Opera singer Chivo is currently playing a singing cowboy, and Mexican bandito Braganza kidnaps him (along with Jane, an heiress) so he can learn to become more like the American movie gangsters he admires.
The story of a disabled beggar in Charleston,S.C. who falls in love with a prostitute, this is the first filmed version of Gershwin's opera which uses Gershwin's own orchestrations and practically all of the music, with only one major cut.
Rigoletto is a jester in the court of the Duke of Mantua. He has a hunch-back and he's rather unattractive, but he's good at his job of humiliating the courtiers for the amusement of the Duke. The courtiers, of course, are not amused. The Duke is a ladies man who feels his life would be meaningless if he couldn't chase every skirt he sees. In fact, we learn as the opera begins that he's recently been noticing a young lady every Sunday on her way to church, and he's vowed to have his way with her. What nobody realizes is that the girl is the jester's beloved daughter, Gilda, and that Gilda has seen the Duke every Sunday and is smitten with him. Suddenly Count Monterone appears at court, furious that the Duke has seduced his daughter. Rigoletto ridicules Monterone, the Duke laughs, and Monterone casts an awful curse on both of them. Later, the courtiers discover that Rigoletto is secretly living with Gilda...
Aldo and his girlfriend Lucy reopen an abandoned opera house, but find out that the place is inhabited by a group of Phantoms wearing the Claude Rains 1943 Phantom of the Opera costume.
Based on the Béla Bartók opera, Duke Bluebeard reluctantly and gradually uncovers the secrets of his psyche to his fourth wife, Judit, opening the seven doors of his castle to ultimately reveal his still living previous wives, among whom Judit must take her place.
An adaptation from the controversial John Adams opera about the true life incident that took place in the mid 80s. The liner "Achille Lauro" is on a 12-day cruise in the Mediterranean. While the ship is docked in Alexandria, a maid discovers that four of the passengers are actually members of the Palestine Liberation Organization traveling incognito. Startled by their discovery, the PLO cadre is forced to act. They take the passengers on board hostage and demand the release of 50 Palestinian activists held in Israeli jails. As Egyptian, American, Italian, and Palestinian authorities bicker over the best way to handle the situation (and who would negotiate with the terrorists), the kidnappers find themselves dealing with rebellion among their captives, and an argument between the four PLO members and Leon Klinghoffer, a Jewish-American confined to a wheelchair, eventually escalates into violence.
Madame Flora is terrified when she perceives a supernatural presence during one of her fraudulent séances...
An orphan (Eight-year-old boy soprano Bobby Breen) gets a chance to sing opera in New York.
A return to its roots for Castor et Pollux, Jean-Philippe Rameau’s lyric tragedy first performed in 1737 at the Académie royale and inspired by the mythological episode of the Gemini. Rarely performed in its original version – the score was reworked by Rameau himself in 1754 –, this daring work plays on contrasts and expressiveness, as in the famous “Tristes apprêts”. The aria is sung by Télaïre mourning the death of her fiancé Castor, killed in battle, before his twin brother Pollux descends into the Underworld to ask his father, Jupiter, to bring him back to life. While this opera celebrates brotherly love, its prologue poses an essential question for director Peter Sellars: how do you stop a war and its attendant hatred and resentment?
Notre Dame de Paris tells the story of Quasimodo, the hunchbacked bell-ringer of the cathedral of Notre-Dame and of his impossible and tragic love for Esmeralda, a beautiful gypsy. A love condemned by injustice and hypocrisy. Quasimodo forced by his ugliness to look at the world from the top of a tower one day he falls madly in love with Esmeralda who sees dancing and singing on the square in front of the cathedral. But Esmeralda is in love with Febo, the handsome captain of the King's guards. Febo is fiancé of Fiordaliso, a young and rich bourgeois, but the exotic and sensual beauty of the gypsy does not leave indifferent the man who immediately falls in love with her. Even Frollo, the archdeacon of the cathedral, is attracted by the gypsy and spying on the moves of the two lovers in a raptus of jealousy and repressed carnal desire to get rid of the rival stabbing Febo behind.