This all-time ballet favourite, in which young Clara is swept into a fantasy adventure when one of her Christmas presents comes to life, is at its most enchanting in Peter Wright's glorious production - as fresh as ever in its 25th year. Tchaikovsky's ravishing score, period designs by Julia Trevelyan Oman (including an ingenious magical Christmas tree), an exquisite Sugar Plum Fairy (Miyako Yoshida) and chivalrous Prince (Steven McRae), the mysterious Drosselmeyer (Gary Avis) and vibrant dancing by The Royal Ballet make for a captivating performance.

As a celebration of the 30th anniversary of their debut album, DAWN PATROL, and hot on the heels of their 10th studio album, SOMEWHERE IN CALIFORNIA, Night Ranger will release a very special newly-recorded live greatest hits CD/DVD package: 24 STRINGS & A DRUMMER LIVE & ACOUSTIC via Frontiers Records…

Respected American troupe Pacific Northwest Ballet take on equally revered choreographer George Balanchine's 1962 version of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'. Artistic director Francia Russell emulates Balanchine's intentions as closely as possible in this classic ballet combining Shakespeare's much-loved tale of love and magic, married to Felix Mendelssohn's energetic score.

Götz Friedrich’s 1981 Elektra film sets Richard Strauss’ opera in a dark and dingy abandoned 20th-century factory populated by grungy denizens in psuedo-Greek garb. Elektra herself appears like some deranged homeless woman reeking with sweat and slime (in the rain). And the depravity doesn’t stop there. Friedrich plays up the work’s sado-masochistic elements, with bloody whippings and an orgy sequence involving nude lesbians bathing themselves in the blood of a sacrificial ram. Now you might think that all of this detracts from the score, but on the contrary, the production matches image to music so brilliantly that anyone seeing this opera for the first time would think they were created for each other (which allows you to ignore the occasional useless, almost silly gesture, such as the frequent and prolonged shots of Agamemnon’s bloodied visage during Elektra’s opening monologue).

Monumental operas deserve epochal stagings. And "Les Troyens" by Hector Berlioz is just such a work. This grand opera, complete with ballets, large choruses and orchestral set pieces, is just given the full treatment by famous Catalan theatre group La Fura dels Baus. Recorded at Valencia´s Palau de les Arts under the baton of the great Valery Gergiev, this coproduction with St. Petersburg´s Mariinski Theatre and Warsaw´s Wiekl Theatre is “such a feast for the eyes, a veritable orgy of optical opulence” that displays “this artist group´s sheer inexhaustible fund of imagination and creativeness” (Das Opernglas).

Hysteria is the fourth studio album by English hard rock band Def Leppard. It was released on August 3rd, 1987 and is the band's best-selling album to date, selling over 25 million copies worldwide and charting at #1 on the Billboard 200 in the US…

Formed in late 1969 by brothers Christian Descamps (vocals) and Francis Descamps (keyboards) and later joined by guitarist Jean-Michel Brézovar, bassist Daniel Haas and Gérard Jelsh on drums, this French symphonic progressive rock band, similar to contemporaries such as Genesis and King Crimson, is undoubtedly France's most important prog band…

Two complete Rockpalast TV shows from Germany (1998 / 2008) plus a bonus concert from 2002, 12-page booklet. The Rockpalast performance of June 21, 1998 at the Loreley is a significant example of the first international phase of success. It was Tito & Tarantula's third concert in Germany and it shows that their musical reputation did not crumble to dust in broad daylight at all. At that time the violinist and mandolin player Lyn Bertles gave the band a more folkloristic touch. That and the simmering mixture of blues, rock and Americana with Mexican influences put the German crowd under the same spell as the shady spectators in the famous movie scene…

Another DVD of Ange from Musea, but this time more inclined towards the older fans of the band. Indeed as the title suggests this deal with the glorious 70's "concerts" (two of them) and the more "iffy" 80's performances. As you'd expect with such a wide time lapse, there is a vast variety of line-ups, with the only common players the Descamps brothers…