Classical Bluray Dvd

In November 2004 a new name caused listeners to prick up their ears on the international orchestral scene: under Claudio Abbado’s artistic guidance the Orchestra Mozart came into being. It combines both young instrumentalists on the threshold of a first-rate career as well as eminent chamber musicians such as Danusha Waskiewicz, Alois Posch, Jacques Zoon, Michaela Petri, Ottavio Dantone, Mario Brunello, Alessio Allegrini, Jonathan Williams and Reinhold Friedrich. As with his famous Lucerne Festival Orchestra, Abbado hand-picked an ensemble to his liking, this time one of early- and Baroque-music specialists, all masters in their field.

Here is Death in Venice in high Visconti style, ravishingly designed in greys and silver blues, and inimitably Italian in the classical elegance of its settings. No other production of this opera has so successfully transported the audience through a series of fully conceived sets – starting out from a graveyard built of piles of books, along the Grand Canal, checking in to a black-and-white marble hotel, and then out on to the beach, where the games of Apollo take place under the gaze of the god’s giant statue.

The Vrijthof concerts have been going for ten years and this anniversary was all the excuse André Rieu needed to make things extra festive and put on a fantastic, unforgettable anniversary concert with his new DVD, ‘Love In Venice’ – a selection of favourites from the concert. For this tenth concert series he had the Vrijthof square specially decorated in Venetian style, complete with a Doge’s Palace, Rialto Bridge, a fabulous Italian fountain and a colourful Venetian masquerade and it was a party from start to end.

How good to see Riccardo Chailly so radiant at the end of this great event.It's an exhilaration he earns through sheer hard work as well as injecting the adrenalin at most of the right moments.(Majority) of the singers are excellent,from two very different but keenly-projected lyric-dramatic sopranos,Erika Sunnegardh and Ricardo Merbeth,to Georg Zeppenfeld,whose bass is rock solid and expressive across a huge range.Chailly holds attention between movements and makes you realise how many soloists within the orchestra have to sing,too.His Leader,the superb Sebastian Breuninger,assists him between blazes in the most striking of chamber-musical moments.Breuninger shares the front desk of viloins in Claudio Abbado's Lucerne festival Orchestra,but this one Mahler symphony Abbado's forces have yet to tackle,and Chailly's rendering leads the field on DVD. (BBC Music Magzine)

This DVD is a new production of the Puccini favourite, staged at Salzburg 2012.Tenor Piotr Beczala rocks as Rodolfo, Mimì’s lover. Massimo Cavalletti sings Rodolfo’s friend Marcello with uncommon finesse and beauty of tone. Nino Machaidze is a moving Musetta.The robust orchestration of this popular opera verges on the ethereal as Mimì’s life slips away. Throughout his reading, conductor Daniele Gatti strikes the perfect balance between sentiment and sentimentality, vigour and fragility, the specter of untimely death and the quick and young it haunts. The New York Times wrote, “You don’t often hear Mimì sung with such vivid character and sheer charisma.”

A red hot ticket at the Metropolitan Opera in 2010/2011 was Donizetti's comic gem, Don Pasquale, with Anna Netrebko reviving Norina, the part that made her a star in New York. Opera summed up the simple truth: ". . . everyone adored her". John Del Carlo's impressive singing and acting chops as the Don are given every boost by Otto Schenk's hilarious staging and James Levine's witty conducting. Leading this opera for the first time at the Met, the renowned maestro demonstrates that his gifts suit Donizetti as perfectly as Wagner. Mariusz Kwiecien and Matthew Polenzani scintillate as Malatesta and Ernesto.

Ariadne auf Naxos is one of many beautifully crafted operas created by Richard Strauss and his librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal. In the compelling production from the Zurich Opera, recorded on this DVD, Christoph von Dohnányi leads a particularly strong cast of singer-actors in a thrilling interpretation of the work. Ariadne is sung by the American soprano Emily Magee, who has received worldwide praise for her performances in works by both Wagner and Strauss. The German-born Italian tenor Roberto Saccà, who is regarded as one of the leading lyric tenors of his generation, takes the part of Bacchus. Both made their role débuts under Christoph von Dohnányi’s subtle yet sensual leadership, and both were acclaimed for their vocal radiance, subtle handling of the text and the care that they lavished on the technical aspects of their parts.

This is the first EuroArts release in cooperation with the San Francisco Opera, internationally recognized as one of the top opera companies in the world Renée Fleming as “America's most-loved and most-lauded opera singer”(The Times, London) played Lucrezia Borgia with passion and outstanding virtuosity in line with a top-notch cast: Michael Fabiano, Elizabeth DeShong and Vitalij Kowaljow. Fleming plays a femme fatale renowned for her ruthless pursuit of power that reveals poignant vulnerability when she comes face to face with her long-lost son. Led by internationally acclaimed conductor Riccardo Frizza.

Plácido Domingo‘s triumphant “return” to his baritone roots (his first debut with the Mexican National Opera, in 1959, was as a baritone), is captured in this stunning DVD of the Teatro alla Scala’s 2010 production of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra. Domingo is joined by Anja Harteros, Ferruccio Furlanetto and Fabio Sartori in this Daniel Barenboim conducted performance, directed by Federico Tiezzi.

This is a Beethoven Symphonies Cycle of the 21st century! Christian Thielemann and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra perform Beethoven Symphonies Nos. 1 – 9 incl. and each DVD includes a one-hour-long documentary for each symphony.
Includes an hour-long documentary for each symphony where Maestro Thielemann and Joachim Kaiser (the most famous German music critic) discuss and analyze in an entertaining conversational exchange Thielemann’s interpretation, complemented by excerpts from rehearsals as well as by comparisons of Beethoven cycles with Karajan, Bernstein etc. – no aspect of Beethoven’s symphonic œuvre will remain unaffected!