A lighthearted burlesque of Victorian English culture and the vagaries of love, The Mikado offers an ideal matching of William Schwenck Gilbert's elegant comedic gifts with Arthur Sullivan's agile and refined musicianship. The tale unfolds amid a fanciful version of Japanese society, in which a wandering minstrel has the misfortune to fall in love with the beautiful ward of the Lord High Executioner of Titipu. The sparkling lyrics and witty dialogue...

In order to escape her narrow and restrictive life, Senta, the daughter of a rich ship owner, seeks refuge in her fantasies and dreams. In this realm of imagination, a bold and restless sea captain appears to her, the Flying Dutchman, who is cursed to wander the seas forever. In her obsessive dreams, Senta frees this man through her love for him. Herz's successful staging of The Flying Dutchman at the Berlin Komische Oper in 1962 at the invitation...

A documentary film about the taboos, stereotypes, and struggles of black actors in Brazilian television "soaps. " Based on his own memories and on a sturdy body of research evidence, the director analyzes race relations in Brazilian soap operas, calling attention to their likely influence on Black people's identity-forming processes.

"Beyond Reason relates Wagner's works to the philosophical and cultural ideas of his time, centering on the four music dramas he created in the second half of his career: Der Ring des Nibelungen, Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and Parsifal. Karol Berger seeks to penetrate the "secret" of large-scale form in Wagner's music dramas and to answer those critics, most prominently Nietzsche, who condemned Wagner for his putative inability...

This beautifully realized documentary chronicles the life and work of Qi Shu Fang, one of the preeminent masters of Chinese Opera living in the United States. It is a story of ambition, love, the creative impulse and the struggle to survive against all odds. The film highlights the intricacies of Peking Opera, an art form that is hardly known in the West and is declining in popularity in China. At the same time it explores why Ms. Qi, her husband,...

Corinna Chapman, talented baker and reluctant investigator, accepts an offer from a caterer friend to do the baking for the film set of a new soap called "Kiss the Bride." While on the other side of town, a young woman is being unmercifully bullied by her corporate employers -- employers who spend a lot of time cooking the books.

"This pathbreaking study of Italian stage works reconsiders a crucial period of music history: the late eighteenth century through the early nineteenth century. In her interdisciplinary examination of the statue animated by music, Ellen Lockhart deftly shows how Enlightenment ideas influenced Italian theater and music and vice versa. As Lockhart concludes, the animated statue became a fundamental figure within aesthetic theory and musical practice...

An ancient Hopi myth says people arrived on tiny silver pods that fell from the sky. But the truth is far more terrifying. 258 teens are sent from a dying Earth to a terraformed Mars as part of the Emergence Program, mankind's last hope before solar flares finish off their planet and species. Among the brave pioneers are 16-year-old Joey Westen and her twin brother, Jesse. After only minutes in space, something triggers a total ship lockdown. With...

"The Laconian Empire has fallen, setting the thirteen hundred solar systems free from the rule of Winston Duarte. But the ancient enemy that killed the gate builders is awake, and the war against our universe has begun again. In the dead system of Adro, Elvi Okoye leads a desperate scientific mission to understand what the gate builders were and what destroyed them, even if it means compromising herself and the half-alien children who bear the weight...

The Ring of Truth is an exploration of the drama, music, symbolism and philosophy of the Ring from a writer whose knowledge and understanding of the Western musical tradition are the equal of his capacities as a philosopher. Scruton shows how, through musical connections and brilliant dramatic strokes, Wagner is able to express truths about the human condition which few other creative artists have been able to convey so convincingly. For Wagner, writes...