New Releases

A new release of EuroArts successful series My Favourite Opera. Here we study the results of involvement with a specific role. We witness musical and stage rehearsals in 1991, listen to what the artists have to say about the work in progress and share in private moments.

“I can feel deep into Giulietta’s soul” explains Katia Ricciarelli. The world famous and distinguished Italian star soprano fascinates as Giulietta in Vincenzo Bellini’s I capuleti e i Montecchi alongside Diana Montague (as Romeo), Dano Raffanti (Tebaldo), Macello Lippi (Capellio) and Antonio Salvadori (Lorenzo).

This opera is inspired by the tragic love story of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. It is an opera about power, hate, jealousy, rivalry, love. The role of the Giulietta was one of the high points of Katia Ricciarelli’s career.

Katia Ricciarelli is best known for her roles in Rossini, Verdi and Puccini Operas but also appeared on screen and won the best actress prize Nastro D’Argento for her role in Pupi Avati’s La seconda notte di nozze.

This intimate portrait of a great opera singer also reveals how an opera production at the highest level is created.

Picture format DVD: NTSC 16:9

Sound format DVD: PCM Stereo

Region code: 0

Languages: English, German, French

Booklet notes: English, German, French

Running time: 58 mins

This DVD Box will be released in honour of Claudio Abbado’s 80th anniversary on June 26th. It contains an extensive collection of concert recordings and the documentary Hearing the Silence, capturing the outstanding work and repertoire of this formidable conductor on 8 DVDs.

Claudio Abbado, musical director of the Teatro alla Scala in Milan (1968-1986) and the Berliner Philharmoniker (1989-2002) has always been supportive to the younger music generation and hence founded excellent orchestras such as the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, European Union Youth Orchestra and the Orchestra Mozart. His musical career took him all over the world to the most prestigious opera and concert houses from Milan, London, Chicago to Berlin, Vienna and Bologna. A tremendous achievement which is captured in this Box.

These 8 DVDs contain marvellous recordings of Beethoven, Mussorgsky, Stravinksky, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Verdi, Mahler and Bach performed by excellent Orchestras such as the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, accompanied by exceptional soloists like Alfred Brendel , Andrea Rost, Karita Mattila, Barbara Bonney all conducted by one of the greatest conductors of our time.

Picture format: NTSC 16:9

Sound formats: PCM Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS 5.1

DVD 2 & 5 PCM Stereo

Region code: All (worldwide)

Booklet Notes: English, German, French

Running Time: Disc 1: 97 mins, Disc 2: 79 mins, Disc 3: 94 mins,

Disc 4: 122 mins, Disc 5: 67 mins, Disc 6: 84 mins,

Disc 7: 106 mins, Disc 8: 100 mins (total 749 mins)

This DVD includes Brahms outstanding Trio in A minor for clarinet, cello and piano as well as the Trios Nos. 1, 2 and 3 for piano performed by the well–acclaimed pianist Elena Baschkirova, who established in 1988 the International Jerusalem Chamber Music Festival. Wenzel Fuchs (clarinet), Maxim Vengerov (violin),

Boris Pergamenschikow (cello) and Dietmar Schwalke (cello) complete this extraordinary ensemble.

New Release on Euroarts's sub-label: Recorded Excellence – Historical Value. The aim of the new series is to make accessible to music lovers and collectors top-quality recordings documenting extra-special concert performances that were hitherto unreleased or were no longer available, either for the first time or as re-releases on DVD.

Brahms is famous for his blend of Classicism in form with a Romantic harmonic idiom. There is a singular beauty in the music Brahms wrote towards the end of his life, compositions of an autumnal melancholy to which the Trio for clarinet is particularly well suited.

Picture format DVD: NTSC 4:3

Sounds format DVD: PCM Stereo

Region code: 0 (worldwide)

Booklet notes: English, German, French

Running time: 117 mins

Staged by Patrice Chéreau

The legendary production of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck, formerly released by Warner Music, again available on DVD.

A splendid opera under the musical direction of Daniel Barenboim and staged by his close friend Patrice Chérau.

When Alban Berg saw a performance of the existentialist drama Woyzeck by Georg Büchner, he said it left such a tremendous impression on him that he immediately made up his mind to set it to music.

Berg is recasting Büchner’s fragmentary drama in a nearly expressionistic way. His music tears into the flesh. Berg’s Wozzeck is not just an opera about social compassion, it is an opera in which fear finds consummate musical expression.

This extraordinary performance at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden was staged by Patrice Chéreau who can be called one of the greatest theatrical directors of this century.

Outstanding opera singers Franz Grundheber, Waltraud Meier, Graham Clark, Günter von Kannen and Mark Baker and many others complete this great opera performance.

Picture format DVD: NTSC 4:3

Sound format DVD: PCM Stereo

Region code: 0 (worldwide)

Subtitles: English, German, French, Italian, Spanish

Booklet notes: English, German, French

Running time: 97 min

Nigel Lowery / Amir Hosseinpour, staging

Nigel Lowery, set & costume design

Re-Release of the successful DVD on Blu-ray Disc.

For more than 25 years René Jacobs has dedicated his life to baroque operas and works with the best ensembles for early music. On the occasion of the Haydn Year the renowned Freiburger Barockorchester and outstanding baroque opera singers such as Marlis Petersen, Alexandrina Pendatchanska, Pietro Spagnoli and Tom Randle presented Haydn’s most successful opera from the Berliner Staatsoper.

