La Traviata

An unknown actress lands the role of a lifetime in Rome. Paired with an American journalist writing a profile, she will discover surprises about love and life in the eternal city.

Princess Amelia of Bundbury travels across America to explore a budding romance with an artist, only to fall in love with her bodyguard, Grady.

Margot, a world-renowned pianist, returns to Chateau Newhaus to spend the holidays with her family and is reunited with an ex who helps her rediscover her passion for music.

Wendy Walton is the best designer in Boston... but no one knows it yet. Hoping to kick-start her career, Wendy has left work with the local theatre to take a job as an assistant to Priscilla Hall, the most prestigious designer in the city. Ms. Hall works Wendy around the clock, which is how Wendy finds herself trapped in an elevator late one night with an incredibly handsome stranger. Wendy and the mystery man share an impulsive, romantic, life changing kiss before the doors open and Wendy runs out, leaving him behind. The next day at work, Wendy answers the door to find the handsome gentleman standing in front of her.

After moving back to her hometown, Lisa (Lenz) plots with her siblings and grandparents to help her father's bed and breakfast get a five-star review from an incognito travel critic (Webster), but ends up falling for him, not knowing he is the real critic.

It is 1945. Enrico Piaggio’s Pontedera factory is in ruins and the 12,000 people who worked there are condemned to unemployment and misery. Piaggio feels the enormous responsibility resting on his shoulders: the lives of so many families depend on his ability to create new jobs. A project is born in the mind of the entrepreneur: a small, robust, agile and affordable means of transport, capable of relaunching mobility, giving impetus to the recovery of the country’s economic and civil life. To make this dream come true, Piaggio turns to engineer Corradino D’Ascanio, a brilliant designer who uses the experience gained in the field of aeronautics to create the scooter that remains today the symbol of Italian creativity and design: the Vespa!

When Anna Parisi, an unemployed fine arts painter, is unable to make ends meet, she is hired to become a personal Christmas shopper for Marc, an uptight corporate exec. As they begin working together, Marc learns that Christmas giving has less to do with the amount of money spent and more to do with the importance of the gift, while Anna discovers she might find success as an artist in a way she never expected. The best gift of all of course is the love they discover with one another.

Ella's unique designs inspire publishing mogul Derek to include plussized fashion in his magazine. It's not long before Derek realizes that Ella's influence reaches far beyond the catwalk.

A recently single Jessica sends Christmas cards to people who have impacted her life—the aunt who raised her, her younger brother in the military, a popstar who was part of the soundtrack of her life, the music teacher who inspired her, and the best friend who always tells the truth.

A murder investigation is reignited in a house that is considered haunted by the Lawrenceton locals and where years ago Aurora and Sally, as teenagers, discovered a body.

David is an American architect who relocates across the pond to take up a job at a prestigious London firm. As the clock counts down to Christmas Day, David is running out of time to buy his girlfriend – who also happens to be his boss’s daughter – a thoughtful present so he resorts to buying her a somewhat uninspired gift card.

Two seemingly incompatible game designers team up to create a romantic, city-wide scavenger hunt themed for the "12 Days of Christmas."

A skeptical writer shows up in Evergreen to get the scoop on the town's famed passion for Christmas during a search for a long-lost time capsule.

Jenna and Charlie found love in Ireland but their dreams drove them apart. Five years later, they reunite and Jenna has to decide where her heart belongs—back home or in the Emerald Isle.

Big city girls Julia and her best friend Sydney take a trip to a dude ranch in Wyoming for a fun weekend getaway, but after a brawl at the local bar, the girls are sentenced to stay in town and perform community service. Along the way, Julia finds love and her true calling in life.

Looking for a fresh angle to her book on relationships, Merry heads to snow-covered Vermont. She finds a new perspective and Christmas cheer with charismatic aid worker Chris.

Ethan, always the nice guy, wakes up in a new reality at Christmas. Initially, he is enthralled with his new life but soon realizes that it's not what he thought it would be.

When Brooke’s boyfriend, Ethan, breaks up with her just before the holidays, she agrees to go home with Joel, an actor who will pose as her boyfriend.

Susanna gladly accepts help one day from handsome stranger Nate at her parents’ garden store in small-town Georgia. Sparks between them fly, but when a photo of them gets leaked to the press, Susanna is in for the shock of her life when Nate is called back home by his mother… For his coronation as the King Nathaniel of Cambria!

Bella Sparks, owner of Bella’s Boutique, takes on a demanding new client named Stefan, who needs to be outfitted for a week of high-stakes meetings and events after his luggage goes missing. Imagine Bella’s reaction when she accidentally discovers Stefan is actually Stefan William Francis Brown, the Duke of Tangford.

Who loves whom in Così fan tutte, Mozart’s and Da Ponte’s cruelly comic reflection on desire, fidelity and betrayal? Or have the confusions to which the main characters subject one another ensured that in spite of the heartfelt love duets and superficially fleetfooted comedy nothing will work any longer and that a sense of emotional erosion has replaced true feelings? Così fan tutte is a timeless work full of questions that affect us all. The Academy Award-winning director Michael Haneke once said that he was merely being precise and did not want to distort reality. In only his second opera production after Don Giovanni in 2006, he presents what ARTE described as a “disillusioned vision of love in an ice-cold, realistic interpretation”.

