"Actor: John Mark Ainsley"

• Janacek - From The House Of The Dead | DVD | (17/03/2008) from £6.30   |  Saving you £8.95 (177.58%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Leos Janacek: From The House Of The Dead, performed by various performers and conducted by Pierre Bouelz.

• L'Orfeo - Monteverdi | DVD | (03/10/2005) from £5.85   |  Saving you £24.14 (412.65%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Intense and refined performances by an inspired cast led by a profound and commanding John Mark Ainsley as the legendary tragic musician are sustained with fluent ease and obvious affection by the ensemble under Stephen Stubbs.The beautifully styled evocative stage production rich with Pierre Audi's trademark symbolism accentuates the solemn serenity of Monteverdi's most famous work to create a moving and timeless experience.

• Handel: The Messiah | DVD | (31/10/2000) from £20.00   |  Saving you £-0.01 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The most popular and well-loved of all Handel's great oratorios, The Messiah here receives warm if not exactly passionate treatment under the direction of Stephen Cleobury. This is a period-instrument performance featuring Roy Goodman and his Brandenburg Consort, although not one that aims at any inflexible authenticism. The four soloists are all of the first rank, as are, of course, the choristers of King's College, Cambridge. So, musically the concert's credentials are impeccable. The setting is the Pieterskerk, Leiden, which at least boasts a sympathetic acoustic even though its visual beauties are hidden in candlelit gloom. It must have been a charming evening for the audience, but the film version doesn't really have anything more to offer the home viewer than a few close-ups of the soloists and the occasional cutaway shot of an appropriate painting. Hence, this disc will be of interest if you want to see musicians giving a delightful performance instead of just listening to them; but it's no substitute for a good audio recording. On the DVD: This is a non-anamorphic widescreen picture, not the 4:3 ratio claimed on the back cover. The sound is only PCM stereo, there are no extra features, and the disc only has the most basic of menus. Chapter access is restricted to just three points. If you wish to select a specific aria or chorus you have to refer to the inside of the booklet and work out which track you need to jump to. And would it be asking too much for the libretto, either on screen or in the booklet? Overall, a very disappointing DVD presentation of an otherwise enjoyable concert performance. --Mark Walker

• A Night With Handel | DVD | (25/10/1999) from £16.24   |  Saving you £0.01 (0.07%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Sultry sopranos and contraltos brood in candle-lit churches or at the top of a shopping mall escalator; a shaven-headed tough menaces enemies with a knife, singing of vengeance and death in a terrifying counter-tenor rasp; a couple sing of fulfilment in the back of a limousine. Jonathan Keates remarks in his accompanying lecture that the heroes and heroines of Handel's opera are real people, whose passions transcend the baroque libretti they are singing; by taking them out of full-bottomed wigs and panniered frocks and putting them at large in contemporary London at night, this interesting documentary reminds us of the immediacy of these arias. This would not work, of course, were not the performances exemplary in their own right and presented with a driving urgency that takes us away from the pieties of the oratorio tradition and reminds us what a superb and popular man of the theatre Handel was. --Roz KaveneyOn the DVD: The DVD comes with the narration in English, French and German, and subtitles in those languages. The arias are also playable as audio only. --Roz Kaveney

• L'Upupa Und Der Triumph Der Sohnesliebe - Henze | DVD | (06/12/2004) from £24.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Hans Werner Henze: L'UpupaUnd der Triumph der SohnesliebeEin deutsches Lustspiel in elf Tableaux aus dem ArabischenRecorded live at the Kleines Festspielhaus Salzburg 12-26 August 2003.

• Mozart: Don Giovanni -- Glyndebourne | DVD | (21/08/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Deborah Warner's 1995 production of Don Giovanni for Glyndebourne is characterised by a central portrayal of the Don as at once evil and sexually magnetic. Gilles Cachemille has at one at the same time a raffish charm and a deep mean-spiritedness--many Don Giovannis don't bully his servant nearly as much as this one, and Warner pushes his sinfulness all the way into sacrilege--apart from mocking the Commendatore's grave effigy, this Giovanni also has his way with a statue of the Madonna. Pieczonka's Elvira is at once stately and sensual--there is no sense of hysteria here, rather more of a deep sadness and sense of a ruined life. Page's Leporello is a wonderful long-faced clown; his catalogue aria is at once genuinely funny and a rather sadistic tease of Elvira. Though Kreizberg is working with authentic forces, the feel of his performance has a passionate gloominess that teeters on the brink of Romanticism without ever exceeding the work's adventurousness. The DVD comes with subtitles in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish, as well as a full printable text of the libretto. --Roz Kaveney

• Handel: Messiah | Blu Ray | (04/01/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Mozart 22 - La Finta Giardiniera | DVD | (13/11/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

• Monteverdi: L'Orfeo | DVD | (02/09/2013) from £12.55   |  Saving you £2.44 (19.44%)   |  RRP £14.99

  John Mark Ainsley leads the cast in Pierre Audi's production of Monteverdi's opera, recorded live at De Nederlandse Opera in 1997. Other cast members include Brigitte Balleys, Michael Chance, David Cordier and Mario Luperi. The conductor is Stephen Stubbs

• Johannes Passion - Bach | DVD | (09/05/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Performed by Kings College Choir Cambridge and the The Brandeburg Consort (leader Roy Goodman). Conducted by Stephen Cleobury and filmed at King's College Chapel.