"Actor: Marie McLaughlin"

• Strauss: Arabella | DVD | (16/04/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Like most of his later operas, Richard Strauss' Arabella ends with a meltingly lovely duet. But then criticising Strauss for composing melodically enduring operas is as pointless as lambasting Vermeer for painting only exquisite interior scenes. Those who say Strauss never improved on Rosenkavalier may be right but when such beguiling sounds kept coming from his music for the next 30 years of his life, there shouldn't be any quibbles. Arabella is, in a nutshell, the story of a woman who cannot make up her mind about a suitor. Taped at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1994 under the baton of conductor Christian Thielemann, this production features Kiri Te Kanawa in the title role; her acting is mediocre but vocally she never forces anything and at least sounds like the perfect Arabella. Wolfgang Brendel does well with Mandryka, who finally ends up with Arabella and Marie McLaughlin makes a sympathetic younger sister to the heroine as Zdenka. Otto Schenk's production is sturdily conservative, the video transfer is acceptable if unspectacular and the sound mix is CD-quality. --Kevin Filipski, Amazon.com

• Gianni Schicchi - Puccini | DVD | (30/05/2005) from £16.37   |  Saving you £3.62 (18.10%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Alessandro Corbelli takes the title role in Annabel Arden's whirlwind production of Puccini's compact opera in which the scheming Gianni Schicchi retrieves for himself the spoils of a disinherited family to pave the way for his daughter to marry her love.

• Beethoven: Fidelio | DVD | (31/07/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Beethoven's lone opera Fidelio had a troubled gestation, as its no fewer than four overtures suggest. The finished product, while obviously a work of genius, exposes its patchwork qualities even in the best of productions. Luckily, the 1991 staging by the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, is so lucid and intelligent that the opera--a forceful plea for freedom, even in the most severely dictatorial regimes--comes across as both a forceful drama and a thought-provoking "message".Stage director Adolf Dresen, together with set designer Margit Bardy and lighting designer Erich Falk, presents the characters (which on paper have a tendency to remain "types") as fully human, their interactions made understandable and plausible not only by Beethoven's humanising music but also the realistic period settings. Video director Derek Bailey has succeeded admirably at getting this across for the home viewer as well. Musically, this Fidelio is a whirlwind, with conductor Christoph von Dohnányi leading the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House and the Royal Opera Chorus in an energetic but never too-fast performance (by the way, they perform the fourth overture); and the singers are top-notch vocally and dramatically. Soprano Gabriela Benacková makes an arresting, emotionally complex Leonore, and Josef Protschka as her imprisoned husband, Florestan, brings down the house with his impassioned aria at the beginning of Act II. --Kevin Filipski, Amazon.com

• Mozart - Requiem | DVD | (13/11/2006) from £21.49   |  Saving you £-4.50 (N/A%)   |  RRP £16.99

• Glass: The Perfect American | Blu Ray | (02/09/2013) from £25.75   |  Saving you £4.24 (16.47%)   |  RRP £29.99

  United Kingdom released, Blu-Ray/Region A/B/C DVD: LANGUAGES: English ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ), English ( Dolby DTS-HD Master Audio ), English ( Dolby Linear PCM ), English ( Subtitles ), French ( Subtitles ), German ( Subtitles ), Japanese ( Subtitles ), Korean ( Subtitles ), Spanish ( Subtitles ), WIDESCREEN (1.78:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Interactive Menu, Photo Gallery, Scene Access, SYNOPSIS: At the age of 75, one of the leading figures on the 20th century music, Philip Glass, is composing a new work for the Teatro Real. "The Perfect American", imagining the final months of the life of Walt Disney - the person who has, more than any other, influenced the current world of consumers. Children nowadays only see mice and ducks as Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck, thanks to the image invented for them by Walt Disney factory. In opposition to the world of happiness he devised, the existence of this perfect American was marked by an unhappy youth and a personality whose 'political correctness' outdid that of even Richard Nixon. From the hand of Dennis Russell Davies, who has conducted almost all the premieres of Glass's operas, and the stage director Phelim McDermott, we will be penetrating into the nightmare of a happy world. World Premiere, commission of the Teatro Real De Madrid and English National Opera of London. ...The Perfect American (Blu-Ray)

