"Actor: Luigi Alva"

• La Fanciulla Del West | DVD | (21/05/2004) from £15.25   |  Saving you £-5.26 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Puccini's Wild West opera based on Belasco's play The Girl of the Golden West has the California gold rush as its dramatic backdrop for a story in which Minnie the only woman in a mining camp gambles on her one chance of happiness. Lorin Maazel conducts a fine cast in Jonathan Miller's 1991 production of the compelling and evocative opera which Puccini himself considered his best work. Unlocked from the archives of RAI television this is a classic recording from one of the world's great opera houses.

• Rossini - Il Barbiere Di Siviglia (Abbado) | DVD | (09/05/2005) from £14.09   |  Saving you £5.90 (41.87%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Jean-Pierre Ponnelle directed this film of Rossini's comic masterpiece four years before filming Mozart's Figaro. The result was an irresistibly entertaining and musically rewarding film starring Hermann Prey as Beaumarchais's scheming barber of Seville. The other main roles in Ponnelle's Barber are taken by four of the most celebrated Rossini interpreters of the past decades: Teresa Berganza as the cunning heroine Rosina Luigi Alva as her devoted suitor Count Almaviva Enzo Dara as the long-suffering outfoxed Dr. Bartolo and Paolo Montarsolo as the shifty music master Don Basilio.

• Haydn - Lo Speziale (Andrae, Orch Della Svizzera Italiana) | DVD | (06/11/2006) from £6.95   |  Saving you £-1.96 (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  La Speziale.Comic Opera in 3 Acts.

• The Great Silence | DVD | (16/09/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Bounty killers led by Loco (Kinski) prey on outlaws hiding out in the snowbound Utah mountains. After Pauline's husband becomes Loco's latest victim she hires a gunman for revenge... Director Sergio Corbucci brings this spaghetti western to life with great acting and a brillant villian in Klaus Kinski. Enhanced with Ennio Morricone's original music score this movie is what the genre should be.

• Verdi: Falstaff | DVD | (06/03/2006) from £26.89   |  Saving you £-1.90 (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  This 1956 Falstaff from Radiotelevisione Italiana is one of the finest of the many studio productions that RAI presented in the 1950s. In addition to the presence of the legendary maestro Tullio Serafin there is the elegant physical production and brilliant staging by the renowned opera director Herbert Graf. the top-notch cast includes a number of singers particularly associated with this opera. Anna Moffo scored many of her early successes as Nannetta often opposite Luigi Alva's Fenton. Just a month after appearing in this production the two joined the cast of the studio recording of Falstaff under Karajan also featuring Fedora Barbieri as Mrs Quickly. Giuseppe Taddei Rosanna Carteri and Anna Maria Canali had also taken part in a 1949 Cetra recording of the opera. Taddei Rosanna Carteri and Anna Maria Canali had also taken part in a 1949 Cetra recording of the opera. Taddei who made a specialty of the title role began his long career in the mid-1930s.

• Rossini: Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) -- La Scala | DVD | (19/11/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Like all successfully filmed operas, Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's 1974 film of his 1972 La Scala production of The Barber of Seville weaves its magic on multiple levels: naturalistic lighting and camera-work which break through the invisible barrier of the proscenium arch and take the viewer to the heart of the action; wonderful casting and magnificent singing; opera singers who can act to the camera (Teresa Berganza, in particular, is luminous); and conducting which simply revels in the richness of a much-loved score (Claudio Abbado wrings every ounce of levity and brilliance from the music). Rossini's 1816 work, based on Beaumarchais' Figaro characters and an earlier libretto by Paisiello, is one of the great joys of comic opera, crammed with familiar arias and duets, all of which drive the galloping pace of the book without ever interrupting the plot. Its ingredients of romance, disguise and intrigue merge in Rossini's extraordinarily vibrant and increasingly explosive score. At the heart of the tale is the love triangle of Count Almaviva (a lusty Luigi Alva), the wilful Rosina (Teresa Berganza at the peak of her mezzo-soprano powers) and her guardian with an ulterior motive Bartolo (Enzo Dara, constantly foiled). Thanks to the machinations of Figaro (Hermann Prey, making the most of his trademark theme "Largo al factotum") they are put through a series of hoops in which love conquers all and no real harm is ever done. On the DVD: If this Barber has dated at all it's largely thanks to Abbado's pudding-basin haircut and the film's inevitable 1970's quality. It is presented in standard 4:3 format with a PCM Stereo soundtrack, producing a merely average video-standard viewing experience. Apart from a good choice of subtitles there are no extras. A history of the production would have been useful. But these shortcomings, and the occasionally dull sound quality, are soon forgotten in the heat of the action.--Piers Ford

• Mozart - Don Giovanni (Molinari-Pradelli) | DVD | (25/04/2005) from £23.82   |  Saving you £4.17 (17.51%)   |  RRP £27.99

  Mozart - Don Giovanni (Molinari-Pradelli)

• Mozart - Le Nozze Di Figaro | DVD | (04/02/2008) from £23.51   |  Saving you £-0.52 (N/A%)   |  RRP £22.99