Unitel

Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), WWV 86B, is the second of the four music dramas that constitute Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, (English: The Ring of the Nibelung). It was performed, as a single opera, at the National Theatre Munich on 26 June 1870, and received its first performance as part of the Ring cycle at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus on 14 August 1876.

Leonard Bernstein narrated by legendary screen star Lauren Bacall. The movie also relies extensively on Bernstein's own words to provide the counterpoint to the abundant visual material. Highlights include excerpts of Bernstein conducting masterworks by Beethoven and Mahler, as well as of the maestro with the New York Philharmonic in Moscow in 1959 before an audience which included composer Dmitri Shostakovich and the dissident poet Boris Pasternak. It also contains never-before-seen footage, such as outtakes from televised concerts and interviews. Among these special treats: the dashing 28-year-old maestro representing the U.S. at the 1947 Prague Spring Festival – possibly the earliest extant film of Leonard Bernstein.

Violetta, a courtesan much wooed by Parisian society, organizes a grand party that is attended, amongst others, by the young Alfredo Germont. He confesses his feelings to Violetta, who is already suffering from consumption. She vacillates between genuine affection and a realistic assessment of her situation as a "fallen woman", which precludes any lasting relationship with a man. The Willy Decker production of La Traviata, recorded live at the Salzburger Festspiele in August, 2005. Anna Netrebko stars as Violetta Valéry, with Rolando Villazón as Alfredo Germont and Thomas Hampson as Giorgio Germont. Carlo Rizzi conducts the Wiener Philharmoniker.

Like many of John Adams’ operas, Doctor Atomic is based on recent world historical events—here, the effusive Robert Oppenheimer, “father of the atomic bomb,” anxiously awaits the bomb’s first test in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Adams adapted the work into a symphony, comprising its three main acts. In the second half of the program, Adams conducts his 2015 violin concerto, Scheherazade.2, which restages the tale of the One Thousand and One Nights heroine as a strong woman navigating a patriarchial society, incarnated by the solo violin part. The work was composed specifically for Canadian-American virtuoso Leila Josefowicz and co-commissioned by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, who perform it to perfection. The evening then closes out with Tromba Lontana, an orchestral fanfare written to mark the 150th anniversary of Texas’s independence from Mexico in 1836.

Rigoletto is a jester in the court of the Duke of Mantua. He has a hunch-back and he's rather unattractive, but he's good at his job of humiliating the courtiers for the amusement of the Duke. The courtiers, of course, are not amused. The Duke is a ladies man who feels his life would be meaningless if he couldn't chase every skirt he sees. In fact, we learn as the opera begins that he's recently been noticing a young lady every Sunday on her way to church, and he's vowed to have his way with her. What nobody realizes is that the girl is the jester's beloved daughter, Gilda, and that Gilda has seen the Duke every Sunday and is smitten with him. Suddenly Count Monterone appears at court, furious that the Duke has seduced his daughter. Rigoletto ridicules Monterone, the Duke laughs, and Monterone casts an awful curse on both of them. Later, the courtiers discover that Rigoletto is secretly living with Gilda...

It's an event that draws many thousands of music lovers to one of the most beautiful cities in the world every summer: the opera season at the ancient Arena di Verona. The 2,000-year-old roman amphiteatre with its gigantic stage dimensions is one of the largest and best preserved Roman construction of its kind, and with over 22,000 seats it is undoubtedly one of the most spectacular open-air venues of the world! The revered master of opera Franco Zeffirelli, who died shortly before the premiere of Il Trovatore, created a legendary scenery with groups of giant sized armoured knights, a fortress turning into a luminous cathedral, an enormous choir, horses, breathtaking fights: “his perhaps best arena production” (Opernglas). It brings Anna Netrebko to the Arena of Verona where she is giving her much-anticipated debut in one of Giuseppe Verdi’s most popular operas.

A spectacular production of Aida filmed at Bregenz Festival's lakeside stage in 2009, with Carlo Rizzi conducting the Vienna Symphonic Orchestra and the Polish Radio Choir.

Internationally acclaimed Chinese film-maker Chen Kaige delivers an opulent staging of the fairy-tale story of Chinese Princess Turandot, who will only marry a prince capable of solving her riddles. With sumptuous costumes and palace sets designed in China, Kaige's production adds a compellingly authentic accent to Puccini's exotic orchestral palette. Zubin Metha and his brilliant Orquestra de la Comunitet Valenciana offer "genuine foreworks of sound" (Wiener Zeitung), Maria Guleghina triumphs as Turandot. Recorded in 2008 at the Palau de les Arts in Valencia. Zubin Mehta (conductor).

Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducts the Wiener Philharmoniker in this filmed studio performance of Mozart's opera recorded in 1988.

