The poignant and tragic love story of Robert and Clara Schumann told in words and music to be released by Opus Arte on September 29, 2009

On September 29th, Opus Arte presents Twin Spirits, the story of the passionate romance and subsequent marriage between composer Robert Schumann and piano prodigy Clara Wieck, available on DVD and Blu-Ray disc. This production from the Royal Opera House brings together nine diverse performers of the highest caliber: Sting, an artist who defies simple classification, joins his wife, actress and producer Trudie Styler to read from the letters between Robert and Clara. Their story, narrated by Sir Derek Jacobi, is illustrated and interwoven with music composed by Robert - whose spirit is embodied by pianist Iain Burnside, baritone Simon Keenlyside and violinist Sergej Krylov - and by Clara, who is evoked by pianist Natasha Paremski, soprano Rebecca Evans, and cellist Natalie Clein.

This subtle and moving piece, a fusion of recital and drama, was devised by the stage director and writer John Caird. His credits include Hamlet and Candide at the National Theatre, Les Misérables and Nicholas Nickleby with Trevor Nunn, and Don Carlos for Welsh National Opera.

“A performance like this is a personal journey,” Sting explains. “You’re forced to share very private thoughts and make them public, and that creates a tension. This love story - the relationship and the tragedy - provides a great introduction for people who don’t normally listen to classical music. Hearing the Schumanns’ music at the same time as telling their story is a very intimate, engaging and emotional experience.”

“When we started on this adventure with Twin Spirits,” adds Trudie Styler, “I was profoundly moved by the richness and power of the narrative. The passion of Robert and Clara’s love transcends the ages. It is a wonderful and moving story which I believe remains fascinating and relevant to today’s world.”
Love began to blossom between Robert Schumann (1810-56) and Clara Wieck (1819-90) when she was a teenager and he was the student of her father, Friedrich Wieck, who made every effort to impede the relationship. She was one of the 19th century’s greatest pianists and herself a composer of note. After a legal battle with her father the couple finally married in 1840. In the 1850s their happiness became compromised by Robert’s increasing mental instability, which resulted in a suicide attempt in 1854; he died in an asylum in 1856. Clara, who lived for another 40 years, devoted her considerable energies to propagating her husband’s music, which is at its greatest in his intimate works for piano, voice and chamber ensemble.

“Twin Spirits tells a great human drama, irrespective of the fact that it’s about two great musicians,” says director John Caird. “It makes us think about love, marriage, relationships, pain, illness and how they influence art and life. Robert and Clara’s chamber music was almost like a diary and listening to it you feel you are looking into the pages of something deeply personal.”

Twin Spirits was recorded before a small audience in a studio space at London’s Royal Opera House shortly before Christmas 2007. All the artists involved donated their talent and time so that everyone buying a copy will be supporting the important work of the Royal Opera House Education Program which provides opportunities for some 90,000 people annually to engage with opera, music and dance. These projects reach people of all ages and backgrounds, including the isolated and elderly, the socially deprived, disabled adults and children, young offenders and for these people they have a very significant and positive impact. The Royal Opera House’s work helps them to become enthusiastic and motivated, learn self-respect, discover the potential within themselves and develop a team spirit. For every performance on the world-famous stage, at least twice as many educational activities are taking place and this work is a vital part of the Royal Opera House’s mission.

The original performance of Twin Sprits took place in June 2005, also at the Royal Opera House. Other charity performances took place at Salisbury Cathedral (to benefit the Salisbury Cathedral Girl Choristers), the New Victory Theatre in New York (to benefit Broadway Cares - Equity Fights Aids) and, at the Prince of Wales’ invitation, Windsor Castle (to benefit the Royal Opera House Foundation, and Soil Association). Among other performers who have participated alongside Sting and Trudie are actors Sir Ian McKellen, Charles Dance, and Jonathan Pryce and violinists Vasko Vassilev and Joshua Bell.

Twin Spirits will be released by Opus Arte on DVD (OA 0994 D) and Blu-Ray (OA BD7043 D) in the US on September 29th, 2009. Preview the DVD and access further information about the Twin Spirits project, Robert and Clara Schumann and the Royal Opera House Education Program at www.twin-spirits.com.

On June 30, Opus Arte releases Marco Polo, Tan Dun’s first full-length opera, for which the composer won the coveted Grawemeyer Award in 1998. Recorded live at Het Muziektheater, Amsterdam, in November 2008, the production is directed by Pierre Audi, and features Charles Workman, Sarah Castle, Stephen Richardson, Nancy Allen Lundy, Zhang Jun, Tania Kross, Stephen Bryant, and Mu Na. The composer himself leads the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra and Cappella Amsterdam. Bonus material includes a documentary entitled The Music of Tomorrow, which includes interviews with the creative team and principal cast members.

Marco Polo premiered at the Munich Biennale in 1996, with subsequent performances at the Holland Festival, the Hong Kong Arts Festival, New York City Opera, and Settembre Musica in Turin. When questioned about his choice of subject, Tan Dun replied: “It’s a ripe subject for the times and global culture … My personal experience as a traveler from East to West is similar to Polo’s from West to East. I thought the best thing was to draw on my own experience, on my feelings about culture and about the idea of journey. Marco Polo is a symbol of journey, of travel from past to the future, from external space to internal space, from one medium to another. All crossover journeys excite me, and Polo is a great excuse to explore them.”

