"Actor: Claron McFadden"

• Reves D'Un Marco Polo - Vivier | DVD | (03/01/2006) from £2.49   |  Saving you £27.50 (1,104.42%)   |  RRP £29.99

  A performance of the Vivier opera in two acts that tells a mystical story which centres on the character called Agni. Reinbert De Leeuw conducts.

• A Night With Handel | DVD | (25/10/1999) from £16.24   |  Saving you £0.01 (0.07%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Sultry sopranos and contraltos brood in candle-lit churches or at the top of a shopping mall escalator; a shaven-headed tough menaces enemies with a knife, singing of vengeance and death in a terrifying counter-tenor rasp; a couple sing of fulfilment in the back of a limousine. Jonathan Keates remarks in his accompanying lecture that the heroes and heroines of Handel's opera are real people, whose passions transcend the baroque libretti they are singing; by taking them out of full-bottomed wigs and panniered frocks and putting them at large in contemporary London at night, this interesting documentary reminds us of the immediacy of these arias. This would not work, of course, were not the performances exemplary in their own right and presented with a driving urgency that takes us away from the pieties of the oratorio tradition and reminds us what a superb and popular man of the theatre Handel was. --Roz KaveneyOn the DVD: The DVD comes with the narration in English, French and German, and subtitles in those languages. The arias are also playable as audio only. --Roz Kaveney

• L'Incoronazione Di Poppea - Monteverdi | DVD | (01/08/2005) from £16.10   |  Saving you £13.89 (86.27%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Almost four decades before creating his Poppea Monteverdi wrote in the preface to his fifth book of madrigals The modern composer must create his works solely on the basis of the truth - a credo to which the music of his final opera is utterly faithful.Poppea is a potent work from opera's first true creator and pioneering genius. The fact that at the close of this highly charged 'dramma in musica' he allows evil to triumph over good (albeit temporarily) has frequently led to his being decried as amoral.Monteverdi's timeless masterpiece which creates a deep involvement in performers and audiences alike is brilliantly captured in this High Definition live recording of Pierre Audi's moving and beautifully style production from Het Muziektheater Amsterdam in 1994.

• Weihnachtsoratorium BWV 248 - Christmas Oratorio Part 1 To 6 | DVD | (31/12/2007) from £26.98   |  Saving you £-6.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A performance of Bach's Christmas Oratorio recorded in Herderkirche in Weimar in 1999. John Eliot Gardiner conducts the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists.

• Gluck - Orpheus and Eurydice: Opera in 3 Acts | DVD | (17/07/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £8.99