"Actor: Kiri Te Kanawa"

• Bernstein - the Making of Westside Story (Te Kanawa) | DVD | (11/07/2005) from £14.29   |  Saving you £2.70 (18.89%)   |  RRP £16.99

  27 years after its Broadway premiere Leonard Bernstein went into a New York studio for Deutsche Grammophon to conduct his most famous work for the first time. In selecting his cast he decided to go for sound with the sumptuous operatic voices of Kiri Te Kanawa Jose Carreras and Tatiana Troyanos. This spellbinding film winner of the Prix Italia and the British Academy's Flaherty Award documents the stresses and strains exhilaration and eventual triumph in the making of a landmark recording.

• Le Nozze Di Figaro - Mozart | DVD | (09/05/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £21.99

  This luxuriously cast film of Mozart's beloved opera buffa features a host of legendary interpretations including Kiri Te Kanawa's exquisite Countess Almaviva Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as her philandering husband Hermann Prey as the wily title character Mirella Freni a delight as his no less savvy bride Susanna and Maria Ewing hilarious as the lovesick page Cherubino. Director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's imaginative camera-work tellingly emphasizes character and mood of this immortal story of love intrigue and class struggle set against the historical background of ancien regime Europe sliding inexorably towards revolution.

• Kiri Te Kanawa - My World Of Opera | DVD | (25/09/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

• Verdi: Otello -- Royal Opera House/Solti | DVD | (29/10/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £34.99

  A coproduction by BBC Covent Garden Pioneer and the Royal Opera House of Verdi's classic opera about the Moor who loved not wisely but too well. Conducted by George Solti.

• Verdi - Otello | DVD | (31/03/2008) from £15.25   |  Saving you £-0.26 (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Giuseppe Verdi - The Royal Opera Otello - At the Royal Opera House.

• R. Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier - Royal Opera House/Solti | DVD | (23/02/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Strauss' dazzling opera Der Rosenkavalier set in 1740's Vienna combines farce romance and a world of weary acknowledgement of getting older. It features some of the most gorgeous music ever written for the female voice.

• Don Giovanni | DVD | (18/02/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Infamous womanizer Don Giovanni makes conquest after conquest leaving seduced and abandoned women in his wake. When the ghost of the Commendatore he has killed appears he is given a final chance to change his philandering ways or face the terrors of hell. Joseph Loseys hugely successful adaptation of Mozarts greatest opera features wonderful performances from an excellent cast and stunning cinematography. Following a painstaking restoration including a newly remastered DTS 5.1 soundtrack this deluxe edition presents the film as never before.

• R. Strauss: Capriccio -- San Francisco Opera | DVD | (26/06/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  The last and most subtle of Richard Strauss's operas, Capriccio gets a finely nuanced interpretation in this San Francisco Opera production. A generally excellent cast is highlighted not only by the radiant presence of Kiri Te Kanawa but by the deceptively robust performance of Tatiana Troyanos in her last operatic appearance before her untimely death from cancer. The composer described Capriccio as a "conversation piece for music in one act", and he put much effort into not only the music but the words, on which he collaborated with conductor Clemens Krauss. Krauss's verbal input was particularly appropriate in this work, because the real subject (symbolised by a conventional love triangle) is the competition (and alliance) between words and music in opera, a subject naturally close to the composer-librettist's heart. The conversation runs through the whole opera in various forms. It begins immediately after the curtain goes up, with a quarrel between the poet Olivier (Simon Keenlyside) and the composer Flamand (David Kuebler) over the respective merits of their arts. They are rivals for the hand of the widowed Countess Madeleine (Te Kanawa); she is to choose between them (i.e., between poetry and music) but she is still undecided as the final curtain descends. The intervening two hours are rich in artistic shop talk and backstage situations that will enchant sophisticated opera-lovers, as well as the love interest for the rest of us. David Runnicles conducts with a sure sense of Straussian style; and Mauro Pagano's 18th-century set creates the right atmosphere. Keenlyside and Kuebler are eloquent and believable, Te Kanawa sweet, regal and ambiguous. Hakan Hagegard and Victor Braun give particularly vivid performances in supporting roles. --Joe McLellan

• Verdi: Simon Boccanegra -- Metropolitan Opera/Levine | DVD | (09/09/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £16.99

  A performance of the Verdi opera 'Simon Boccanegra'. Conducted by James Levine.

