"Director: Nigel Wattis"

• 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.

• Kiri Te Kanawa - Opera in the Outback | DVD | (25/09/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Opera in the Outback features internationally renowned diva Dame Kiri Te Kanawa singing a superb selection of songs from opera favorites such as Puccini's Tosca through to the popular classics of Richard Rogers and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Dame Kiri is also joined by the Adnymathanha Women's Choir the region's indigenous women's choir for the world debut of the Warrioota Song. Set against the spectacular backdrop of Yalkarinha Gorge in the South Australian Flinders Ranges Opera in the Outback is a truly magical event. Track List / Composer: 1. Prince Igor Overture / Borodin 2. Bailero / Canteloube 3. Malurous qu'o uno fenno / Canteloube 4. La Delaissado / Canteloube 5. Lou Boussu / Canteloube 6. Vissi d'arte / Puccini 7. Signore ascolta / Puccini 8. Un bel di vedremo / Puccini 9. Adagio / Khachaturian 10.Wayanta Lullaby / Traditional 11.Warrioota Song / Soutelle 12. Viliwarunha manyinga / Traditional 13. Marietta's Lied / Korngold 14. Chanson d'enfance / Lloyd Webber 15. Unexpected Song / Lloyd Webber 16. The Jellicle Ball / Lloyd Webber 17. How Deep Is The Ocean / Berlin 18. I Believe / Drake Shirl Graham Stillman 19. You'll Never Walk Alone / Rodgers 20. Summertime / Gershwin 21. O mio babbino caro / Puccini

• Marilyn Horne - a Profile | DVD | (24/11/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £8.99

  Marilyn Horne is acclaimed as the finest mezzo soprano of the twentieth century with a voice known for its brilliant sound and its extraordinary range. Her career has spanned everything from Grand Opera to light entertainment and pirate recordings of pop singles. She started singing in public when she was just three years old and for over thirty years she has been at the top of her profession. Home''s greatest contribution to music has been in developing and popularising the mezzo soprano repertoire of composers such as Rossini and she was the first non-Italian ever to win the coveted Rossini Medal honouring her as the greatest singer in the world. This programme looks back over Marilyn Horne''s long and remarkable career celebrating her formidable achievements and giving an insight into her unique talent. Specially-shot performance items together with archive footage and recordings demonstrate her magnificent vocal ability and at the heart of the profile is an interview in which the engaging and dynamic singer talks about her life and her music. The film visits Marilyn Horne''s home town of Bradford Pennsylvania and travels with her to Long Beach California where her family moved when she was eleven years old. Here she talks about her early days: singing in church choirs making recordings for television sitcoms with the Robert Wagner Chorale cutting pirate pop records and acting as voice double for Dorothy Dandridge in Otto Preminger''s film Carmen Jones. A clip from the movie displays Marilyn Horne''s astonishing powers of imitation. She touches on the rich musical life that existed in California at that time and on her association with Stravinsky. The composer dedicated his last work to Horne and encouraged her to go to Europe to further her career as an opera singer. It was her work with Dame Joan Sutherland in the bel canto operas of composers such as Rossini Donizetti and Bellini that first brought Marilyn Horne major stardom in the mid-1960s. Dame Joan is one of the contributors to the programme and talks about the chemistry that made their performances together so special. Other contributors include her former husband and good friend the conductor Henry Lewis fellow American singer Samuel Ramey and her biographer Jane Scovell. Highlights of the programme include coverage of Horne''s final appearance in a Rossini opera -Isabella in L''Italiana in Algeri recorded at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in 1993 -and of the gala recital at Carnegie Hall in January 1994 which marked her sixtieth birthday and the launch of the Marilyn Horne Foundation set up to revive the art of the vocal recital in America. Her passion for this cause is matched by her commitment to training young singers and she is seen giving a masterclass during the Cardiff Singer of the World competition. An archive clip recalls one of Horne''s finest moments when as President Clinton''s favourite classical singer she sang at his inauguration in Washington in 1993 a performance watched by hundreds of millions of television viewers. Another side of Horne''s vivacious personality emerges in a clip from the Carol Burnett Show in which she features in a song and dance routine.

• Marilyn Horne: A Portrait | DVD | (17/07/2001) from £31.70   |  Saving you £-11.71 (-58.60%)   |  RRP £19.99

  As one of America's most treasured and delightful opera singers, mezzo soprano Marilyn Horne was justly lauded in this 1994 profile, originally made for the South Bank Show arts programme. At work as one of the finest bel canto singers of the 20th century or at rest looking poignantly back at her career--the making of the film coincided with her 60th birthday--Horne is splendid company. She was born with singing in her blood, trying her hand at everything from the church choir to jingles, pirate pop singles--she did a mean Kay Starr impersonation--and supplying a singing voice for Dorothy Dandridge in the 1954 film of Carmen Jones before embarking on a career as a classical artist. Horne effectively learned her trade during four years at Gelsenkirchen, going on to form a legendary singing partnership with Joan Sutherland and blazing a trail for the mezzo soprano roles--Arsace in Semiramide has been her signature--through the world's greatest opera houses. But for all her success, Horne has retained a down-to-earth openness which permeates this documentary and has rendered her equally at home on the recital stage or in grand opera costume. She speaks with simple brilliance about the singer's technique and about her desire to broaden the appeal of opera. A fascinating portrait of one hell of a dame. On the DVD: At just 52 minutes, the original programme is too short to do Horne full justice. Even so, the film is packed with enough archive footage to whet the appetite of the novice fan. The sound format is Dolby Digital 2.0--adequate enough to do justice to Horne's extraordinary range and genius for ornamentation, and the picture format can be adjusted from the standard 4:3 to 1.78:1 although both do little more than replicate the look and feel of the original television transmission. Detailed booklet notes compensate for the lack of extras on the DVD itself--a biography or career chronology would have been more than handy. --Piers Ford