The unrivalled Bayreuth Centenary Ring by Boulez/Chéreau sent ripples through art and society even before the curtain was lifted. Leaflets were distributed, signatures were collected and musicians left the orchestra pit in disgust, all because of disagreements over the bold new interpretation of Wagner's Ring Cycle by conductor Pierre Boulez. The festival hired 31-year-old film and theatre director Patrice Chéreau, a relative unknown. Chéreau's submitted concept for the multi-part, many hours long Ring Cycle had fitted on a single typewritten page. Once hired, he had just four months to prepare the monumental dramatic work.

Bernstein opera sets come few and far between, but those that do emerge are treated as isolated landmarks. Such was his recording of Richard Strauss` ''Der Rosenkavalier'' of 1971 (CBS M3K 42564, three CDs), recorded three years after he virtually swept the Viennese off their collective feet with it at the Staatsoper.

"The poised polished execution of the Vienna Philharmonic, and … the controlled, tasteful vigour of Bernstein's conducting sets standards of Beethoven playing that recall Toscanini's heyday with the New York Philharmonic." - Fanfare

In 1976 French director Patrice Chéreau's cenentenary staging of Wagner's "Ring"-Cycle unleashed the greatest scandal in Bayreuth Festival history but, by the end of its last performance in 1980, this epoch-making production was acclaimed with an hour and a half of thunderous applause. "Götterdämmerung presents a world in which no values exist any more. The only refuge is in the past" (Chateau). "The videotaped Bayreuth Ring succeed triumphantly."

"The central part of the "Ring" tetralogy is precisely this: a hero has been created who would actually have had all the attributes of freedom, but nobody remembered to tell him…" (Patrice Chéreau). "One can only marvel at how enthrallingly Chéreau has made visible every ramification of this malignant idyll and bitter comedy. In its faithful service to this fabulously polished staging Brian Large's video direction is a model" (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung).

The second part of Patrice Chéreau's epoch-making Bayreuth "Ring" is a radical re-imaging of "Die Walküre", unprecedented in its psychological penetration. "This Wagnerian drama", says Chéreau, "which is at once classical theatre and domestic comedy, enables us to interpret the myths in terms that are both anecdotical and sublime … With Wagner one is dealing with a drama tuned virtually white-hot by the music." "Nothing ever seen before on television has given a better insight into Wagner's genius." (The New York Times)

This production of Richard Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” was recorded during the Deutsche Oper Berlin’s great tour to Japan in 1993. Directed by Götz Friedrich and conducted by Jiří Kout, this interpretation of the adulterous love between the Cornish knight Tristan and the Irish princess Isolde was a great success. Wagner’s composition of “Tristan und Isolde” was inspired by his love affair with Mathilde Wesendonck and the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer.

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Beethoven's birth in 1970, German television took Fidelio into the studio and filmed the Deutsche Oper Berlin's production of the composer's only opera. Karl Böhm, well-known as a master conductor of this opera, leads an astonishing performance which emphasizes orchestral clarity and emotional depth. The conductor leads a strong cast headed by the glorious Gwyneth Jones and powerful James King in the starring roles. First time on DVD! "Gwyneth Jones sang a passionate Leonore…James King was a Florestan on the summit of his vocal expression." (Berliner Morgenpost)

Filmed in 1979, this delightful staging by Otto Schenk features outstanding singer-actresses Gwyneth Jones, Brigitte Fassbaender and Lucia Popp. Der Rosenkavalier is Richard Strauss’s most popular opera and the greatest comic opera since Mozart. Premiered just three years before the start of the First World War, the opera traces the artistic heritage of the Austrian-Hungarian empire in the days of Mozart, where the story is set, to the morbid distraction of the Viennese Art Nouveau.