At the beginning of 1964, the music world experiences something completely unexpected. Maria Callas returns to the opera stage as the prima donna. Her “Tosca” at the Royal Opera House becomes a sensation. Maria Callas wants to show everyone once again that she deserves the title of “prima donna assoluta.” On the condition that star director Franco Zeffirelli take over the direction, the exceptional singer agrees to sing the role of Tosca. The BBC recorded the 2nd act of the opera for television. It is one of the most dramatic acts in opera history: in order to free the painter Cavaradossi from the hands of torturers, Tosca ends up murdering the police chief Scarpia. The film footage is one of the rare opportunities to see Maria Callas in an opera performance and to experience her highly emotional performance art and vocal abilities...

The grand scale and magnificent acoustics of the Roman arena in Verona are ideally suited to the pag...

After the great success of his Beethoven cycle, Christian Thielemann now turns with his new orchestr...

The production was the Vienna State Opera debut for the young Swiss conductor Philippe Jordan – the ...

Emmanuelle Haïm has established herself as one of the world’s leading performers, conductors and int...

Disciplined Italian composer Antonio Salieri becomes consumed by jealousy and resentment towards the...

This set has Edita Gruberova singing in top form, all her scooping cast aside, which one finds in ab...

This May 2010 production of Massenet's 1910 opera "Don Quichotte" marked the opera's centenary and a...
The writer Dario Fo applies his inventive genius to Rossini's comic opera in its premiere DVD releas...

Götterdämmerung, the final instalment of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung, is a story of human passions...

A musical drama based on Giuseppe Verdi's opera Rigoletto.

The life and career of Italian opera singer Farinelli, considered one of the greatest castrato singe...
The Christmas I Love’ is a very special Christmas gift – a collection of some of the most tender car...

Simon Rattle conducts the Berliner Philharmoniker in Stepháne Braunschweig's production of Richard W...

Viva Vivaldi! is a concert by the Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli interspersing arias from the...

The first-ever audio-visual recording of this opera – directed by Christof Loy, conducted by Marc Al...

Starring Jonas Kaufmann as Bacchus and featuring Emily Magee with Daniel Harding conducting the Vien...

The film covers a hundred years in the lives of the Ricordi family, the Milan publishing house of th...

Anton Bruckner’s 6th Symphony was written between 1879 and 1881: a very happy time in his life. Unli...

Handel's 1724 opera Tamerlano followed the success of his previous year's Giulio Cesare with another...

Premiered in 1787, “Don Giovanni” exposes the timeless theme of a man hovering between vitality and ...