"Actor: Angela Denoke"

• Die Tote Stadt - Korngold | DVD | (06/08/2002) from £20.00   |  Saving you £4.99 (24.95%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Any fan of Alfred Hitchcock - and in particular of Vertigo his film in which Kim Novak gives male fantasies something to feed on - is certain to love Eric Wolfgang Korngold's Die Tote Stadt (The Dead City). This was the finest opera to come from the pen of this composer of film scores who found both fame and fortune in Hollywood. It relates the remarkable tale of the protagonist Paul and his individualistic approach to dealing with the loss of his beloved wife Marie. As the drama unfolds all is not what it seems - dream and reality intertwine as Paul attempts to come to terms with the past in exchange for a tolerable future.

• Janacek: Katia Kabanova --Salzburg Festival | DVD | (01/07/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  With its overt love interest and focus on individual isolation, Katia Kabanova is the first of the four operas that crowned the productive last decade of Leos Janacek (1854-1928). The operatic idioms of Dvorak and Verdi are transmuted through his singular soundworld, whose vocal lines convey subtle speech inflexions and whose orchestral writing has a keen pathos and surging emotional intensity. Christoph Marthaler's production for the 1998 Salzburg Festival updates the provincial Russia of the 1850s to that of the 1990s, a decaying tenement block whose inhabitants live out a futile existence. It neither enhances nor undermines the music, in which Angela Denoke's wan Katia gradually gains in conviction, culminating in a touching "mad scene" and ill-fated reconciliation with her lover Boris. David Kuebler is powerful in this role, while Jane Henschel is characterful but lightweight as Kabanicha (mother-in-law) and Hubert Delamboye sympathetic as Katia's put-upon husband Tichon. Sylvain Cambreling, an experienced opera conductor, directs the Czech Philharmonic skilfully and with flair. On the DVD: Katia Kabanova arrives on disc with a 16:9 aspect ratio that captures the many oblique camera angles and perspective shifts; and sound in LPCM Stereo, Dolby 5.1 and DTS options. Subtitles are in five European languages, and there are 29 access points. There are no special features, apart from the regular TDK trailer, but the booklet has a useful, if generalised synopsis of the opera.--Richard Whitehouse

• Die Walkure | DVD | (01/12/2003) from £25.00   |  Saving you £4.99 (19.96%)   |  RRP £29.99

  A performance of the Richard Wagner opera by the Stuttgart State Orchestra. Conducted by Lothar Zagrosek.

• Richard Strauss: Salome (Arthaus: 108037) | Blu Ray | (31/01/2012) from £30.05   |  Saving you £-0.06 (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Live aus dem Festspielhaus Baden-Baden

• Cardillac - Hindemith | DVD | (09/07/2007) from £21.58   |  Saving you £1.41 (6.10%)   |  RRP £22.99

• Wagner: Der Ring Des Nibelungen (Lisa Gasteen/Robert Gambill/Stuttgart Opera/Lothar Zagrosek) | DVD | (27/09/2010) from £83.68   |  Saving you £-13.69 (N/A%)   |  RRP £69.99

  Wagner: Der Ring Des Nibelungen