• Strauss: Arabella | DVD | (16/04/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Like most of his later operas, Richard Strauss' Arabella ends with a meltingly lovely duet. But then criticising Strauss for composing melodically enduring operas is as pointless as lambasting Vermeer for painting only exquisite interior scenes. Those who say Strauss never improved on Rosenkavalier may be right but when such beguiling sounds kept coming from his music for the next 30 years of his life, there shouldn't be any quibbles. Arabella is, in a nutshell, the story of a woman who cannot make up her mind about a suitor. Taped at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1994 under the baton of conductor Christian Thielemann, this production features Kiri Te Kanawa in the title role; her acting is mediocre but vocally she never forces anything and at least sounds like the perfect Arabella. Wolfgang Brendel does well with Mandryka, who finally ends up with Arabella and Marie McLaughlin makes a sympathetic younger sister to the heroine as Zdenka. Otto Schenk's production is sturdily conservative, the video transfer is acceptable if unspectacular and the sound mix is CD-quality. --Kevin Filipski, Amazon.com

• Puccini: Manon Lescaut -- Royal Opera House | DVD | (22/09/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  This famous production of Manon Lescaut from The Royal Opera recorded in 1983 features two of the biggest stars in opera Placido Domingo and Kiri Te Kanawa in their vocal prime. Placido Domingo's performance of Des Grieux is considered to be unsurpassed. Conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli made his British operatic debut with this production which has not been available on video for 10 years. Puccini's first masterpiece was rapturously received on its first night. It has his hallmark se

• Leonard Bernstein conducts West Side Story -- The Making of the Recording | DVD | (04/02/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Filmed in 1984 for the BBC, the feature-length documentary Leonard Bernstein conducts West Side Story follows the composer through one week as he records the first-ever complete album of his musical theatre masterpiece. (The previous Broadway cast and original soundtrack albums had both been cut down to single LP length.) Virtually the entire documentary takes place in a New York recording studio with a pick-up orchestra, session singers and headliners Kiri Te Kanawa (Maria), José Carreras (Tony), Tatiana Troyanos (Anita) and Kurt Ollmann (Riff). The 89-minute programme alternates rehearsal footage with complete final takes of the main numbers--including "Tonight", "America", and "Maria"--with a limited amount of comment from the principal players. Te Kanawa explains how much the music means to her, Troyanos notes how she grew-up in the very streets depicted on stage and Carreras provides a rare moment of tension when a session ends unsatisfactorily. Bernstein himself is by turns commanding, charming, enthusiastic or weary. For anyone wanting an extensive insight into what happens as a major album is recorded this is fascinating, though others who just want to enjoy the wonderful music will be better served by the resultant two-CD set. On the DVD: Though filmed for British television, Deutsche Grammophon have chosen to release a single region-free (Region 0) DVD for the entire world. Unfortunately this means the disc is in NTSC format rather than PAL, and requires an NTSC-compatible television for playback. It also means that while the sound has been effectively remastered for PCM stereo the picture shows all the signs of a bad NTSC copy--weak, washed-out colours and poor definition with a serious lack of detail. Most videos are far better. The DVD has subtitles in German, French, Spanish and Chinese. There are no extras, though the booklet adapts an interesting article by producer Humphrey Burton which originally appeared in Gramophone magazine in 1985.--Gary S Dalkin

• Prom At The Palace | DVD | (01/07/2002) from £9.59   |  Saving you £10.40 (108.45%)   |  RRP £19.99

