A Good Person

Allison's life falls apart following her involvement in a fatal accident. The unlikely relationship she forms with her would-be father-in-law helps her live a life worth living.

Bernd Alois Zimmermann - Die Soldaten

Arabella

Arabella, Op. 79, is a lyric comedy or opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, their sixth and last operatic collaboration.

Rigoletto

In Rigoletto, the deformed figure of the hunchbacked jester at the Mantuan court acts as a foil to his cynical and powerful master, an unscrupulous philanderer contrasted with his cruel and unforgiving fool. Rigoletto encourages and welcomes the Duke's conquests, pitilessly mocking his victims until he discovers that the Duke has abducted the one person he genuinely loves, his own daughter. As a result, the character of the court jester is transformed into a tragic figure who, in spite of his evident immorality and malice, allows us to sense the devotion he feels for his daughter and his horror at being destroyed by the same despotic world as that which he himself has helped to create.

The Phantom of the Opera

The deformed Phantom who haunts the Paris Opera House causes murder and mayhem in an attempt to make the woman he loves a star.

Andrea Chenier

France, 1792. Chenier is an idealistic poet, in love with the aristocratic Maddalena. While Chenier supports such notions as "liberte, fraternite egalite," his sympathies do not extend to the current Reign of Terror. Likewise, the Revolutionary Tribunal has no need for poets or their girlfriends, especially those judged to be an Enemy of the State. Heads will roll.

Pavarotti, chanteur populaire

Although he is unanimously credited with having democratised opera, making it accessible to the greatest number, focus is rarely put on the strategy he devised and implemented in order to carry out his actions, nor what his actions reveal of the man and artist, and of the resulting metamorphosis from opera singer to pop artist. Through this angle, this film sets out to pay tribute to the man who summed up his credo, obsession and life’s work, in the following way: “They led the public to believe that classical music belonged to a restricted elite. I was the way to prove to the world that was wrong.

Tchaikovsky: The Enchantress

Originally set in the 15th c century, Tchaikovsky's "The Enchantress" is updated to the present day in this innovative production. The charismatic, emancipated Nastasya, who rejects the advances of the devious Mamïrov, duly faces the implacable forces of traditional values in a society riven by divisions between liberal freedoms and religious orthodoxies. The tragic outcome engulfs everyone...

Viridiana

Viridiana is preparing to start her life as a nun when she is sent, somewhat unwillingly, to visit her aging uncle, Don Jaime. He supports her; but the two have met only once. Jaime thinks Viridiana resembles his dead wife. Viridiana has secretly despised this man all her life and finds her worst fears proven when Jaime grows determined to seduce his pure niece. Viridiana becomes undone as her uncle upends the plans she had made to join the convent.

Naši furianti

River of Fundament

Visionary artist Matthew Barney returns to cinema with this 3-part epic, a radical reinvention of Norman Mailer’s novel Ancient Evenings. In collaboration with composer Jonathan Bepler, Barney combines traditional modes of narrative cinema with filmed elements of performance, sculpture, and opera, reconstructing Mailer’s hypersexual story of Egyptian gods and the seven stages of reincarnation, alongside the rise and fall of the American car industry.

Bobbie of the Ballet

Wealthy Jack Stimson (Jay Belasco) falls in love with Broadway diva Velma Vrooman (Gretchen Lederer), and for her sake bankrolls the musical production in which she is currently starred. But when Velma proves to be fickle and unreliable, Jack shifts his affections to humble chorus girl Bobbie (Louise Lovely).

Broken Fetters

Macbeth

This hard-edged postmodern production of Giuseppe Verdi's haunting masterpiece brings the story of Shakespeare's bloody tragedy to vivid life, characterized by spine-tingling atmospherics and a triumphant debut by American baritone Thomas Hampson in the title role. This Zurich Opera House production also features a mesmerizing turn by Paoletta Marrocu as the beautiful, power-hungry Lady Macbeth, while striking sets and costumes further enhance the duality of the main character whose rise and fall mirror the darkest impulses of man. Replete with supernatural mystery, sexual tension, and violent power plays, this timeless story remains gripping and chilling for today's audiences and boasts some of the most astonishing music of Verdi's legendary body of work.

Der Rosenkavalier

With their “comedy for music” in the spirit of Mozart, Richard Strauss and his inspired librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal created the most popular of all their works and one of the most frequently performed operas of all time. In the guise of a gossamer-light and supremely entertaining high-class comedy, Der Rosenkavalier touches on universal themes such as love, sex, marital fidelity and the changes that human relations undergo over time – and all of it set to music of the most glorious kind imaginable. With its stellar cast under the inspired direction of Harry Kupfer, the 2014 Salzburg Festival’s production of Der Rosenkavalier was one of the most internationally acclaimed interpretations of the work since the start of the new millennium. “A musical feast from beginning to end“ (Wiener Zeitung).

Wildfire

Since they met the first time in boarding school as little kids, it was obvious that the orphans Kay and Dave would become a couple. But at sixteen, Dave foolishly attempted to rob a bank with a water pistol, and ended up in jail for eight years. Meanwhile Kay was sent to foster parents, where she met the successful business man Mike, whom she married and bore two kids. Now Frank is released from prison and immediately starts wooing Kay again. Although she's happy with Mike, she can't withdraw herself completely. Old memories and her husband's jealousy make her spend more and more time with him.

Cavalleria rusticana

Franco Zeffirelli directs these two legendary La Scala productions telling tragic tales of jealousy. Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana features performances by Elena Obraztsova, Plácido Domingo, and Renato Bruson. Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci stars Teresa Stratas, Plácido Domingo, and Juan Pons. Both are conducted by George Pretre. This production of Pagliacci earned director Franco Zeffirelli the coveted Emmy as Best Director in the category of Classical Music Programming.

Good Stock On The Dimension Floor: An Opera

A collectively made filmic opera in 35 parts. The Black and predominantly queer art collective, an evolving line up of poets and artists from across the world, abstracts and reimagines opera in any traditional conception. Set to hip-hop, blues, noise, R&B and electronica, the piece uses the voice (chanting, singing, screaming; written by poet and activist Dawn Lundy Martin) as its primary tool, verbalising centuries of alienation, vulnerability and protest in the global African diaspora through its disruptive libretto.

Mädchen in Uniform

A sensitive girl is sent to an all-girls boarding school and develops a romantic attachment to one of her teachers.

Amahl and the Night Visitors

One night in Judea, a disabled shepherd boy-turned-beggar and his mother are visited by three strangers. They are the Three Kings, and they are on their way to Bethlehem to visit the Christ Child, who has just been born.