"Actor: Elizabeth Gale"

• Orfeo Ed Euridice - Glyndebourne Festival Opera | DVD | (02/08/2004) from £15.49   |  Saving you £2.50 (16.14%)   |  RRP £17.99

  The great British contralto Dame Janet Baker gave her very last stage appearance in Peter Hall's acclaimed production of Orfeo ed Euridice for Glyndebourne Festival Opera filmed in 1982. This is one her most famous roles and she gives a most moving portrayel of Orfeo the grieving musician of Greek myth who tries to bring his wife back form the depths of Hades. Elisabeth Speiser is Euridice and Elizabeth Gale is Amor with first-rate singing from the Glyndebourne Chorus. The Londo

• Falstaff - Giuseppe Verdi | DVD | (12/01/2005) from £3.78   |  Saving you £11.21 (296.56%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Verdi's opera based on Shakespeare's character Falstaff who attempts to woo two wealthy married women in an attempt to avoid bankruptcy....

• Fidelio | DVD | (28/11/2005) from £16.18   |  Saving you £-1.19 (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Fidelio - Recorded At The Glyndebourne Festival Opera 1979.

• Orpheus In The Underworld | DVD | (21/02/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Eurydice is married to Orpheus but has started an affair with a local shepherd called Aristaeus. However Aristaeus is really Pluto in disguise and he becomes so besotted with Eurydice that he lures her to a field where she is bitten by a snake. He then reveals his true identity and whisks her away to Hades so they can be together. Orpheus now a free man is happy about this new situation until his mother insists he rescues Eurydice from Hades. Meanwhile King Of The Gods Jupiter ha

• Britten: Owen Wingrave - Berlin/Nagano | DVD | (22/12/2003) from £24.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Owen Wingrave is perhaps Britten's most radical opera, both politically and artistically. Originally written for television, and here presented in a 2001 Channel 4 version, the 1970 score is based, like The Turn of the Screw, on a Henry James ghost story. Britten, though, is more in tune than James with the pacifism into which Owen revolts from a long family tradition of military service. The fluid, impassioned, often declamatory music given Owen makes him one of the most sympathetic of Britten's outsider protagonists, though he has a streak of self-centredness, which stops him being an implausible paragon. Gerald Finley is quite admirable in the part, conveying fully the sense that by losing and dying at the hands of family ghosts, Owen demonstrates the integrity which is central to his character. The other parts are admirably filled here, notably Martyn Hill as Owen's harsh General grandfather, Josephine Barstow as his aunt and Charlotte Hellekant as the fiancee who unknowingly sends him to his death. They and Elizabeth Gale are quite extraordinary in the first act quartet of recrimination and condemnation. This excellent performance compares vocally with the original on almost entirely equal terms--modern technology means that the ghost scenes are far more dramatic and plausible. Kent Nagano and the Berlin Orchestra do full subtle justice to the chamber orchestra sonorities of one of Britten's most interesting scores, never overstressing its complex musical architecture at the expense of the drama. On the DVD: Owen Wingrave is presented in a widescreen 16:9 visual aspect ratio with PCM stereo sound. It is accompanied by The Tender Heart, a documentary about Britten's career full of personal reminiscences by his surviving friends, colleagues and family, that concentrates on Peter Grimes, the War Requiem and Death in Venice, the three popular masterpieces of his early, middle and late career. It has menus and subtitles in English, French, German and Spanish. --Roz Kaveney