simon Rattle, who tell their stories and open their hearts about this unique Festival.

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.

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.