Miller, Jonathan

BBC Shakespeare Comedies DVD Giftbox

BBC Shakespeare DVD 5 Pack Comedies Giftbox Set William Shakespeare loved to laugh. One need look no further than to explore his gift for dramatic humor in his great comedic plays. The BBC Shakespeare Comedy Gift Box gives us five of the best of Shakespeare's plays performed by great actors and the best British directors. The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, & As You Like It. The actors include: Helen Mirren, Richard Pasco, John Cleese, Michael Hordern, Warren Mitchell, Gemma Jones and many more. The list goes on.....the laughter runs deep. DVD brings out the luster of the periods sets and the audio crisply delivers the voices of the past. English subtitles have been added to give the viewer the luxury of reviewing the crisp dialogue (when needed).

Programs in this Comedy Giftbox Set includes: The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice,& As You Like It

Mozart - La Clemenza di Tito (Opernhaus Zurich 2005)

Long Day's Journey Into Night

Academy Award©-winning star power lights up this passionate production of Eugene O'Neill's timeless American classic! In the height of a sweltering summer, the Tyrone family is about to explode with simmering tensions and suppressed truths that can no longer be held back. Wealthy but unsatisfied former actor James (Jack Lemmon) lives with his morphine-addict wife, Mary (Bethel Leslie, In Cold Blood), and their two tormented sons, Jamie (Kevin Spacey, The Usual Suspects) and Edmund (Peter Gallagher, TV's The O.C.). As nightfall approaches, truth and madness fight for control over a family tearing itself apart. A landmark production from theater legend Jonathan Miller, this searing drama is a bold, electrifying powerhouse you'll never forget!

Mozart - Die Zauberflote / Hartelius, Beczala, Salminen, Mosuc, Schaginger, Neumann, Keller, Vogel, Will, Welser-Most, Zurich Opera

Die Zauberflöte is the strangest of Mozart's operas. On the one hand it's a beguiling story of lovers in jeopardy, as transparent and enjoyable as any pantomime; on the other, it's an opaque allegory that has occasioned more interpretative speculation than any opera outside the canon of Richard Wagner. Ultimately, the esoteric meaning is less important than the overt subject matter, which is conveyed through a consistently entertaining mix of popular tunes, high-art arias, solemn Gluck-like drama and bel canto display. The style veers rapidly from one extreme to the other, ranging from exalted opera seria to knockabout opera buffa. Within that range lies some of the finest vocal music Mozart ever produced, from heartfelt love songs, to outrageously silly exchanges and hair-raising coloratura dementia. For this Zurich Opera staging, designed by Philip Prowse, Jonathan Miller has set Mozart's opera in the time of its creation: 1791, just after the French Revolution and the fall of the Bastille. It includes wonderful performances from a cast lead by Matti Salminen, Piotr Beczala, Elena Mosuc, and Julia Neumann.

John Gay - The Beggar's Opera / Jonathan Miller · John Eliot Gardiner · Roger Daltrey · English Baroque Soloists

John Gay's The Beggar's Opera created a theatrical revolution in London in 1728. It lampooned the conventions of Italian opera seria--then the reigning form of musical theatre in London--by putting the genre's aristocratic attitudes and high-flown sentiments into the dialogue of thieves, beggars, cutthroats, and prostitutes and by making it painfully clear that petty greed, vanity, and jealousies, not the noble sentiments uttered by operatic heroes, were what motivated its plot. For the elaborately structured da capo arias and rhetorical recitatives of opera seria, it substituted spoken dialogue and popular tunes of the time with new, satirical lyrics. It was sensationally popular because it was in touch with the contemporary environment.

Today, nearly three centuries later, it requires some historical background for complete enjoyment. Only a few of the tunes are still familiar, and for American audiences, subtitles might occasionally be useful. Some of the characters, representing small-time underworld operators, have Cockney accents almost as impenetrable as the German, Italian, or Russian heard in other opera videos. But the performance is superbly styled and it grows more enjoyable with repeated hearings. The cast includes some highly skilled stars of British TV who slip easily into a baroque equivalent of their sitcom experience. For Americans, the best-known cast member is Roger Daltrey (of the rock group the Who), perhaps better-known for Tommy than for The Beggar's Opera. --Joe McLellan

Created especially for television, this version of John Gay's "The Beggar's Opera" captures the quality and satiric edge of the Hogarth engravings which influenced Gay's original version. The characters of this highly-spirited comedy of London's lowlife thrive on thieving, lechery and deceit. Starring Bob Hoskins and Roger Daltrey of The Who, "The Beggar's Opera" is one of the great seminal works of British musical theatre and has achieved staggering success continuously since its first performance in 1728.

Omnibus {Whistle and I'll Come to You}

Wednesday Play, The {Alice in Wonderland} [Region 2]

The Complete Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare: King Lear [Region 2]