Giacomo Puccini's immortal opera, in a high budget feature-film version directed by Academy Award nominee Robert Dornhelm, stars opera's 'Golden Couple', Rolando Villazon and Anna Netrebko as the protagonists, Rodolfo and Mimi. The chemistry between them is electric, unrivalled in the theatre today. Russian soprano Anna Netrebko is not only beautiful but has a marvelous voice and technique; Mexican tenor Rolando Villazon, has a wonderful voice and an incredible charisma. The director not only wanted to remain steadfastly faithful to Puccini's design but also document two of the leading singers of the modern age rather than embarking on a 'trendy' contemporary re-creation.

A concert-film using innovative cinematic techniques to set music to images. As conductor Herbert von Karajan didn't like the experimental style, he had the film re-edited severely before release.

With a career that includes a 35-year tenure as composer of the Berlin Philharmonic and record sales topping 200 million, Herbert von Karajan is one of the most legendary figures in 20th-century classical music. Comprised of archival footage, performance highlights and interviews with the likes of Anne-Sophie Mutter, Christa Ludwig and Seiji Ozawa, this retrospective chronicles the life and times of the iconic Austrian maestro.

Triumphantly premiered in 1724 at the King's Theatre in London, George Frideric Handel's Giulio Cesare in Egitto masterfully combines human emotions: Triumph with sorrow, despair with happiness and love with profound melancholy in the face of the transience of all earthly life. Star director Keith Warner creates a production that imaginatively blends silent film and baroque opera, delightfully echoing Mankiewicz's legendary Cleopatra with Elizabeth Taylor, Rex Harrison and Richard Burton. An excellent cast of singers is led by two of the world's leading countertenors: Bejun Mehta and Christophe Dumaux. Louise Alder shines as the seductive Cleopatra. Patricia Bardon, Simon Bailey and Jake Arditti are further highlights in this extraordinary group of singers, while Ivor Bolton provides the appropriate soundtrack on the podium of the Concentus Musicus Wien.

An operetta with music by Johann Strauss II. However, he did not see the premiere. Wiener Blut is set at the time of the Congress of Vienna, 1814-1815, an international conference that sought to settle Europe after the upheavals of the Napoleonic Wars, and follows a traditional operetta plot full of mistaken identities. Count Balduin Zedlau, ambassador of the tiny court of Reuss-Schleiz-Greiz, is posted to Vienna. Count Zedlau is married but a real Don Juan always looking for a new encounter. Many of Strauss' compositions are used in the operetta although he did not specifically composed them for the operetta.

Olga Peratyatko and Atalla Ayan star in Rolando Villazón's scintillating production of Verdi's La Traviata at the Festspielhaus in Baden Baden, Germany. Supported by the Balthasar-Neumann-Chor and the Balthasar-Neumann-Ensemble.

In the Temesvar Province, a landowner returned from exile marries a gypsy girl who is revealed to be the daughter of a Turkish Pasha and the rightful owner of a hidden treasure. Next to "Die Fledermaus", DER ZIGEUNERBARON is Johann Strauss’s most popular operetta. The libretto gave Strauss the chance to revel in such contrasting musical forms as the Csárdás and the Viennese waltz. The style of the lied forms and ensembles is so original and finely balanced that the "Gypsy Baron" can truly be called a comic opera. Among the leading names of the stellar cast in this exuberant 1975 film of the operetta are Wolfgang Brendel, Ivan Rebroff, Janet Perry, Ellen Shade, Martha Mödl and, in the role that launched his career, Siegfried Jerusalem as Sándor Barinkay.

Sebastian, Chief Archer in the Roman Army, converts to Christianity. A favorite of Emperor Augustus, Sebastian's devotion to Christ eventually drives him to reject the Emperor's love, causing the Emperor to angrily order Sebastian to be shot with arrows by his fellow archers. The film retells this mystery play with a definite 'art-house' approach: an almost poetical use of language, singing, dancing, some homoerotic themes, and some special effects.

This 1978 studio production of the prologue to Wagner's masterpiece is the only segment of the famous Salzburg Festival/Metropolitan Opera productions, first seen in the 1960s, that made it to film. Based on one of those original productions, Georges Wakhevitch produced stage settings and transformations that supported Karajan's concept with every possible means. Herbert Von Karajan's staging is in the epic style of another age, emphasizing the dignity of the gods rather than their all too human failings. With the singers - foremost among them Peter Schreier - Karajan had an ensemble that fully conformed to his intentions.

Not every fairytale starts with the usual formula of “Once upon a time…”. However, all fairytales touch us with the power of their inherent fantasy. They blend the beautiful and the eerie into a magical world between dreams and reality. Hollywood and fairytales have developed a very special friendship that - this year - presents us with a fantastic concert experience in the land of mythical creatures.