David McVicar's production of Verdi's 1847 opera Macbeth.
Sondra Radvanovsky
as Lady Macbeth
Joshua Guerrero
as Macduff
Christian van Horn
as Banquo
Craig Colclough
as Macbeth
Visionary artist Matthew Barney returns to cinema with this 3-part epic, a radical reinvention of Norman Mailer’s novel Ancient Evenings. In collaboration with composer Jonathan Bepler, Barney combines traditional modes of narrative cinema with filmed elements of performance, sculpture, and opera, reconstructing Mailer’s hypersexual story of Egyptian gods and the seven stages of reincarnation, alongside the rise and fall of the American car industry.
At the beginning of 1964, the music world experiences something completely unexpected. Maria Callas returns to the opera stage as the prima donna. Her “Tosca” at the Royal Opera House becomes a sensation. Maria Callas wants to show everyone once again that she deserves the title of “prima donna assoluta.” On the condition that star director Franco Zeffirelli take over the direction, the exceptional singer agrees to sing the role of Tosca. The BBC recorded the 2nd act of the opera for television. It is one of the most dramatic acts in opera history: in order to free the painter Cavaradossi from the hands of torturers, Tosca ends up murdering the police chief Scarpia. The film footage is one of the rare opportunities to see Maria Callas in an opera performance and to experience her highly emotional performance art and vocal abilities...
Eight months after the Chernobyl disaster, a Chernobylite woman that stayed behind to care for her sick mother gives birth to a mutated daughter. She wakes up after giving birth to find her mother gone. Masha, isolated and suffering from cataracts from the radiation exposure, becomes fearful that soldiers will take her contaminated baby. While attempting to reunite with her family in Kiev, the blinding mother and infant become lost in a forest. Masha sees a figure chasing her and believes it's a soldier that wants her child.
Derek Vineyard is paroled after serving 3 years in prison for killing two African-American men. Through his brother, Danny Vineyard's narration, we learn that before going to prison, Derek was a skinhead and the leader of a violent white supremacist gang that committed acts of racial crime throughout L.A. and his actions greatly influenced Danny. Reformed and fresh out of prison, Derek severs contact with the gang and becomes determined to keep Danny from going down the same violent path as he did.
Franco Zeffirelli directs these two legendary La Scala productions telling tragic tales of jealousy. Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana features performances by Elena Obraztsova, Plácido Domingo, and Renato Bruson. Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci stars Teresa Stratas, Plácido Domingo, and Juan Pons. Both are conducted by George Pretre. This production of Pagliacci earned director Franco Zeffirelli the coveted Emmy as Best Director in the category of Classical Music Programming.
John, an ambitious but undisciplined New York City office worker, meets and marries Mary. They start a family, struggle to cope with marital stress, financial setbacks, and tragedy, all while lost amid the anonymous, pitiless throngs of the big city.
A lottery win of $5,000 forever changes the lives of a miner turned dentist and his wife.
A bomb explodes in a cafe, at the same time as Leong is released from prison. Sadikin orders Pandu to investigate Leong's trail. Pandu's time is increasingly taken up with Olivia, his daughter who needs the presence of a father after her mother died of illness. Luckily there is Suri, Olivia's teacher, who tries to fill the void by approaching Olivia. Because of Olivia, Pandu and Suri's relationship becomes closer. But the situation becomes more dangerous for Pandu because his face is seen when the ambush and revenge action are about to be carried out.
The film narrates a tormented love story between one of the most famous poets of Serbian literature, Laza Kostic, renowned for his sublime poetic puns and word coining and an enchanting young girl by the name of Lenka Dundjerski, an educated and refined daughter of a landowner Lazar Dundjerski. Standing in the way of their love is the insurmountable age gap between the two, as Kostic is 29 years older than his beloved one. The affair inspired one of the most sophisticated and tender love poems of the time, an utmost expression of yearning, in which the poet's unflinching devotion is linked to his admiration for a Venice basilisk by the name of Santa Maria della Salute.
Alone in the woods, a young man is pursued by a horrifying specter and by visions of his deceased sisters. A meditation on the precarious uncertainty of the American Dream and the role that uncontrollable forces play in our lives, The West is a Land of Infinite Beginnings is inspired by a harrowing scene from the opera Proving Up, by composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek.
The gorgeous and evocative Otto Schenk/Günther Schneider-Siemssen production continues with this second opera in Wagner’s Ring cycle. Hildegard Behrens brings deep empathy to Brünnhilde, the favorite daughter of the god Wotan (James Morris) who nevertheless defies him. Morris’s portrayal of Wotan is deservedly legendary, as is Christa Ludwig, as Fricka. Jessye Norman and Gary Lakes are Sieglinde and Siegmund, and Kurt Moll is the threatening Hunding. James Levine and the Met orchestra provide astonishing color and drama. (Performed April 8, 1989)
Siegfried is the third of the four operas that constitute Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), by Richard Wagner.
Joji, an engineering dropout and the youngest son of a rich family lives with his aspirations of becoming super wealthy. Driven by greed and blind ambition, he decides to execute his plans following an unexpected event in the family.
Despondent over a painful estrangement from his daughter, trainer Frankie Dunn isn't prepared for boxer Maggie Fitzgerald to enter his life. But Maggie's determined to go pro and to convince Dunn and his cohort to help her.
Disciplined Italian composer Antonio Salieri becomes consumed by jealousy and resentment towards the hedonistic and remarkably talented young Viennese composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
At an elite, old-fashioned boarding school in New England, a passionate English teacher inspires his students to rebel against convention and seize the potential of every day, courting the disdain of the stern headmaster.
In the future, the Japanese government captures a class of ninth-grade students and forces them to kill each other under the revolutionary "Battle Royale" act.
Noble Moroccan Othello finds his life with beautiful, fiercely loyal Desdemona thrown tragically out of balance when secretly jealous, scheming confidante Iago begins an insidious campaign of lies and treachery.