Tan Dun and librettist Paul Griffiths designed their opera in many layers and have divided the figure of the Traveler into two parts, Marco and Polo; Marco represents the external figure of the Venetian explorer, whereas Polo is his inner being, his memory. They are united only at the end of their journey, when they fuse together into one person. The opera comprises three parallel journeys: one physical, one spiritual, one musical.

Directed by Peter Sellars and recorded live at Het Muziektheater in Amsterdam in June 2007, the superb cast includes baritone Gerald Finley as J. Robert Oppenheimer and soprano Jessica Rivera as Kitty Oppenheimer.

“Doctor Atomic came across as the most complex and inventive of Mr. Adams’s works, an engrossing operatic drama, even though very little happens. Yet by the end the entire world has changed forever.”
-Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times

On September 30, Opus Arte releases John Adams’ Doctor Atomic (OA0998D), in a production from the Het Musietheater in Amsterdam in June 2007. Directed for television by its librettist/director and Erasmus Prize-winner Peter Sellars, Doctor Atomic is John Adams’ and Peter Sellars’ fifth work in almost 20 years of artistic collaboration.

Doctor Atomic features a superb cast, including Canadian baritone Gerald Finley, who created the role and has made it his signature. The luminous soprano Jessica Rivera performs the role of Kitty Oppenheimer, a part originally conceived for the late mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. For the Chicago Lyric production, Adams rewrote the role for soprano, adding additional music. Anthony Tommasini called Ms. Rivera, “a radiant lyric soprano … in a vulnerable and intense portrayal.” Other cast members include Eric Owens, Richard Paul Fink, James Maddalena, Thomas Glenn, Jay Hunter Morris, and Ellen Rabiner.

Doctor Atomic received its world premiere at the San Francisco Opera on October 1, 2005. In December 2007, the Lyric Opera of Chicago produced the opera in a revised version. Doctor Atomic will enjoy its fourth production at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, opening on Monday, October 13, 2008 at 8 PM.

On August 26, Opus Arte presents Sleeping Beauty performed by The Royal Ballet and conducted by Valeriy Ovsyanikov. This performance of Tchaikovsky’s second ballet, filmed in December of 2006 to mark the 75th anniversary of The Royal Ballet Company, is a revival of the original full-length 1946 production of Sleeping Beauty. As a fitting tribute to The Royal Ballet’s unique style and lush designs, the original designs by Oliver Messels and choreography by famed Marius Petipa are used for this commemorative occasion. Dancers Alina Cojocaru, Federico Bonelli, Christopher Saunders, Genesia Rosato, and Marianela Nuñez lead the viewer through this wonderfully whimsical fairy tale.
Based at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, The Royal Ballet is Great Britain’s most prestigious ballet company. The 95-strong troupe is acknowledged to be reaching a new artistic and technical peak with talented dancers at all levels in its ranks. The Company’s wide-ranging repertory showcases the great classical ballets including The Royal Ballets own heritage, alongside new works by the foremost international choreographers of today and choreographers from within the Company’s own ranks. This range embraces all the celebrated three-act classical ballets, together with works by Founder Choreographer Frederick Ashton and Principal Choreographer Kenneth MacMillan, ballets by George Balanchine, William Forsythe, Christopher Wheeldon and works by Ashley Page and rising British talents amongst those regularly performed.

On July 29, Opus Arte releases Cecilia and Bryn at Glyndebourne, a recital of arias and duets recorded live at Glyndebourne Opera House on April 24, 1999. Cecilia Bartoli and Bryn Terfel open the concert with the first two scenes from Le nozze di Figaro, performing the same roles they sang together to great acclaim at the Metropolitan Opera. Terfel and Bartoli join forces with Myung-Whun Chung and the London Philharmonic Orchestra to perform other opera favorites such as the “Catalog Aria” from Mozart’s Don Giovanni (”Madamina, il catalogo è questo”), “Quanto Amore!” from Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, and “Pa-pa-pa-pa” from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. Some opera rarities like the aria “Al tuo seno fortunato” from Haydn’s opera L’anima del filosofo also are included in the recital.

Also in July, Opus Arte presents Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake performed by the Paris Opera Ballet and Orchestra in December 2005. Tchaikovsky’s first ballet, Swan Lake was composed at the request of the Bolshoi Ballet in 1875. Its premiere was a great disappointment and in 1877 it was removed from the Bolshoi repertoire. It was not until eighteen years later that Swan Lake was resurrected to great glory by French choreographer Marius Petipa, who also convinced the reluctant Tchaikovsky to compose two additional ballets before his death in 1893: Sleeping Beauty and Nutcracker. Petipa’s Swan Lake revival, which secured the ballet’s place in the standard repertoire of almost every ballet troupe in the world, finally occurred on January 27, 1895 at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg.

This production of Swan Lake, choreographed by Rudolf Nureyev, premiered with the Paris Opera Ballet in 1984. Nureyev stayed faithful to Petipa’s production, however, he offers a much more personal and intimate vision of the ballet, with what some might say is an almost autobiographical aspect to the development of the story and its characters. Nureyev’s interpretative resolutions are well-suited to Tchaikovsky’s compositional style giving the work the power to assume its true tragic structure.