
20 Apr 2020

Das Haus der guten Geister
A documentary about the Staatsoper Stuttgart (Stuttgart State Opera) in Germany.
Director Scheffer registered a performance of the Tea Opera by Chinese composer Tan Dun (who won an Oscar in 2001 with his score for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). Scheffer interlaces the images with interviews with Dun, stage director Pierre Audi and librettist Xu Ying, about the opera and the role tea and oriental philosophy play in this work. Using monochrome, sometimes abstract images (in yellow, blue, red and green), close-ups of plants and flowers and images of the Chinese nature and people (sometimes accelerated or decelerated, sometimes in black-and-white), he mirrors the stylised opera performance and Dun's reflective music.
20 Apr 2020
A documentary about the Staatsoper Stuttgart (Stuttgart State Opera) in Germany.
06 Jan 1975
A documentary behind the scenes of Ingmar Bergman's The Magic Flute.
01 Jan 2010
No overview found
01 Jan 1936
This portait of life on the tea plantations is decidedly rosy – clearly, there are no exploited workers here. However, the film provides an intriguing overview of tea production – from the planting of tea seeds to the final shipping of the precious leaves across the globe.
12 Aug 1984
Memoirs of the Italian Opera by the singers and musicians of the Casa Verdi, Milan, the world’s first nursing home for retired opera singers, founded by composer Giuseppe Verdi in 1896. This documentary, which has achieved cult-like status among opera and music lovers, features former singers who reminisce about their careers and their past operatic roles.
27 Apr 2017
A 12-year-old boy tries everything to join a music lovers club.
06 Oct 2018
Shot over the course of ten years on both film and video, the film consists of a series of carefully composed tableaux of people and environments. Pedestrians shuffle across a bustling Beijing street, steelworkers linger outside a deserted factory, tourists laugh and scamper across a crowded beach, worshippers kneel to pray in a remote village. With a painterly eye for composition, Wang captures China as he sees it, calling to a temporary halt a land in a constant state of change.
24 Nov 2015
Go inside the building that has been the source of some of the greatest moments in music, ballet and opera.
25 Apr 1955
No overview found
14 Jan 2000
Stefan Zucker, the world's highest tenor, visits the opera divas of his childhood. The journey from apartment to apartment, from diva to diva, from Rome to Milan, turns into an opera road movie.
18 Jul 2015
The arias of La traviata are instantly recognisable. Yet at its London premiere in 1856, it was denounced for bringing 'the poetry of the brothel' to the stage and unleashing uncomfortable truths on Victorian society.
22 Jan 1999
With its four operas, seventeen-hour running time and months of rehearsal, Wagner's "Ring Cycle" is a daunting undertaking for any opera company. Jon Else goes backstage to show this rare event entirely from the point of view of union stagehands at the San Francisco Opera.
07 Aug 2025
From the first steps of an emerging singer to the final bow of a celebrated soprano, 'PRIMADONNA OR NOTHING' follows three relentless women who sacrifice everything to be an opera star.
30 Dec 2021
During his thirty-year career, Walter Hus, a Belgian composer and pianist, has taken a thousand musical faces. While he wanted to compose a new work, a crisis blocked his creation. During an exchange with his therapist, he comes to an existential question: "Who am I musically? » Through the portrait of this composer, as abundant as it is fascinating, the film aims to give access to his creative process and thus to the endurance and beauty of creation.
01 Jan 1952
No overview found
18 Dec 1975
No overview found
14 Oct 1985
The creative processes of avant-garde composer Philip Glass and progressive director/designer Robert Wilson are examined in this film. It documents their collaboration on this tradition breaking opera.
19 Nov 2020
Love Opera provides an inside look at Brisbane’s world-class Lisa Gasteen National Opera Program as it prepares a production of Carmen with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra. Nestled inside Griffith University on Brisbane’s South Bank, the Lisa Gasteen National Opera Program is the brainchild of its eponymous leader, whose singular qualities as an opera singer have taken her from The Met to Covent Garden and all across Europe.
12 Jan 2014
Adventurer and journalist Simon Reeve heads to Kenya and Uganda to uncover the stories behind Britain's favourite drink, meeting the people who pick, pack and transport tea.
02 Oct 2022
Born in 1873 in a poor neighbourhood in Naples, Enrico Caruso conquered the world with his singing voice. At the age of 27 he got a contract at the Scala in Milan, and his already considerable popularity skyrocketed thanks to the invention of the gramophone. He sold millions of records, and garnered international acclaim. In 1903 he moved to New York to perform at the prestigious Metropolitan Opera, in the role of Radames. But his riches and fame attracted the attention of the Mafia, who started blackmailing him. He felt trapped by his fame and died at just 48 years old. Biographer Francesco Canessa, the music critic Jürgen Kesting and the composer Micha Hamel explain the ups and downs of the man behind the timeless Italian voice.