Claude D'Anna's film of Verdi's Macbeth is a gloomy affair, stressing the descent into madness of the principal villains. It's acted by the singers of the Decca recording of the opera (with two substitutions of actors standing in for singers) and the lip-synching is generally unobtrusive. The musical performance is superb, conducted by Riccardo Chailly with admirable fire, and sung by some of the leading lights of the opera stages of the 1980s. Shirley Verrett virtually owned the role of Lady Macbeth at the time, and she delivers a terrific performance, the voice equal to the role's wide register leaps and it's suffused with emotion, whether urging her husband on to murder or maddened by guilt in the Sleepwalking Scene. Leo Nucci's resonant Macbeth may lack the ultimate in vocal color and steadiness (his last notes of the great aria Pietà, rispetto, amore are wobbly) but he compensates with intensity in both singing and acting.
First staged at the Teatro La Fenice in 1846, Verdi’s ninth opera, Attila, returns to the stage of L...
Rufus Wainwright's original opera finds Emperor Hadrian devastated after his lover Antinous drowns i...
Manon Lescaut's production was updated and it worked. Highly professional production with two of the...
Scenes from Ruggero Leoncavallo's opera with Canio, the clown, introducing actors who are seen in pa...
This production from Covent Garden is set in Stockholm, and not Boston. With Reri Grist (Oscar), Pla...
Alfredo, a young man from the provinces, falls in love with Violetta, the stylish toast of Paris. Bu...
German composer Richard Wagner wrote Parsifal, which is a three-act opera that tells the story of th...
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La Rondine (The Swallow) is possibly the least performed of Giacomo Puccinis later operas, but is st...
Based on Gluck's masterpiece and performed entirely on location in and around the environs of the Ba...
Richard Eyre’s stunning new production of Bizet’s opera was the talk of the town when it was unveile...
Adaptation of John Gay's 18th century opera, featuring Laurence Olivier as MacHeath and Hugh Griffit...
Robert Lepage’s remarkable Met Opera production of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, the 2013 Grammy...
Ring Cycle, pt 4. Siegfried is drugged and tricked into kidnapping his wife, since she has the Ring ...
O Die Zee is a modern Dutch retelling Homer's Odyssey in the form of a rock opera. It was performed ...
For those with any interest in Vivaldi's operas Orlando Furioso is essential viewing, being a 1989 S...
Features: Mario Del Monaco Leyla Gencer Ettore Bastianini Fedora Barbieri Laura Londi Plinio Clabass...