APAP MASALA GILLES APAP IN INDIA – GILLES APAP EN INDE Directed by Max Jourdan French violinist and longtime California dweller Gilles Apap engages in an initiation journey to India in search of Carnatic and Hindustani musics. At the crossroads…

This exciting open-air staging of Aida was one of the classical highlights in summer 2004. The vast production of the Verdi masterpiece at St. Margarethen took place amidst the intoxicating scenery of a rustically romantic Roman quarry, which…

In his position as the king’s composer, Jean Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) created the opera Persée for Louis XIV. The opera was considered the crowning achievement of 17th century French music theatre and was widely recognized as Lully’s greatest work.…

Live from St Thomas’s Church – the church for which Bach conceived most of his works – comes a concert performed by the man who introduced Bach to the world of Jazz and vice versa. In 1959, Jacques Loussier hit upon the idea that was to make his…

Bizet’s passionate tale of the self-willed gypsy woman Carmen is certainly one of the most popular works in the history of opera. It shows how a cigar factory worker in Seville enchants and bewitches the men around her. Melodies like Carmen’s…

Composed when he was just twenty-four, Agrippina was Handel’s first theatrical success and is a sparkling example of his early work. It is full of his fresh, exuberantly inventive music and employs one of the finest librettos with which George…

Uwe Scholz, ballet director in Leipzig, was hailed as one of the most brilliant choreographic minds of his generation when he died in November 2004 at the early age of 45. His ballet “The Great Mass” is one of the most impressive works of this…

Conducting Mahler : The film documents the interpretations of Gustav Mahler's compositions by conductors Bernard Haitink, Riccardo Chailly, Riccardo Muti, Claudio Abbado and Simon Rattle, who detail the special relationship they have with Mahler's…

Il matrimonio segreto is Cimarosa's most famous opera buffa and it is one of the few comic operas to have maintained its place in the repertoire until today. At its first performance in 1792, Austrian emperor Leopold II is reputed to have liked this…

The Final Chorale tells the story of Igor Stravinsky's Symphonies of Wind Instruments, a piece he composed in 1920 in memory of Claude Debussy. Using for the first time a montage technique juxtaposing short musical sequences and blocks of sound…