"Actor: Barbara Hendricks"

• Falstaff - Giuseppe Verdi - The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden | DVD | (07/05/2007) from £13.82   |  Saving you £5.43 (43.23%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Verdi was almost eighty when he startled the musical world with his mastery of comic invention in his last opera Falstaff with its brilliant libretto by Arrigo Boito. The story is taken from Shakespeare's play The Merry Wives of Windsor although the central character is much closer to the Falstaff of Henry IV. The roguish Sir John embroils himself in numerous plots and dupes of love and marriage until eventually the Merry Wives get their revenge on him and all plans are thwarted. When Carlo Maria Giulini returned to conducting public performances of opera after an absence of fourteen years he chose this comic masterpiece for the occasion. The great lyric baritone Renato Bruson sings the title role. Katia Ricciarelli leads the trio of merry wives with Lucia Valentini-Terrani as Mistress Quickly and Brenda Boozer as Meg Page. Leo Nucci sings the role of Ford and the young lovers are here portrayed by Dalmacio Gonzalez and Barbara Hendricks. Stunning designs by Hayden Griffen and Michael Stennett provide the perfect setting for this witty interpretation of Shakespeare's masterpiece.

• Offenbach: Des Contes D'Hoffmann | DVD | (25/04/2001) from £19.85   |  Saving you £6.40 (34.43%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Unfortunately the qualities that make Jacques Offenbach's operetta The Tales of Hoffmann an irresistible melodic profusion of wit, dash and unfailing high spirits are only in evidence in the playing of the Lyon Opera Orchestra under Kent Nagano: operetta, more than its serious cousin, continues to be fair game for the whims of producers and designers. In this case an excellent cast including Daniel Galvez-Vallejo as Hoffmann, Natalie Dessay as Olympia, Brigitte Balley as Nicklausse and Isabelle Vernet as Giulietta, as well as Gabriel Bacquier who sings three roles, are obliged to perform Offenbach's operetta in a lunatic asylum designed by Philippe Starck as a three-dimensional grey set, topped with barbed wire. The production by Louis Erlo adapts and cuts scenes to fit this concept, so the tavern scene where Hoffmann sings his celebrated number "The Legend of Kleinzack" disappears, as do the chorus who are banished to the wings. In this environment there's no room for charm or even a kind of mad-hatter behaviour. The cast are reduced to stereotypes and of necessity singularly unlovable ones. What a wasted opportunity. The sound is excellent as it is on two fillers: a short film of Penderecki conducting his choral work, The Seven Gates to Jerusalem from the Midem festival at Cannes and a trailer for a Lyon Opera House production of Berlioz's Damnation of Faust. --Adrian Edwards

• The Rake's Progress | DVD | (28/11/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Inger Aby's stunning film version of Stravinsky's opera The Rake's Progress won the coveted 1995 Prix Italia in the music and arts section the industry's most prestigious prize. The film stars Greg Fedderly as the innocent Hakan Hagegard as Nick Shadow and the counter-tenor Brian Asawa in the role of Baba the Turk. Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Choir. Stravinsky's neo-classical masterpiece is a tale of innocence entering a pact wi

• Barbara Hendricks And The Monty Alexander Trio - A Tribute To Duke Ellington | DVD | (06/06/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  A tribute to the Duke featuring tracks such as 'Duke's Place' 'The Creole Love Song' 'Take The A Train' 'Love You Madly' 'I Let A Song Go Out In My Heart' and 'In A Sentimental Mood'.

• Great Arias With Placido Domingo | DVD | (25/07/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

• Offenbach: Les Contes d'Hoffmann | DVD | (01/03/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £22.99

  Offenbach - Hoffmann (Guingal Choir Of Teatro Regio Parma)

• Barbara Hendricks - Live At Basilique De Saint Denis | DVD | (26/03/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Conducted by Jean Claude Casadeus & Mate Rabinovsky and featuring Barbara Hendricks & Carl John Falkam Rrecital includes Gloria and Requiem

• Barbara Hendricks - A Portrait | DVD | (17/05/2004) from £27.89   |  Saving you £-2.90 (-11.60%)   |  RRP £24.99

  A portrait of the American soprano Barbara Hendricks with rare backstage footage plus excerpts from performances and rehearsals of 'The Marriage of Figaro' 'Rigoletto' 'La Boheme' plus much more.