When Sir John Falstaff decides that he wants to have a little fun he writes two letters to a pair of Window wives: Mistress Ford and Mistress Page. When they put their heads together and compare missives, they plan a practical joke or two to teach the knight a lesson. But Mistress Ford's husband is a very jealous man and is pumping Falstaff for information of the affair. Meanwhile the Pages' daughter Anne is besieged by suitors.

Johann Strauss, Jr., a would-be composer of waltzes in mid-19th Century Vienna, attempts to thwart his father's efforts to prevent his success when the older man becomes jealous of his melodic skill.

A colorful and comedic staging of the classic opera buffa by the Vienna State Opera.

Live recording of a stage performance at the Glyndebourne Theatre, 24 August 1973, directed by Sir Peter Hall.

This filmed version of Strauss' shocker features Teresa Stratas as opera's most depraved teenager, and she's as perfect a Salome as one would ever hope to see or hear. Stratas inhabits the role, exploring the character's sensuousness as she vainly woos Jochanaan, her venomous hatred when she's rejected, the crazed look in her eyes when she demands his head--on a silver platter, no less. Such complete identification with a role, especially of a character so malignant helps make this 1974 Salome stand out among the many fine DVDs of the opera.

Jules Massanet's lyrical opera is transformed into a superb film production by Petr Weigl, shot on location in Prague, with music conducted by Libor Pesek. First produced by the Vienna Opera in February 1892, "Werther" rapidly confirmed Massanet's position on the French opera scene and achieved enormous popularity outside France, notably in Italy, America and England. The tragic story tells of Werther's intense passion for Charlotte, who has married his best friend, Albert, fulfilling a pledge to her now deceased mother. But Werther's letters of love bring Charlotte to his side when he promises to take his own life.

Frantisek Filip film version of the Smetana opera.

Miller’s daughter Zuzanka Vojířová, betrothed to Ondřej Zachar, hesitates before marriage when Lord Peter Vok of Rožmberk invites her to his castle. There she bears his son Petříček, but his wife hides the child. After Vok’s death in battle, Zuzanka is expelled and lives as a beggar, reunited with her son and former fiancé, finding solace in the continuation of the Rožmberk lineage.

La traviata in Paris is a film-opera of Giuseppe Verdi's La traviata filmed live on television and worldwide, directed by Giuseppe Patroni Griffi, conceived and produced by Andrea Andermann in 2000. A Traviata that takes place live, with a television reporter who, amid the events of the day that took place in France on June 3, 2000, connects live to the scene of the action but at the time exactly a century earlier, in the Paris of June 3, 1900 (the setting of the opera is thus postdated from the original, which was conceived for the 1850s).

The historic, original, live airing of what would become an annual Christmas tradition throughout the 1950s, this opera tells the story of Amahl, a crippled shepherd boy, and his destitute mother, who provide temporary shelter to three men who are following a star to the newly-born Christ child.

In the 50's, in Paris, the neighbors Rodolfo and Mimi meet each other when Mimi's candle blows out in a cold and dark night. They immediately fall in love for each other, in times of financial difficulties in the post-war. Rodolfo introduces Mimi to his close friends Marcello and his beloved Musetta; Colline; and Schaunard and together they have a good-time in Café Momus. Some time later, Mimi tells Marcello that she can not support the jealousy of Rodolfo any longer and when Marcello discuss with Rodolfo, Mimi overhears the real reason for the behavior of her beloved Rodolfo.

“Let us assume that Switzerland is truly a paradise. The music hereto was written long ago. We have merely forgotten it.” (Daniel Schmid) This is the material from which the most Swiss of all operas is made: the legendary Wilhelm Tell – a Swiss hero: straightforward, a primus inter pares of the indomitable freedom fighters, a good shot, surefire. A myth that becomes a poetic playground: nature in turmoil, the struggle for freedom and forbidden love. A legendary overture at a gallop with an iconic post horn motif – all this and much more in the thirty-seventh and last opera by Rossini.

The Royal Ballet and the Royal Opera collaborate in Wayne McGregor's production of Handel and Gay's classic opera, in which the nymph Galatea falls in love with a shepherd named Acis.

Arrigo Boito's most known work is Il Mefestefele, first performed in 1868. Russell's modern interpretation presented by the Genoese Opera has Faust as an ageing hippy, who smokes marijuana and is tormented by his lost youth. Mephisto bets God that he can turn anyone to pagan life, even someone as innocent as Faust. It becomes a battle of good against evil in a flamboyant, surreal display of primary colours, PVC costumes, nurses with swastikas, rocket trips, love and even characters dressed as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse.

Piero Cappuccilli and Shirley Verrett lead Verdi’s sombre masterpiece, drawn from one of Shakespeare’s most celebrated tragedies. Filmed for television at Teatro alla Scala in 1979, Claudio Abbado conductes a night to remember.

Seeking to exorcise the failure of his current love affair, the poet Hoffmann tells the tales of his three past loves - the doll-like Olympia, the high-class courtesan Giulietta, and the ambitious but delicate Antonia - and recalls how each was thwarted by the evil influence of his rival. In this production by the distinguished film director, John Schlesinger, with spectacular designs by Maria Bjornson and William Dudley, Offenbach's nightmare world is brought to life. The all-star cast is headed by Placido Domingo as Hoffmann: his three loves are Ileana Cotrubas, Anges Baltsa and Luciana Serra and the manifestations of his rival are sung by Geraint Evans, Robert Lloyd, Siegmund Nimsgern and Nicola Ghiuselev. The score, which includes such favourites as the "Barcarolle" and the "Doll's Song", is conducted by Georges Pretre.