  One of the most remarkable things about this recording of the Queen's Golden Jubilee Prom at the Palace--quite apart from the musical goodies on offer--is the opportunity to glimpse inside the royal garden, and see what Her Majesty's principal home looks like from the back. Who would have guessed she had her own lake? Voyeurism aside, director Bob Coles also catches the palpable sense of occasion and excitement that surrounds the concert, with some swooping camera angles and shots of a very chuffed-looking crowd. The music, introduced by Michael Parkinson, is a mix of popular favourites (Zadok the Priest, "Jupiter" from The Planets, Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks) and a few lesser-known items such as Malcolm Arnold's The Nation's Dances. The outdoor acoustic is generally handled pretty well with some sensitive microphone placement, and the soloists all sound wonderful; Angela Gheorghiu stops the show with a passionate account of "Vissi d'Arte" (from Tosca) and 13-year-old clarinettist Julian Bliss gives a remarkably assured performance of Messager's fluffy salon-piece Solo de Concours. Occasionally the BBC Symphony Orchestra loses concentration and plays somewhat scrappily--the accompaniment to Figaro's aria "Largo al Factotum" is not all it should be--but overall this is a fine souvenir of a historic concert. On the DVD: Prom at the Palace has no special features on DVD. The arias in French and Italian are all subtitled in English. All profit from the sale of the DVD will be donated to the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Trust. --Warwick Thomson

• Mozart: The Mozart Glyndebourne Collection | DVD | (28/11/2005) from £51.39   |  Saving you £8.60 (16.73%)   |  RRP £59.99

  Six Mozart features: 'Cosi Fan Tutte (1975)' 'Don Giovani (1977)' 'Die Entfuhrung Aus Dem Serail (1980)' 'Idomeneo (1974)' 'Le Nozze Di Figaro (1973)' and 'Die Zauberflote (1978)'.

• Le Nozze Di Figaro | DVD | (23/07/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Recorded at the Glyndebourne Festival Opera 1973.

• Puccini: Manon Lescaut | DVD | (01/01/2024) from £6.85   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Various Composers - An Evening With Kiri Te Kanawa | DVD | (24/09/2007) from £20.99   |  Saving you £-2.00 (-10.50%)   |  RRP £18.99

  The only known DVD program of opera arias sung by Dame Kiri Te Kanawa in her most radiant and graceful form in a 1986 concert with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra conducted by Charles Dutoit. Dame Kiri sings arias by Handel Mozart Bellini Gounod Boito Puccini and Charpentier the camera and microphone vividly capturing her special affinity with this repertoire.

• Kiri Te Kanawa - Dame Kiri Te Kanawa - A Portrait | DVD | (24/08/2001) from £21.58   |  Saving you £-1.59 (-8.00%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A portrait of one of the most famous sopranos of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries filmed over a year. The camera follows her on her trips to New Zealand and the San Francicsco Opera. The DVD also includes recordings of Arias by Handel Charpentier Puccini Cilea and Richard Strauss.

• Tchaikovsky: Gala Tribute To Tchaikovsky | DVD | (29/10/2001) from £3.00   |  Saving you £30.25 (1,738.51%)   |  RRP £31.99

  Recorded on December 1st 1993 this programme celebrates the centenary of Tchaikovsky's death.

• Otello - Arena Di Verona | DVD | (25/07/2005) from £10.98   |  Saving you £10.00 (125.16%)   |  RRP £17.99

  The spectacular open-air Arena di Verona is the setting for this production of Verdi's last tragic opera Otello a work some consider to be his masterpiece. In this recording from 1982 Otello is sung by the Russian tenor Vladimir Atlantov rightly famous for his magnificent interpretation of the title role. This DVD is the only chance to see and hear one of the great Otellos as no other recordings are currently available of Atlantov in this role. The role of Desdemona is beautifull