DVD Videos

New German adaptation by WALTER FELSENSTEIN and HORST SEEGER based on the original score by HENRI MEILHAC and LUDOVIC HALÉVY.

Feature Film (coloured), produced in the DEFA-Studio, Babelsberg 1973.

A film production of the stage version by WALTER FELSENSTEIN.

Script and Direction WALTER FELSENSTEIN, GEORG MIELKE.

Arrangement and Musical Direction KARL-FRITZ VOIGTMANN.

Set Design PAUL LEHMANN.

Walter Felsenstein (1901–1975), founder and general director of the Komische Oper in Berlin, was one of the twentieth century’s greatest creative theatre directors, who played a hugely important role in the revival of opera as a theatrical art form. A brilliant artist who directed over 190 productions during the course of his career, he was equally committed to the works, their creators, the ensemble and the audience. After 163 performances Felsenstein decided to make a film version of Ritter Blaubart. This film can now be enjoyed in a carefully restored digital form. Felsenstein’s forceful work on the musical and visual language of the opera film continues to influence other productions creatively. Felsenstein’s Ritter Blaubart is accompanied by the music of French composer Jaques Offenbach and was performed to great critical acclaim in Paris in 1866. Opera reviewer Oscar Bie delightfully remarked: “How the music flourishes in soil like this. How the tragedy laughs, and how seriously the comedy takes itself. […] This is not opera, nor is it comedy, and only on occasions is it parody. No, this is something much more sublime altogether: it is that wonderfully shimmering realm, full of truth about life, which borders grand fates and all-conquering humour.” Felsenstein’s adaptation of this diversified opera affords countless opportunities for audiences to make associations, moments in which they are torn between laughter and abomination, but which all the while reveals an aptitude of theatrical magic one could only admire. The constant switching between comedy and tragedy is a fine balancing act that demands enormous self-discipline and ability from the performers. Felsenstein himself spoke of the “entirely new style of interpretation” the work required. This visionary theatre director, who played a hugely important role in the revival of opera as a theatrical art form, was exactly what this demanding opera needed.

Special Features on DVD: Script segments, sketches and drafts & performance segments, interviews, picture gallery.

"Arthaus’s scholarly and imposing ‘Walter Felsenstein Edition’ offers a fascinating glimpse of an important moment in operatic history now vanished." The New York Times

Directed by Gilbert Deflo

Set Design and Costumes by William Orlandi

Arthaus presents an exceptional Manon from the Opera Paris on DVD. With American star soprano Renée Fleming in the manyfaceted title role, Argentinean tenor Marcelo Álvarez opposite her and Spanish opera conductor Jesús López-Cobos, this production provides first-rate listening and viewing of one of the masterpieces of French opéra lyrique.

The musical excellence of the performers in this production is outstanding. Renée Fleming’s Manon is womanly and seductive, her voice perfectly cultivated in this enormously demanding role, that requires change of register, sentiment and expression more often than almost any other operatic role. The combination of vocal beauty, stylistic versatility and commitment to dramatic portrayal made her Paris Manon an enormous success, in an interview she comments, “I think Manon is my favourite role. I love French music, it is so elegant and delicate stylistically. It has both dramatic and lyrical elements”.

Renée Fleming is partnered by the brilliant Marcelo Álvarez, who is hailed as „one of the hottest tenors on the international scene“ (Opera News), in the role of the Chevalier des Grieux. Together they present an absolutely moving final scene, when Manon dies in her lover’s arms, proving them one of the dream teams of the international opera scene.

The staging by Gilbert Deflo had its first performance at the Bastille opera in Paris in June 1997 and proved to be an unforgettable experience complete with splendid historical costumes by William Orlandi, sophisticated lighting, opulent ballet dancing and colourful mass scenes. The minimal décor of darkly shaded abstract backdrops further accentuates the magnificent, colourful costumes – thus shifting the focus onto the interaction between the characters of the drama. This is supported by the close-up filming, so that the viewer can actually experience an intimate filmed drama.

Staging and Artistic Direction - Walter Felsenstein

Film Direction and Script - Walter Felsenstein, Georg Mielke

Set Design - Rudolf Heinrich, Herbert Michel

German Translation by Walter Felsenstein, using the adaptation by Max Brod. Electronic recording (black-and-white) in the Studio Adlershof Berlin, 1965

Walter Felsenstein (1901–1975), founder and general director of the Komische Oper in Berlin, was one of the twentieth century’s greatest creative theatre directors, who played a hugely important role in the revival of opera as a theatrical art form. A brilliant artist who directed over 190 productions during the course of his career, he was equally committed to the works, their creators, the ensemble and the audience. “Vixen is a work I fell strangely in love with […]” said Felsenstein and created a fable with a distinctive dramatic structure. By directing this opera Felsenstein illustrated the amazing nature of the piece with all its philosophical depth and poetical power. His production of The Cunning Little Vixen is supported by the visionary setting of Rudolf Heinrich. The bright and energetic music of the Czech composer Leoš Janácek comprises humanity and offers pleasant warmth to the stories of gifted poet Rudolf Tesnohlídek. Felsenstein describes Leoš Janácek as “[…] a unique and inimitable phenomenon in the history of music.”

