"Actor: Les Arts Florissants"

• Les Paladins - Rameau | DVD | (31/10/2005) from £25.65   |  Saving you £4.34 (16.92%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Inspired by a fable by La Fontaine Rameau produced perhaps his most brilliant music for his penultimate great work blending reality and surreal on several levels.This passionate new production by Jose Montalvo stunningly choreographed by Montalvo and Dominique Hervieu sets new standards in entertainment charm and ingenuity. The sharp and spectacular multimedia staging does full justice to Rameau's dazzling burlesque confirming Olivier Rouviere statement that 'Les Paladins is the last laugh of a witty 77-year old composer'. Recorded live in 2004 at the Paris Theatre du Chatelet in true surround sound both the virtuoso cast and Les Arts Florissants are in top form clearly enjoying themselves in the masterful hands of William Christie.

• Rameau: In Convertendo | DVD | (03/07/2006) from £2.49   |  Saving you £12.50 (502.01%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Jean-Philippe Rameau was still a young musician when he moved to Lyon where he probably composed his few surviving motets including the Grand Motet In Convertendo here performed by Les Arts Florissants under William Christie which anticipates Rameau's orchestration in his later operatic works. This wonderful fugue on Psalm 126 (verse 6) Euntes ibant et flebant (They went forth and wept) bears comparison with similar works by his contemporary J.S. Bach. In addition to a full performance of In Convertendo this DVD presents some of Rameau's key chamber music pieces and an insightful music documentary The Real Rameau which sheds light on the life of a composer who thought only of music dreaming of a universal harmony and regarding music as an example to all arts and indeed to all the sciences as well. Pictured by his contemporaries as a gaunt and taciturn man ill-suited to courtly surroundings his work was described by Berlioz as 'one of the most sublime conceptions of dramatic music'.

• Hercules - Handel | DVD | (06/02/2006) from £19.32   |  Saving you £13.66 (83.65%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Musical drama in three acts.