Georges Bizet's 1875 opera about Carmen, the colorful cigarette factory worker whose flirtations with the soldier Don José are forgotten in her love for the matador Escamillo, is the source for director Francesco Rosi's cinematic version of the same story. Plácido Domingo sings the part of Don José, Julia Migenes-Johnson sings Carmen, and Ruggero ...
Puccini's classic opera of a trusting woman and how her love was tragically betrayed comes to the screen in this faithful film adaptation. In the 19th century, an American sailor named Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton (Richard Troxell) arrives in Japan and meets a 15-year-old girl named Cio-Cio-San (Ying Huang), whom he calls Butterfly. Butterfly falls ...
An international collection of well-known directors contributed to this compilation film, each fashioning a short film inspired by an aria from a famous opera. The approaches vary broadly, from the playful abstraction of Jean-Luc Godard's segment, which illustrates Armide with exercising body-builders, to the more literal approach of Franc Roddam, ...
One of the most popular stage musicals in the history of Broadway and London's West End makes its long-awaited arrival on the motion-picture screen in this lavish adaptation directed by Joel Schumacher. Christine (Emmy Rossum) is a beautiful and gifted young woman who longs to join the company of the Paris Opera House. During rehearsals for one of ...
Trevor Nunn's acclaimed 1993 production of Dubose Heyward and Ira Gershwin's classic fable of the tragic love affair between crippled Porgy (Willard White) and beautiful but troubled Bess (Cynthia Haymon) was widely acclaimed as one of the definitive stagings of one of America's best-known operas. Nunn restaged his production for a television ...
A longtime pet project of Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera The Magic Flute was finally brought to the screen in 1973. While the opera itself is offered in a highly stylized and theatrical fashion, the fluidity of the camerawork turns the affair into a purely cinematic experience. Sung in Swedish, the libretto ...
Dr. Jonathan Miller, onetime Beyond the Fringe trouper, who was one of the leading lights of the PBS Shakespeare productions of 1978-83, serves as director of The Beggar's Opera. This adaptation of John Gay's lusty 18th-century "play with song" stars The Who's Roger Daltrey as robber captain MacHearh. Stratford Johns co-stars as Peachum, king of ...
Most baby-boomers are familiar with the Powell-Pressburger production of the Offenbach opera Tales of Hoffman only through the full-color stills from the film which were reproduced in the "Motion Picture" section of The World Book Encyclopedia. If this is your only memory of the film, we advise you to seek out a copy of this lengthy but visually ...
This TV adaptation of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado was produced by British Home Entertainment in 1966 and released to American public television one year later. John Wood heads the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in a virtually uncut version of the venerable comic opera. The story, set in an old Japan that never existed outside the imaginations of ...
Sophia Loren, complete with blackface and an Afro, came to international acclaim in this fairly literal version of the Giuseppe Verdi opera. Loren (with singing dubbed by Renata Tebaldi) portrays the title character, an Ethiopian slave owned by Amneris (Lois Maxwell), the daughter of the Egyptian king. Aida's romantic heart is her weakness, as she ...
Russian filmmaker Vera Stroyeva specialized in a cinematic adaptations of famous operas. One of the most successful of these was her 1955 film version of Mussorgsky and Pushkin's Boris Godunov. Stroyeva's adaptation deftly streamlines the story of a Russian czar whose life is placed in jeopardy by a pretender to his throne. A. Pirogov sings the ...
Filmed opera can be deadly if not done right; fortunately, The Medium is in the loving and capable directorial hands of the man who wrote the piece, Gian-Carlo Menotti. Slightly expanded from the one-act stage version, this is the story of fraudulent medium Marie Powers, whose mute and crippled son Leo Coleman helps to fleece her customers. During ...
The opening chapter of Guiseppe Verdi's wildly popular, career-defining trilogy that also includes Il Trovatore and La Traviata makes the leap from the stage to the screen in this 1946 film starring Tito Gobbi, Mario Del Monaco, and Janet Vidor and featuring Oliviero de Fabritiis conducting the Rome Opera Orchestra. Arias and duets are performed ...
The tragedy of Puccini's heartbreaking romance comes to life on stage in this production starring Angela Gheorghiu, Roberto Alagna, and Ruggero Raimondi and directed by Beniot Jacquot. The Royal Opera House - Covent Garden performs Puccini's timeless score as Antonio Pappano conducts. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
Katerina Izmailova is a filmization of Dmitry Shostakovich's long-suppressed 1936 opera. Galina Vishnevskaya stars as Katerina, a bored 19th century farm wife. At the behest of her grungy lover, Katerina murders her husband and her father-in-law. She and her new beau are both sent to Siberia, where the lover almost immediately takes up with a ...
This BBC film version of Benjamin Britten's darkly dramatic opera The Turn of the Screw (which was based on a novella by Henry James) was brought to the screen by director Katie Mitchell. With music performed by the London Sinfonia under conductor Richard Hickox, this imaginative presentation of the famous work features performances by Mark ...
Puccini's famous opera gets a royal treatment, a few million dollars worth of it, in costumes and sets for this 1956 cinematic production. Although this is filmed opera performed on a stage, the singing and the performance, as well as the visuals, are excellent. Floria Tosca (sung by Maria Caniglia, performed by Franca Duval) has fallen in love ...
Ave Maria was the second film-starring vehicle for legendary operatic tenor Beniamino Gigli. Mourning the loss of the only woman he ever loved, concert singer Tino Dossi (Gigli) is temporarily shaken from his doldrums by vivacious Montmartre entertainer Claudette (Kaethe Von Nagy). Dossi doesn't realize that Claudette is merely using him to ...
Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) was the first big-name composer of operas in the middle of the Baroque era of classical music. This film of his version of the story of Orpheus and the underworld was made by the famed opera director and set-designer, Jean-Pierre Ponelle, with soloists and choir from the Zurich Opera House of Switzerland. In a step ...
The Kent Opera company presents the Legend of Troy in all its splendor in this filmed production of Michael Tippett's words and music. Conducted by Roger Norrington. Rodney Macann, Sarah Walker, Howard Haskin, and Anne Mason star. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
Jan Kiepura and Marta Eggerth, a pair of gifted opera singers who were also husband and wife, were at the height of their fame in 1936 when they starred in this Viennese screen musical. Denise (Eggerth) is an aspiring singer whose audition for a production of La Bohème strongly impresses Rene (Kiepura), another performer hoping to land a role in ...
At the time of its release, this filmization of Verdi's opera Il Trovatore was praised for its "cinematic" qualities: that is, it didn't look like just another photographed stage play. Director Carmine Gallone even expanded upon the battle sequences that are usually sketchily presented on stage. At 102 minutes, the film takes a lot less time ...
This is a four-hour film performance of Wagner's opera "Parsifal" - about the legend of the Holy Grail (the chalice from which Christ drank at the Last Supper) and the Sacred Spear used by Longinus to pierce the side of Christ. In the opera both of these revered objects were brought down from Heaven and installed in a magic temple on a sacred ...
Luciano Pavarotti stars in this lavish production of Verdi's tragic tale of love and corruption. Directed by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, this 1990 staging of Rigoletto captures Pavarotti is strong voice, with the superstar tenor supported by Edita Gruberova and Ingvar Wixell. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
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