"Orlando Paladino", written in 1782, was Haydn's most famous opera during his lifetime, with thirty performances in Esterháza in the first two years after its composition. The libretto, a "drama eroicomico", gives scope to Haydn's frequently puckish sense of humour, as well as his inventive melodic expression. Most semi-serious operas of the period typically inserted comic characters into an essentially serious story but Haydn expanded the comic elements even into the more serious scenes.

Another very colourful and vivid staging by the successful team Nigel Lowery and Amir Hosseinpour.

Picture format Blu-ray: 1080i Full HD, 16:9

Sound formats Blu-ray: PCM Stereo, DTS-HD Master Audio

Region code: All (worldwide)

Booklet notes: English, German, French

Subtitles: English, German, French, Italian

Running time: 168 mins

Director: Jean-Pierre Ponnelle

New Release on Euroarts's sub-label: Recorded Excellence – Historical Value. The aim of the new series is to make accessible to music lovers and collectors top-quality recordings documenting extra-special concert performances that were hitherto unreleased or were no longer available, either for the first time or as re-releases on DVD and Blu-ray Disc. The main focus is on artists and repertoire. The new series will showcase defining concert moments of music history.

Digitally remastered and restored from 35mm film. Including intensive and high-quality audio and visual restoration.

In the last part of five DVDs, seven-time GRAMMY® Award-winning pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim performs Sonatas 29 to 32 of the so-called 'New Testament' of music, Ludwig van Beethoven's thirty-two piano sonatas.

Composed over twenty-five years and embodying the shift of musical taste from the Classic to the Romantic, their performance requires a musician of extraordinary versatility. Daniel Barenboim is one such pianist – his recordings run the gamut from Bach and Mozart to Bruckner and Bartók. Infollowing in the footsteps of such masters as Artur Schnabel, Barenboim truly shows himself to be among the greatest living musicians.

Picture format DVD: NTSC 16:9

Sound format DVD: PCM Stereo

Region code: 0

Booklet notes: English, German, French

Running time: 125 mins

Kirk Browning, Director

Famous violinist Itzhak Perlman and Eugene Ormandy, long-standing conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra recorded this fantastic Russian program live at the Academy of Music, Philadelphia, in 1978 and 1979 in extraordinary sound quality.

Modest Mussogorsky’s most famous piano composition Pictures at an Exhibition which is deemed to be one of Ormandy’s specialties is orchestrated in the acclaimed Ravel version.

Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, which is considered as one of the best known and technically most challenging works for violin, is performed by Itzhak Perlman - undeniably the reigning virtuoso of the violin – who has also been called “one of the greatest musical talents to emerge since World War II” according to violin expert Tully Potter, New Grove.

The concert is directed by the Peabody Award winner Kirk Browning, who is highly acclaimed for staging classical concerts due to his long-time experience as television director and producer.

Picture format: NTSC, 4:3

Sound formats: PCM-STEREO, DD 5.1, DTS 5.1

Region code: 0

Booklet Notes: German, English, French

Running Time: 89 mins

Founded in 1844 as an “exclusive amusement establishment”, the Kroll opera left deep traces in the history of Germany.

This Documentary produced by Jörg Moser-Metius (Winner of the Silver Berlin Bear) tells the remarkable story of the famous Kroll opera house by including historical material as well as eye witness reports and references up to the present day. It illustrates the eventful days under conductor Otto Klemperer, following its inglorious appearance as an alternative seat of the Reichstag where Hitler passed the “Enabling Act”, up to the year 1990 when nothing is left of the building.

Moreover, the film captures the architectural, political and social developments of the center of Berlin as a place where “German history became manifest”.

Picture format DVD: NTSC 16:9

Sound format DVD: PCM Stereo

Region code: 0

Languages: German, English subtitles

Booklet notes: English, German

Running time: 59mins

Spectacular filming, 3D Blu-ray release!

The Berliner Philharmoniker, one of the worlds leading orchestras, and their Artistic Director Sir Simon Rattle, are highly acclaimed all over the world. Their 2010 tour concluded with their first visit to Singapore.

The orchestra presents Mahler’s unique and breathtaking First Symphony and Rachmaninov’s late Symphonic Dances,. The Philharmonic’s beautiful rendering of Mahler’s homage to nature and Rachmaninov’s nostalgic ode to Russia is taken to a new level in this 3D recording using state-of-the-art video and audio technology.

Join Sir Simon Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker on a musical journey that takes the concert experience to a breathtaking new level – a feast for eyes and ears in 3D!

Picture format Blu-ray: 1080i Full HD

Sound format Blu-ray: PCM Stereo, DTS-HD Master Audio Surround Sound

Region code: 0

Booklet notes: English, German, French

Running time: 120mins

Blu-ray case in slipcase + Sticker: plays on all Blu-ray players

The blind up-and-coming Japanese pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii - an astonishing virtuoso on his instrument – performs with the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg. In 2009 he hit the Top Ten of the Japanese Charts with his first album “début”. He also won the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2009.

At the White Nights Festival he played works by the Russian composers Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and Shostakovich. Here he plays Tchaikovsky’s famous Piano Concerto No. 1.

As a bonus Nobuyuki Tsujii performs his own Elegy for the Victims of the Tsunami of March 2011, a stirring and moving piece dedicated to his home country Japan.

This performance also includes Shostakovich Symphony No. 14.

Live recording from the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg, 8 July 2012.

Picture format DVD: NTSC 16:9

Sound format DVD: DD 5.1, DTS 5.1, PCM Stereo

Region code: 0

Booklet notes: English, German, French

Running time: 102 mins