Musicals on DVD - Discounted Musical DVDs

Mario Lanza did more to bring classical music and opera to the masses through the popular art of movies than anyone else. His unique tenor voice was known to millions through such hit films as The Great Caruso and <I>The Toast of New Orleans, and on such chart-topping records as "Be My Love." The chubby "singing truck driver" from Philadelphia became a Hollywood legend, only to be destroyed by his own excess. In a brief twelve years, Lanza went from being a star to an overeating has-been. He died tragicaly at the age 38 alone and near penniless in a diet clinic under mysterious circumstances. Through clips of his popular recordings, and from interviews his story is now told. This revealing video profile presents the highs and lows of this remarkable performer. Video hosted by Placido Domingo. 1983, color, 70 minutes.

Described as "possessed, "frightening," and "brilliant," Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg has either enraged or enraptured critics while earning herself the nickname "the bad girl of the violin." Academy Award® nominee Speaking In Strings explores the controversial and fascinating life of this funny, fearless, irreverent, and world-renowned musician. A deeply private look at the woman behind all the accolades and controversy. <P>DVD Features: Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg Biography; Docurama Previews; Interactive Menu; Scene Selection

Originally aired on PBS's American Masters series, this evocative biography of the American composer, conductor, and de facto musical evangelist Leonard Bernstein offers a compelling balance of musical scholarship and personal insight. It's a fitting approach to the brilliant--and emotional--life and art of Bernstein, who elevated Broadway musical theater, demystified and democratized classical music for two generations of American children, and brought a true New Yorker's vigor and directness to his conducting.<p> Writer-director Susan Lacy establishes the film's sympathetic tone in its opening shots of Bernstein's funeral cortege as it passed along Manhattan streets in 1990. Underscoring the footage is the elegiac second movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, the final piece conducted by Bernstein at his final performance months earlier at Tanglewood. Scenes from that last concert (and a return to that slow, funereal march) are the inevitable conclusion of Lacy's film, which finds ample drama over the course of approximately two hours.<p> Lacy traces the arc of Bernstein's career from his earliest triumphs as a young conductor through his Broadway successes (culminating in West Side Story), his historic network television outreach, the frustrations encountered over his "serious" compositions (often derided, ultimately vindicated), and his autumnal work abroad conducting the Vienna Philharmonic. Bernstein's private demons--anguish over the tradeoff between a conductor's glory and a composer's productivity, the ridicule invited by his impassioned political activism, the conflict between his devotion to his family and his bisexuality, bouts of depression suffered in his later years--are addressed as well.

Excellent archival footage and a literate script are enhanced by interviews with his brother and children; collaborators including Jerome Robbins, Isaac Stern, and Stephen Sondheim; and conductors including John Mauceri, Seiji Ozawa, and Michael Tilson Thomas. --Sam Sutherland

The most brilliant of all the documentaries about the legendary Maria Callas, Life and Art includes extensive interviews with her friends and colleagues, as well as priceless footage of "La Divina" in performance.

This American Masters production celebrating Isaac Stern is more a profile of the man than the musician. Fans hoping to hear Stern performing will have to settle for the briefest snippets of fiddling: a bar or two from Mendelssohn, a fragment of Rimsky-Korsakov, a taste of Beethoven. Though each of these begins enticingly, they all quickly fade into the background, little more than aural wallpaper behind the comments and testimonials from such notables as Pinchas Zukerman, Yo-Yo Ma, and Itzhak Perlman--as well as some less-expected commentators such as Gregory Peck and Jimmy Connors. But the portrait that all give of this marvelous octogenarian is almost as dazzling and multifaceted as hearing him play. After all, master violinist is only one of the hats Stern can wear with aplomb. There's also the flashy celebrity who provided the music for Hollywood films like Fiddler on the Roof and Humoresque and who could share the stage as easily with Jack Benny as Eugene Ormandy; the musical emissary who sought to bridge cold war divides with music, touring the Soviet Union and communist China as soon as he was allowed (as recorded in the 1980 documentary From Mao to Mozart); the beloved teacher, demanding but genuinely respectful toward young performers; even the hard-driving fundraiser who kept Carnegie Hall from being torn down.

Through it all, Stern has carried himself with a no-nonsense humility, born of his profound love of humanity and devotion to his craft that is never less than inspiring. Footage (again, far from enough!) of Stern performing in Israel during the Gulf War, ignoring the whine of the air-raid sirens and the anxious surreality of an audience decked out in their gas masks, rapturous as he unfolds the serene music of Bach, raises the inspirational to the magnificent. --Bruce Reid

No other opera singer this century has aroused such public interest, such adulation and such controversy as Maria Callas, "La Divina Assoluta." Her dramatic and musical reincarnations of operatic heroines were invested with a psychological depth which made her performances and recordings definitive, and her recordings still outsell every other major classical singer. Callas transformed herself from an overweight ugly duckling into a dazzling beauty, inspired by the sylph-like Audrey Hepburn. She was labeled a "tigress" for her temperamental image, others thought her behavior so unforgivable she was pelted with eggs, but her unique and haunting voice and personality dominated public life in the 1950s and early 1960s. Tony Palmer's award-winning film charts her rapid rise to fame and offers a glimpse into the private life of this remarkable woman. 91 minutes.

Werner Herzog's chilling story of sixteenth century composer Don Carol Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, whose life embraced sexual excess, ghastly murder and obsession. Filmed on location in Italy, the program explores both Gesualdo's musical legacy and the extraordinary influence his tormented life has continued to exert on those whose lives crossed his path. Contributors include Gerald Pace, director of The Gesualdo Consort, Alan Curtis, music director of the singing ensemble II Complesso Barocco, and Professor Ludica of the Archeological Museum in Venosa.

André Previn is one of the most interesting figures on the classical music scene, and this well-crafted television documentary on his career deserves to be preserved, in classrooms and public libraries if not in private collections. It is essentially an introduction to Previn's blockbuster opera A Streetcar Named Desire (based on the Tennessee Williams play), which is available on both CD and DVD recordings, and it will be most useful when played in tandem with the opera.<p> Besides scenes from the opera and the Williams drama, with occasional filmed comments by Williams himself, <I>The Kindness of Strangers takes a look at Previn's biography: a jazz pianist and Hollywood soundtrack composer, often married and divorced, who successfully crossed over an almost unbridgeable gap to become a respected conductor with the world's most important symphony orchestras. He is shown composing, rehearsing, teaching young conductors, and even (though not often) enjoying moments of relaxation. <I>--Joe McLellan

This definitive profile of one of the greatest conductors of our day captures the remarkable man's amazing energy and passion for music. Filmed with Solti in Budapest, Bavaria, Chicago and London during the last year of his life, and filled with a wealth of archival footage and music, this documentary charts Solti's amazing life and illustrious career.