Giovanna D'arco - DVD

With more than 50 years of experience as film director, Peter Greenaway (Nightwatching, Eisenstein in Guanajuato, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover) combines the worlds of film and opera at the Festival Verdi in Parma with an all new approach to Verdi's Giovanna d'Arco, staged and edited by himself and Saskia Boddeke. Turning the auditorium into part of the set, Greenaway includes the unique architecture of the Teatro Farnese into his staging. With the help of spectacular video and light installations, he creates a completely new opera experience, using a striking imagery that includes depictions of the Madonna, modern manga girls and the real faces of refugee children. InchIt is a thrilling moment when threads of light spread over the darkened arches during the overture, shaping the architecture and flooding the whole area with changing light patterns.Inch (Daily Express)

It's 1797, and the English frigate Avenger sails wartime seas, ready to engage the French navy in a broadside-for-broadside combat. But there's another warfare going on, a conflict aboard the kings ship. It's the battle of good versus evil, the powerful theme of Herman Melvilles seafaring Billy Budd. Film-debuting (and 1962 Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominee) Terence Stamp plays the title role, an archetype of goodness on the man-of-war. Robert Ryan portrays the master-at-arms, efficient and cruel - especially so to young Billy. And director Peter Ustinov plays the captain caught between the inevitable clash of polar opposites. Will good triumph? Perhaps not in Melvilles world. Perhaps never in a merciless time of war.

Here for the first time on Blu-ray is the introduction to the opera Giovanna d-¦Arco conducted by Bruno Bartoletti with the MET Royal Opera House Salzburg Festival and Paris Opera.