"Director: Brian Large"

• Strauss: Die Fledermaus -- Bavarian State Opera | DVD | (19/03/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

• Wagner: Das Rheingold | DVD | (15/10/2001) from £3.54   |  Saving you £22.71 (996.05%)   |  RRP £24.99

• Britten: Owen Wingrave | DVD | (14/07/2009) from £19.92   |  Saving you £-3.93 (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

• Cecilia And Bryn At Glyndebourne - Arias And Duets | HD DVD | (31/12/2007) from £11.53   |  Saving you £18.46 (61.60%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Cecilia And Bryn At Glyndebourne.Arias And Duets.

• Boito: Mefistofele | DVD | (02/01/2007) from £29.68   |  Saving you £-4.69 (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  From 1980 the Canadian director Robert Carsen worked for several years at the renowned Glyndebourne Opera Festival, for which he was awarded the Carl Ebert Ward directing. This young talent was then recognised and nurtured by huge for directing. This young talent was then recognised and nurtured by Hugues Gall, who was later to become general manager at the Paris Bastille Opera. Carsen's breakthrough came with his production of Mefistofele, first shown in Ghent in 1988. Among the works which he has tackled with huge success are Bellini's la Straniera and Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor from the bel canto repertoire, as well as modern (classical) works, such as Igor Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale or The Lighthouse by Peter Maxwell Davies. The main centres of Carsen's work in the 1990's were the festival at Aix-en-Provence and the Flemish Opera, Antwerp, where the director received universal acclaim for his seven-part Puccini cycle. Where Verdi is concerned, Carsen has directed productions in Paris and Cologne of Nabucco, Macbeth, Otello and Falstaff. The New York Metropolitan Opera staged Carsen's guest production of Peter Tchaikovsky's Eugen Onegin, and he produced Die Frau ohne Schatten by Rochard Strauss for the Vienne State Opera. For Cologne Opera at the end of the 2000 season Carsen takkled Wagner's summum opus - a new Ring cycle.

• Wagner: Gotterdammerung | DVD | (15/10/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Gotterammerung is the 'third day' of Wagner's great tetra logy of music dramas Der Ring Des Nibelhngen.

• Verdi - Simon Boccanegra | DVD | (10/09/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £16.99

  Sir Georg Solti - Verdi: Simon Boccanegra

• Wagner: Die Walkure -- Bayreuth | DVD | (15/10/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Die Walkure is the 'first day' of Wagner's great tetra logy of music dramas Der Ring des Nibelungen.Conducted by Pierre Boulez and directed by Patrice Chereau this 1976 production commemorating the centenary of the first Bayreuth Ring has come to be seen as the most illuminating and significant of modern times.

• Wagner: Die Walkure -- Metropolitan/Levine | DVD | (12/04/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  The 1990 Metropolitan Opera performance of Die Walkure ("The Valkyrie") with James Levine conducting is a solid, four-square performance with few frills and no gimmicks, just extraordinarily fine singing and orchestral playing. There is no point in this where you find yourself asking why the director did something: this is the sort of production which could be criticised as unimaginative but defended as serving Wagner's intentions for this instalment of his Ring cycle. Levine and his orchestra give the music an emotional intensity that never overwhelms its grandeur, though perhaps in Wotan's farewell to Brunnhilde, we feel him more as father than as god. James Morris as Wotan has real stature, making us feel that he has finally created the free agents he needs to avoid the curse he has unleashed on the world, but he has broken his heart in the process. Jessye Norman is surprisingly good and erotically self-assured as Sieglinde; the Act 1 love duet with Gary Lake as Siegmund has an ardour that makes the incestuous aspect less a matter of perversity than of the conduct of heroes. Kurt Moll makes Sieglinde's rapist and husband Hunding, a three-dimensional sinister villain; and Christa Ludwig almost manages to sell us Fricka's interminable paean to family values. The most impressive performance here, though, is Hildegard Behrens as Brunnhilde, the steely godling who sacrifices everything because she learns to feel and to know what is right. On the DVD Die Walkure on disc comes with menus and subtitles in German, French, English, Spanish and Chinese and with a picture gallery of the production. Awkwardly it is presented in (American) NTSC format not PAL, with a visual aspect of standard TV 4:3. More impressive is the choice of PCM stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1 or DTS 6.1; the sound is admirably clear and well-balanced. --Roz Kaveney

• Don Giovanni / Cosi Fan Tutte | DVD | (28/11/2005) from £52.63   |  Saving you £-2.64 (-5.30%)   |  RRP £49.99

  Cosi Fan Tutte:Live from the Zurich Opera House 2000Don Giovanni:Live from the Zurich Opera House 2001

• Maazel - 1984 / Keenlyside, Lepage (Royal Opera House) | DVD | (12/05/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £21.99

  The debut DVD release of Lorin Maazel's new opera, based on George Orwell's dystopian novel, one of the most famous novels of the 20th century.Premiered at Covent Garden in 2005, where it was conducted by the composer and filmed in High Definition. The producer was Robert Lepage, whose highly-praised, visually-stunning production is gripping and at times terrifying. This release is timed to coincide with the run of the same production at La Scala in May 2008.Stars the acclaimed Simon Keenlyside as Winston Smith, the central character with Nancy Gustafson as Nancy, with whom Winston embarks on the secret affair that will be their undoing.