The production narrates the life story of a little fox. It contains a fi ne mix of cute and funny elements together with serious realism in one story. Two early performances were given on 11 and 12 May ahead of a guest performance by the Komische Oper in Prague. The premiere took place on 30 May 1956. The magnetic recording of this production by Deutscher Fernsehfunk took place in 1965 at the Adlershof studios. With its profound and touching story the Cunning Little Vixen is an opera like no other.

Special Features on DVD: Facsimile & texts, interviews, speech of Walter Felsenstein, piano reduction.

"Arthaus’s scholarly and imposing ‘Walter Felsenstein Edition’ offers a fascinating glimpse of an important moment in operatic history now vanished." The New York Times

World Premiere Recording on DVD

Set and Costume Design by Maurizio Balò

A fake death, a perverse woman and a pure woman, a man torn between them, a murder: the story of Edgar, Giacomo Puccini’s second opera, is full of dramatic turns of events. Arthaus Musik presents this powerful and tragic opera now in a version which was count for lost for nearly 120 years.

For the first time the original version in four acts of Edgar by Giacomo Puccini was staged at the Teatro Regio in Turin in 2008. Thanks to the rediscovery of the manuscript score, after 119 years since the first and only performance in Milan in 1889 and after numerous versions condensing the opera in three acts, it will be again possible to experience the original opera that Puccini wrote. It was only when the American Puccini expert Linda B. Fairtile began reconstructing the original orchestration of the almost 40-minute final act that the composer’s granddaughter, Simonetta Puccini, came up with the intact score. José Cura, acclaimed all over the world for his intense interpretations, is Edgar. His rich and brilliant tenor voice, together with his fascinating stage presence, make him one of the most charismatic and sought-after artists in the world. With him, two prima donnas, two artists of great charm and with skyrocketing careers: the Italian soprano Amarilli Nizza and the Russian mezzo-soprano Julia Gertseva.

Sound Format: PCM Stereo, DD 5.1

Picture Format: 16:9

DVD Format: DVD 9, NTSC

Menu Language: GB

Subtitle Languages: IT, GB, DE, FR, ES, Japanese

Running Time: 157 mins

FSK: 0

Region Code: 0

Directed, Set Design and Costumes by Stefano Poda.

Thaïs, a mature work by the composer Jules Massenet on the libretto by Louis Gallet, it is based on the novel of the same name by Anatole France. The new production of this rarely performed work is the result of more than a year of close collaboration between the forces of the Theatre and Stefano Poda, responsible, for the first time in Italy, for the direction, choreography, sets, lighting and costumes. On the podium, Gianandrea Noseda, who, seduced by the dramatic force and modernity of the orchestral writing, conducts Thaïs for the first time; a debut also for the protagonist Barbara Frittoli, who has chosen the Regio to make her debut in this difficult role. Georgian baritone Lado Ataneli gives an impressive study of the monk Athanaël. Purified of the anticlerical excesses of Anatole France’s original novel, the libretto by Louis Gallet retains the sensual charge, and above all, the irony which, though remaining underplayed, contributes to keeping alive a subject that has possible references to the contemporary world. The taste for the orient that characterised French culture during the nineteenth century had become, by the end on the century, a truly dominant theme in literature, painting and theatre. In Thaïs, which had its debut in 1894, exoticism becomes the vehicle of a trend which is explicitly decadent, containing themes typical of fin-de-siècle art, i.e. the contrast between sacred and profane, transgression and the figure of the femme fatale. The story, which stands out against the background of Alessandria in Egypt in all its opulence and refinement, culture and indolence, presents us with the crossed destinies of Athanaël, a Cenobite monk whose missionary zeal borders on fanaticism, and Thaïs, a famous courtesan who, worried about the transience of her beauty, lets herself be convinced to search immortality in the love of God.

Sound Format: PCM Stereo, DD 5.1, DTS 5.1

Picture Format: 16:9

DVD Format: DVD 9, NTSC

Menu Language: GB

Subtitle Languages: IT, GB, DE, FR, ES, JP

Running Time: 139 mins

FSK: 0

Region Code: 0

all zones, 16/9 PCM stereo, DTS 5.1

Subtitles: Fr, En, Ger, Spa

197 minutes

Bonus: After the show / interview with Oliver Py..…

Offenbach's masterpiece, based on three stories by the German author E.T.A. Hoffmann, is both a three-act opera and a trilogy of taut, individual dramas, all rolled into one.This Geneva production from 2002 features baritone Marc Laho in the tour-de-force triple villain roles, with three different standout sopranos as the tales' three heroines. French producer Olivier Py caused an uproar among Geneva operagoers with a staging of Tales of Hoffmann that features full-frontal male and female nudity and simulated on-stage lesbian and heterosexual sex.Audiences were left "gasping, giggling or reduced to stunned silence" by the production, which interprets the popular opera as an indictment of capitalist society. Py adds several simulated sex acts, including one between the poet Hoffman and the life-sized doll Olympia as she sings her main aria. Soprano Patricia Petitbon is a major tour de force as she sings Olympia wearing only a transparent body stocking in a Venetian bordello.

