"Actor: Sylvain Cambreling"

• Mozart: Cosi Fan Tutte | Blu Ray | (02/12/2013) from £24.32   |  Saving you £5.67 (23.31%)   |  RRP £29.99

  I will ship by EMS or SAL items in stock in Japan. It is approximately 7-14days on delivery date. You wholeheartedly support customers as satisfactory. Thank you for you seeing it.

• Falstaff - Giuseppe Verdi | DVD | (06/09/2004) from £13.24   |  Saving you £4.75 (35.88%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Verdi's last opera and the final peak of his career Falstaff is the culmination of Italian comic opera. 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. Verdi's sparkling and witty opera is the perfect synthesis of mu

• La Clemenza Di Tito - Mozart | DVD | (03/01/2006) from £4.99   |  Saving you £25.00 (501.00%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Commissioned for the coronation of Leopold II in Prague Mozart's last opera is a deep humane reflection on relationships power and forgiveness. With the composition of some of the most beautiful passages in his oeuvre Mozart has succeeded in giving this opera seria both a noble sobriety and transparent instrumentation to which this commanding production by the Hermann partnership does full justice on all levels. Susan Graham's most extraordinary Sesto and Christoph Pregardien's Superb Tito set the standard for this riveting Opera National de Paris Performance conducted by the outstanding Sylvain Cambreling.

• Berlioz: La Damnation de Faust | DVD | (15/05/2000) from £26.98   |  Saving you £-1.99 (-8.00%)   |  RRP £24.99

  This imaginative staging of Berlioz's dramatic symphony for chorus, soloists and orchestra relies heavily on the moving of massed choirs across a large stage. It has vivid lighting effects--rather too many of them using strobes--and monolithic multi-purpose sets, in particular a revolving glass drum which functions both as cinema screen and rostrum for singers, so that the final ride to Hell, for example, is sung by Mephistopheles and Faust above a cavalcade of projected horses, like the inside of a zoetrope. The three main soloists have voices on a scale that can compete with these flashy production values--White and Kasarova, in particular, sing at a level of intensity that would swamp anything less; the climactic seduction trio has rarely been sung so well or with such an overpoweringly polymorphous eroticism. Cambreling marshals his forces effectively, giving full rein to the work's showstoppers like the "Hungarian March" but not neglecting the subtler less kinetic Gluckian side of Berlioz's vocal writing. The DVD has subtitles in English, German and Dutch, and menus in those languages, as well as French, Italian, Spanish and Swedish. --Roz Kaveney

• Stravinsky: The Rake's Progress | DVD | (20/11/2001) from £22.39   |  Saving you £2.60 (11.61%)   |  RRP £24.99

  When this Salzburg Festival production of Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress hit the stage in 1996, the reviews in the British press were red hot. Unfortunately Peter Mussbach's staging, though it has moments of theatrical flair, doesn't translate smoothly to the small screen in this live recording: his grand visual metaphors--an aeroplane that never takes off and stage-hands in anti-Enlightenment monkey costumes--look somewhat pinched. But Sylvain Cambreling's pacy conducting and the central performances come across with 1,000-watt energy. Dawn Upshaw is outstanding as Anne Trulove, bringing as much careful detail to her acting as she does brilliance to her vocal technique; and her performance of the Act I aria and cabaletta, "No word from Tom ... I go, I go to him", must rank among the best ever recorded. Jerry Hadley, dressed as a mullet-haired "yoof" in heavy-metal T-shirt and jeans, doesn't quite have the clarity and vocal agility of, say, Philip Langridge as Tom Rakewell, but the amusing yobbishness of his acting suits his louder redder-blooded performance beautifully. Rich-voiced Jane Henschel is hilarious as Baba the Turk, and uses her large frame with dainty, tippy-toe comic effect. On the DVD: the production is judiciously directed by Brian Large: there are plenty of carefully placed reaction shots, unobtrusive camera movements and there's an overall sense of a highly charged live performance. The recording levels, though generally excellent, occasionally offer a muffled phrase or two. There are subtitles in English, German, French and Spanish but no other special features. --Warwick Thompson