• Verdi: La Traviata -- Glyndebourne | DVD | (31/10/2000) from £16.28   |  Saving you £11.70 (88.04%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Performances of La Traviata stand or fall to an unusual extent on their principal soprano; the first thing that needs saying about this Glyndebourne performance is that Marie McLaughlin has all of the attributes needed for a role that is fundamentally a virtuoso one, no matter how emotionally involving it is as well. The point about Violetta is that she is, with absolute authenticity, all of the things she becomes in the course of the opera--the febrile socialite and yearning love of Act One, the quiet domesticated woman of Act Two who sacrifices her love for Alfredo to precisely the family values he has talked her into espousing, the dying penitent of Act Three. Walter McNeil is an impressive poetic Alfredo in whose successful courtship we can believe. He is also unusually good in Act Two, Scene Two where for once his public humiliation of Violetta is actually painful, which makes his repentance at her deathbed far more moving. Brent Ellis is solidly powerful as his father Germont--the duet in which he talks Violetta into renouncing his son and comes to value what he is destroying is one of the high points here, as it should be. Bernard Haitink conducts impressively. On the DVD: As (unfortunately) usual with Arthaus Musik, the DVD contains no extra features worth mentioning past the usual subtitles in German, English and French, relegating discussion of the opera's stormy history to the booklet. --Roz Kaveney

• Le Rossignol - Stravinsky | DVD | (03/01/2005) from £11.88   |  Saving you £4.11 (34.60%)   |  RRP £15.99

  This DVD is a stunning film adaptation of Stravinsky's Rossignol with Natalie Dessay in the title role. Inspired by Stravinsky's words: ""I said somewhere that it wasn't enough to hear the music you had to see it too..."" the firlm-maker Christian Chaudet made an innovative and ambitious animated film illustrating the opera score with 3 dimensial images into which the singers have been inserted. The film offers superb narrative and visual ingredients following Stravinsky's own st

• Mozart: Le Nozze Di Figaro | Blu Ray | (06/10/2008) from £25.95   |  Saving you £-3.96 (N/A%)   |  RRP £21.99

  Le Nozze Di Gigaro by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Performed by Konzertvereinigung Wiener Staatsopernchor and Wiener Philharmoniker. Conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt.

• Carmen - Glyndebourne Festival Opera | DVD | (24/10/2005) from £24.28   |  Saving you £-6.29 (-35.00%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Bernard Haitink conducts Maria Ewing and Barry McCauley in an interpretation of Bizet's Carmen. Maria Ewing's electric portrayal of the gypsy Carmen is one of the finest in recent memory. Her dark alluring looks and feline grace are exactly suited to playing the hot-blooded Spanish temptress who charms men with her sensuous wild spirit. Peter Hall's production filmed in 1985 reveals Bizet's opera as a torid drama of passion blood and squalor with sets by John Bury that capture the earthy warmth of Spain in an unglamorised view of the factory girls of Seville. Barry McCauley is a thrilling Don Jose Micaela is sung by Marie McLaughlin with Bernard Haitink conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

• Glass: The Perfect American | DVD | (02/09/2013) from £21.38   |  Saving you £3.61 (16.88%)   |  RRP £24.99

  United Kingdom released, PAL/Region 0 DVD: LANGUAGES: English ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ), English ( Dolby Digital 5.1 ), English ( Dolby DTS-HD Master Audio ), English ( Dolby Linear PCM ), English ( Subtitles ), French ( Subtitles ), German ( Subtitles ), Japanese ( Subtitles ), Korean ( Subtitles ), Spanish ( Subtitles ), ANAMORPHIC WIDESCREEN (1.78:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Anamorphic Widescreen, Interactive Menu, Photo Gallery, Scene Access, SYNOPSIS: At the age of 75, one of the leading figures on the 20th century music, Philip Glass, is composing a new work for the Teatro Real. "The Perfect American", imagining the final months of the life of Walt Disney - the person who has, more than any other, influenced the current world of consumers. Children nowadays only see mice and ducks as Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck, thanks to the image invented for them by Walt Disney factory. In opposition to the world of happiness he devised, the existence of this perfect American was marked by an unhappy youth and a personality whose 'political correctness' outdid that of even Richard Nixon. From the hand of Dennis Russell Davies, who has conducted almost all the premieres of Glass's operas, and the stage director Phelim McDermott, we will be penetrating into the nightmare of a happy world. World Premiere, commission of the Teatro Real De Madrid and English National Opera of London. ...The Perfect American (2013)

• Verdi - Aida, La Traviata | DVD | (18/11/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Performed at La Scala in Italy 'Aida' is Guiseppe Verdi's famous grand opera at its very best. 'La Traviata' is Peter Hall's production and comes from the 1988 Glyndebourne Festival under the musical direction of Bernard Haitink.