Director for TV - Brian Large

Marta Domingo’s famous production of this increasingly popular ‘operetta’; the only version of this particular ending to the piece available on DVD.

A valuable addition to Decca’s catalogue of Puccini DVDs. The piece is barely represented on DVD and Marta’s Domingo’s famous production is one of several recently which have started to make this work more a part of the standard operatic repertoire.

The operetta is famous for the beautiful aria ‘Doretta’s Dream’, used in the Merchant Ivory film of a Room with a View. However, the piece is in fact full of Puccini’s luscious melodies, albeit written in a lighter manner than usual.

Marta Domingo’s production was celebrated yet controversial for adapting the ending to reflect the more tragic outcome of the story; this is one of three endings Puccini wrote for the opera and Decca’s DVD will be the only available release of this version.

Excellent cast led by the beautiful Spanish soprano Ainhoa Arteta. American Marcus Haddock plays her suitor and the soprano Inva Mula is also notable in the role of Lisette.

EXTRAS: PBS introduction to the opera

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.

Set Design by Dirk Becker & Costume Design by Renée Listerdal.

A bleak wind chord of E flat minor opens Richard Wagner’s Götterdämmerung. It establishes the dominant atmosphere of the piece from its first bar: twilight, a deceptive half-light, prevails. Shadowy figures stumble towards the abyss. The last evening of the Ring is one of plotting and betrayal, of ominous oaths, a chilling lust for power, abuse and humiliation – and, also, of a superbly staged apocalypse, when the beings and things destined for destruction shine brightly for one last time. The leitmotivs and thematic ideas from throughout the whole tetralogy recur in Götterdämmerung, intensified and woven into a musical web from which there can be no escape. Everything appears to fit together fatally with everything else. There is nothing more to be done. The net of catastrophe is knotted too fatefully for that, both musically and dramatically. When Wagner sat down to write a prose outline of what turned out as the last part of the Ring, he called it Siegfried’s Death. That was in the year of revolutions, 1848. The new title, usually translated as Twilight of the Gods, came later (Bernard Shaw called it Night Falls on the Gods but that never caught on). All the threads of the drama run now towards the hero’s fall. The death of Siegfried precipitates the final dissolution of the gods’ world, set in train by Wotan when he impiously tore a branch from the World Ash-Tree, and to which the god was already resigned long ago, before he knew of Siegfried’s conception. The natural order has been diverted from its proper course, and the last hope of righting it rests with Siegfried – the human being of the future. He knows no constraints, no fear of violence moderates his thirst for action, he is naïve and spontaneous. To Wagner he represented Utopia, Thomas Mann described him as “harlequin, god of light and anarchistic social revolutionary”, Shaw as “a totally unmoral person, a born anarchist, the ideal of Bakunin, an anticipation of the ‘overman’ of Nietzsche”. Yet he is unfree, nevertheless: he must run on the rails laid by Wotan and thus he is the instrument (one might say, war machine) of the failing power of the old gods as they wait for annihilation. The truly new, however, as Wagner saw it, can only rise from the ashes of the old. So Siegfried too must die, and Brünnhilde, magnanimous in forgiveness, assumes the roles of tragic heroine and redeemer by her self-sacrifice.

Set Design by Ezio Frigerio & Costume Design by Franca Squarciapino.

The Milan Otello traditionally opens the Scala season and did so in 2001 on 7 December, but at the same time it was the farewell production before the start of the three-year renovation of the house and not least a brilliant end to the Verdi Year. The audience as well as the press cheered Barbara Frittoli as a youthfully charming Desdemona, Leo Nucci as cleverly self-controlled Iago and Plácido Domingo as a thrilling Otello, both from the dramatic and the singing point of view. Domingo had been the leading Moro di Venezi for a quarter of a century, and in Milan he said farewell to this role – “in triumph”, according to ‘The Herald Tribune’. Graham Vick’s direction, which treats the emotional drama of the protagonists in a sensitive rather than sensationalist way, no doubt contributed in great measure to the success of this production. The cylindrical uniform stage set by Ezio Frigerio emphasised the hopeless consequence of the tragedy, as did the Orchestra della Scala, which, under the baton of Riccardo Muti, never sacrificed the dark, disturbing elements of the score to the rich melodious sound. Moreover, Muti deviated from the traditional performance in that he fell back on Verdi’s dramatically accentuated version of the finale of the 3rd act, which he wrote for Paris in 1894.

"Plácido Domingo is the finest Otello of our time, and Riccardo Muti is as good as any Verdi conductor around, so their partnership at La Scala, in a naturalistic production by Graham Vick, was guaranteed to be memorable…" The Guardian