Sound
Omnibus was an arts-based BBC television documentary series, broadcast mainly on BBC1 in the United Kingdom. The programme was the successor to the long-running arts-based series 'Monitor'. It ran from 1967 until 2003, usually being transmitted on Sunday evenings. During its 35-year history, the programme won 12 Bafta awards. Among the series' best remembered documentaries are Cracked Actor, a profile of David Bowie, and Rene Magritte, a graduate film by David Wheatley, 'Madonna: Behind the American dream', a film produced by Nadia Hagger, and a profile of the British film director Ridley Scott. For a season in 1982, the series was in a magazine format presented by Barry Norman. The series was replaced by 'Imagine' hosted by Alan Yentob.
As children in the loving Ekdahl family, Fanny and Alexander enjoy a happy life with their parents, who run a theater company. After their father dies unexpectedly, however, the siblings end up in a joyless home when their mother, Emilie, marries a stern bishop. The bleak situation gradually grows worse as the bishop becomes more controlling, but dedicated relatives make a valiant attempt to aid Emilie, Fanny and Alexander.
Benjamin Britten’s opera Gloriana was written in 1953 for celebrations around the Coronation of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, to whom the opera is dedicated. It had its first performance at the Royal Opera House on 8 June 1953, in the presence of The Queen then just 6 days into her reign. The centenary in 2013 of Britten’s birth prompted this new Royal Opera production, in which director Richard Jones uses the setting of a celebratory pageant in 1953 to explore the work’s alternating splendour and intimacy. This theatrical, inventive and colourful staging has at its core the symbolic reflections between the Tudor Elizabethan and the New Elizabethan ages that characterize the opera. The juxtaposition of the modern and the archaic in William Plomer’s libretto is wonderfully amplified in music that artfully fuses the sounds and manners of Tudor England – from lute songs to courtly dances – with Britten’s own distinctive style.
A spellbinding film of Benjamin Britten's hauntingly beautiful chamber opera, Curlew River, made to celebrates its 60th anniversary. The standout cast is led by internationally acclaimed tenor Ian Bostridge, as the Madwoman, in a performance lauded as 'heart-wrenchingly poignant', alongside the towering presence of Sir Willard White as the Abbott. Set in the ancient Fenlands of East Anglia, the parable's deeply evocative story tells of a broken woman driven to despair as she searches for her missing child along the banks of the Curlew River. This groundbreaking film interweaves live performance with filming in the Fenlands, framing the action along the hidden paths, on the waterways and under the huge skies of Suffolk's timeless landscape.
During World War I, British soldier Owen is mortified by the examples of cruelty that surround him in the trenches. He combats these terrifying images by maintaining hope in his love for an army nurse. But he also begins to accept his fate as another battlefield sacrifice.
The premiere of Benjamin Britten's Billy Budd in Madrid is undoubtedly one of the highlights of the Teatro Real's bicentennial celebrations. Its magnificent libretto, based on the novel of the same name by Herman Melville, tells the story of the sailor Billy Budd: a handsome, loyal, generous, strong, naive, and kind young man whose beauty and personality drive the ship's master-at-arms mad. Unable to control the situation, the master crucifies the naive young man without mercy. This new production by the Teatro Real is being presented for the first time in Madrid, in co-production with the Opéra national de Paris, under the direction of Deborah Warner, one of the great names in stage direction today.
A housewife galvanises her docker husband to take an interest in more important matters than the football pools.
Tony Palmer directs this documentary exploring the life and work of the celebrated English composer, conductor and pianist. Britten is particularly well known for his operas, which include 'Peter Grimes' and 'Death in Venice'. Palmer discusses the life experiences that influenced Britten's work, such as the turmoil of World War II, which horrified his pacifistic nature, and reflects on the role of an artist in such troubled times.
Ann Harding plays a lovely but somewhat naive young woman who goes on a European vacation after winning a lottery. Swept off her feet by charming Basil Rathbone, Harding finds herself married before she is fully able to grasp the situation. Slowly but surely, Rathbone's loving veneer crumbles; when he casually asks Harding to sign a document turning her entire fortune over to him, she deduces that her days are numbered.
Three 1-hour films exploring British folk music from the rebirth of English romance to the latter day revival.
To mark the 140th anniversary of the organ at Riga Cathedral, Latvian organist Iveta Apkalna and the Latvian Choir are presenting a concert combining classical works (Johann Sebastian Bach, Franz Liszt) and contemporary pieces (Sven-David Sandström), showcasing the rich sound of this exceptional instrument.
After years working in Brazil, middle-aged engineer Martin Boyner returns to Switzerland to marry his longtime friend, the recently widowed Rose Sellars. En route, he encounters an old acquaintance and soon finds himself entranced by and then caring for her seven emotionally abandoned children. The oldest girl, Judith, quickly beguiles Martin with her unsettling blend of innocence and maturity. And suddenly Martin's orderly blueprint for the future is thrown into disarray as Judith's youth and spirit transform his routine life into a dangerously passionate new equation.
With the war in Ukraine, Odessa Classics festival has found a temporary home in the Estonian capital. On the programme are works by Pärt, Mozart and Britten performed by Alexey Botvinov and Daniel Hope and the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Olari Elts.
Bar Avni is the third major winner of the La Maestra conducting competition. Relive the highlights that convinced the jury in the 2024 edition.
Liubov Nosova won second prize at the 2024 edition of La Maestra. Here's a look back at her journey through this prestigious competition for female conductors.
This expository film shows the mood of European society on the eve of the Second World War while promoting the values of international cooperation. Using the Swiss office of the BBC as an example, the film describes the functioning of radio and presents the possibilities opened by mass communications. After the advent of sound film, Cavalcanti promoted experimentation with sound, and in this connection he was interested in the communicational, organizational, and social aspects of radio.
Phyllida Lloyd's acclaimed adaptation for film of the opera that Benjamin Britten wrote for the celebrations of the Queen's coronation in 1953, based on the Opera North revival of a work now recognised to be one of the composer's great achievements. Paul Daniel conducts the English Northern Sinfonia, with a cast inspired by electrifying performances from Josephine Barstow and Tom Randall as Elizabeth I and Essex.
From the Rai Arturo Toscanini Auditorium, conductor Juraj Valčuha presents the Rai premiere in Turin of Jean Sibelius’s Symphonic Poem Op. 73, *Aallottaret* (The Oceanides), followed by the *Four Sea Interludes* from Benjamin Britten’s masterpiece *Peter Grimes*. In the second half of the programme, the mood shifts with two masterpieces of extreme expressive power: the Concert Suite from Béla Bartók’s one-act pantomime The Miraculous Mandarin and Maurice Ravel’s La valse, composed between 1919 and 1920, when Europe was attempting to emerge from the ruins of the Great War.
British educational documentary film about the principal instruments in the modern symphony orchestra, illustrated through Benjamin Britten's composition, "The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra", for which it was commissioned.
John Dexter’s brilliant production of Britten’s searing opera stars Dwayne Croft in the title role of the handsome young sailor whose kindness and innocence cause his downfall. The great James Morris is Claggart, master-at-arms on the 18th-century warship Indomitable, who falsely accuses Billy of inciting a mutiny. Philip Langridge sings Captain Vere, the honest commander who knows that Billy is innocent but finds himself unable to save him. Steuart Bedford, Britten’s close collaborator during the last years of the composer’s life, is on the podium.
