"Actor: The Tolz Boys Choir"

• Berlioz: La Damnation de Faust | DVD | (15/05/2000) from £26.98   |  Saving you £-1.99 (-8.00%)   |  RRP £24.99

  This imaginative staging of Berlioz's dramatic symphony for chorus, soloists and orchestra relies heavily on the moving of massed choirs across a large stage. It has vivid lighting effects--rather too many of them using strobes--and monolithic multi-purpose sets, in particular a revolving glass drum which functions both as cinema screen and rostrum for singers, so that the final ride to Hell, for example, is sung by Mephistopheles and Faust above a cavalcade of projected horses, like the inside of a zoetrope. The three main soloists have voices on a scale that can compete with these flashy production values--White and Kasarova, in particular, sing at a level of intensity that would swamp anything less; the climactic seduction trio has rarely been sung so well or with such an overpoweringly polymorphous eroticism. Cambreling marshals his forces effectively, giving full rein to the work's showstoppers like the "Hungarian March" but not neglecting the subtler less kinetic Gluckian side of Berlioz's vocal writing. The DVD has subtitles in English, German and Dutch, and menus in those languages, as well as French, Italian, Spanish and Swedish. --Roz Kaveney

• Silent Night, Holy Night | DVD | (22/10/2004) from £1.99   |  Saving you £13.00 (86.70%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Silent Night Holy Night From the Schauspielhaus Berlin1. Macht Hoch die Tur2. Es ist ein Ros' entsprungen3. Ave Maria4. Jubilate Domino5. Cantique de Noel6. In dulci jubilo7. Herrscher des Himmels (choir from the Christmas Oratorio)8. Russian Orthodox Hymns and Prayers9. Air (from the Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major)10. Bereite dich Zion (Aria from the Christmas Oratorio)11. Concerto in B flat Minor for Harp and Orchestra12. Ombra mai fu (Aria from Xerxes)13. O Jesulein sub14. Joseph Iieber Joseph mein15. Tochter Zion Freue dich16. Stille Nacht heilige Nacht