"Actor: Paolo Montarsolo"

• Le Nozze Di Figaro - Mozart | DVD | (09/05/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £21.99

  This luxuriously cast film of Mozart's beloved opera buffa features a host of legendary interpretations including Kiri Te Kanawa's exquisite Countess Almaviva Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as her philandering husband Hermann Prey as the wily title character Mirella Freni a delight as his no less savvy bride Susanna and Maria Ewing hilarious as the lovesick page Cherubino. Director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's imaginative camera-work tellingly emphasizes character and mood of this immortal story of love intrigue and class struggle set against the historical background of ancien regime Europe sliding inexorably towards revolution.

• 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.

• Rossini - La Cenerentola (Abbado) | DVD | (17/10/2005) from £12.61   |  Saving you £1.38 (10.94%)   |  RRP £13.99

• The Met/James Levine - Rossini - L'italiana In Algeri | DVD | (19/02/2007) from £16.59   |  Saving you £-1.60 (-10.70%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Live from the Met: 11 January 1986.

• Mozart - Cosi Fan Tutte (Harnoncourt) | DVD | (10/04/2006) from £17.34   |  Saving you £8.65 (49.88%)   |  RRP £25.99

  Mozart: Cosi Fan Tutte (Harnoncourt)

• 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

• Manon Lescaut - Glyndebourne Festival Opera - Puccini | DVD | (07/05/2007) from £15.72   |  Saving you £5.26 (41.32%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Manon Lescaut Puccini's first major success is a work of impassioned emotions based on the 18th-century novel by Abb Prvost depicting the doomed infatuation of Chevalier des Grieux for beautiful fun-loving Manon. Puccini clothes the story in warmly passionate music that makes a direct appeal to the listener's emotions. This production by Graham Vick for Glyndebourne Festival Opera which was filmed in 1997 stars Romanian soprano Adina Nitescu as the ill-fated Manon American tenor Patrick Denniston as Des Grieux and Italian baritone Roberto de Candia as Lescaut. The conductor is John Eliot Gardiner.