• Puccini - La Boheme (Schirmer, Vienna So, Villazon) | DVD | (08/08/2006) from £23.24   |  Saving you £2.75 (10.60%)   |  RRP £25.99

• Mozart - Il Re Pastore (Marriner, Asmif) | DVD | (13/03/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £33.99

  Set in Classical antiquity Mozart's Il re pastore tells of the thwarted love of Aminta (the innocent 'shepherd king' of the title) for the well-born Elisa and that of the nobleman Agenore for the deposed tyrant's daughter Tamiri. No less a figure than Alexander the Great resolves these conflicts of private passion and public status. First performed in Salzburg in 1775 Sir Neville Marriner conducts a top international cast including Sylvia McNair Jerry Hadley and Iris Vermillion in this 1989 staging from Salzburg's Landestheater.

• Romeo Et Juliette | Blu Ray | (10/03/2009) from £29.68   |  Saving you £-13.69 (-85.60%)   |  RRP £15.99

  This rendition of Romeo Et Juliette was performed in Salzburgs 2008 festival season. A combination of incredible vocals and vivid imagery make it a must watch.

• Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 | DVD | (27/02/2006) from £24.28   |  Saving you £-6.29 (-35.00%)   |  RRP £17.99

  The recording took place in the St. Florian Church (Stiftskirche St. Florian) in Linz Austria; it is here that Bruckner is buried where he was organist and where themes of this symphony were first heard in an organ improvisation played by him in 1886Boulez's much discussed interpretation is unique in its clarity of the musical structure without losing the rich expression of the symphony.

• Cecilia Bartoli - Sings Mozart And Haydn | DVD | (23/02/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  A concert filmed at the Styriarte Festival in Graz Austria where Cecilia performs two Haydn Cantatas and Mozart's Symphony No 38 and the orchestra under the baton of Nikolaus Harnoncourt perform Haydn's Symphony No. 92 'Oxford'.

• Richard Wagner - Parsifal | DVD | (29/07/2013) from £13.15   |  Saving you £6.84 (52.02%)   |  RRP £19.99

  NOTICE: Polish Release, cover may contain Polish text/markings. The disk DOES NOT have English audio and subtitles.

• Schumann/Haydn - Mischa Maisky | DVD | (16/07/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £16.99

  Mischa Maisky plays the Cello Concertos 1 & 2 and his own transcriptions of two Haydn Violin Concertos in Vienna's Hetzendorf Palace - a master of the Viennese classical style performing in elegant Baroque surroundings. Maisky's tasteful transcriptions do full justice to Haydn's music exquisitely beautiful and virtuosic. Maisky also plays the Schumann Cello Concerto with the Wiener Philharmoniker under the baton of Leonard Bernstein.

• European Concert 1994 | DVD | (10/06/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  For the fourth annual May 1 European Concert commemorating the date that the orchestra was founded, the Berlin Philharmonic chose to perform in the Staatstheater Meiningen under Claudio Abbado. The acoustic has plenty of bloom and sets the orchestra off beautifully. The concert begins with Beethoven's Emperor Concerto, which Daniel Barenboim starts with surprising leisureliness; one usually associates him with generally quick tempi, but here he gives a measured, almost stately, account of the first movement. But stateliness is not the only mood he conjures up: the slow movement is hypnotically impressionistic (and accompanied by some velvety, luscious string playing), and the finale a brilliant piece of poker-faced playfulness. Abbado then gives a passionate reading of Brahms' Second Symphony, and draws some gorgeously blended playing from the orchestra: the opening of the first movement creates the impression of soft meadows and rolling hills (it's not called Brahms' Pastoral Symphony for nothing). The visual style contains no surprises--shots of the conductor, shots of the players and so on--but is perfectly adequate for the job. On the DVD: The European Concert, 1994 includes a 20-minute German documentary about Meiningen, its place in German cultural life and the involvement of Hans von Bulow (the first Principal Conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic) in the Meiningen Orchestra's early days. There are subtitles in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. There are also short trailers for eight other TDK DVDs.--Warwick Thompson

• European Concert 1993 | DVD | (29/04/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  For their third annual May 1 European Concert commemorating the date that the orchestra was founded, the Berlin Philharmonic chose to perform in the Royal Albert Hall in London under Bernard Haitink. Haitink was then the music director at Covent Garden, and he brings an operatic intensity to their first item, Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Overture. He characterises it brilliantly, with stirring religious solemnity for Friar Lawrence's music and fiery explosions in the fight sequence. Frank Peter Zimmerman then gives a forthright, heavily late-romantic reading of Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 3 which might not be to everyone's taste, but which seems somehow appropriate in the Victorian splendour of the hall. The Rite of Spring allows the orchestra to show off its star woodwind players, who cope with the score's taxing wind writing with polished brilliance. The opening sounds fantastic, and Haitink tailors the tempo to the boomy acoustic so that not a detail is lost. It's a performance literally dripping with energy: you can see the sweat pouring off the players as they dig into the piece's meatier moments. Overall, this is an excellent concert from an orchestra on top form. On the DVD: European Concert, 1993 includes a 28-minute documentary in German about the Albert Hall, and the Berlin Philharmonic's visits to the UK. There's fascinating substantial footage of Furtwängler conducting the orchestra in London, and a long interview with Haitink in which he discusses his relationship with the BP. There are subtitles in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish.--Warwick Thomson