Henrik Hertz

Dansk Melodi Grand Prix is an annual music competition organised by Danish public broadcaster Danmarks Radio, which determines the country's representative for the Eurovision Song Contest. The festival has produced three Eurovision winners and thirteen top-five placings.

Valery Gergiev conducts Mariusz Trelinski’s thrilling new production of these rarely heard one-act operas. Anna Netrebko stars as the blind princess of the title in Tchaikovsky’s lyrical work, opposite Piotr Beczala as Vaudémont, the man who wins her love—and wakes her desire to be able to see. Nadja Michael and Mikhail Petrenko are Judith and Bluebeard in Bartók’s gripping psychological thriller about a woman discovering her new husband’s murderous past.

804, Thuringia. An orphan boy, called Bengel, lives in a monastery and is teased by the nuns because of his ugliness. He nurses a black rider, who is shunned by everyone and is said to have the plague, back to health. The rider tells him about the missing Bogumil, son of the Slavic king Slavomir, who was to marry Reglindis, the daughter of the Margrave of Thuringia, by order of Charlemagne. And he asks Bengel about his origins. Bengel now believes he is Bogumil. He goes to the castle and meets a beautiful girl who also thinks he is beautiful. It is Reglindis, she is blind. The girl senses the boy's inner beauty and is very fond of him. Her father, however, wants to kill him. Bengel narrowly escapes death twice, the Black Rider impressively proves his identity with Bogumil and finally there is a happy ending.

This elaborate and well-staged silent version of Hertz' play is exceedingly well produced for 1913: it starts off by introducing the actors by name and role, then showing them in double exposure in street clothes and in costumes. The production values are also elaborate and the look of the set designs reminds one of the elaborate backdrops that Melies used in his shots.

Grocer Skaarup wins the big prize in the lottery, and it almost makes several members of his family unhappy. Fortunately, everything turns out for the best – and all's well that ends well, as they say in this charming comedy set in 19th-century Copenhagen.