Best movies like Mussorgsky

Swellegant and elegant. Delux and delovely. Cole Porter was the most sophisticated name in 20th-century songwriting. And to play him on screen, Hollywood chose debonair icon Cary Grant. Grant stars for the first time in color in this fanciful biopic. Alexis Smith plays Linda, whose serendipitous meetings with Porter lead to a meeting at the alter. More than 20 of his songs grace this tail of triumph and tragedy, with Grant lending is amiable voice to "You're the Top", "Night and Day" and more. Monty Woolley, a Yale contemporary of Porter, portrays himself. And Jane Wyman, Mary Martin, Eve Arden and others provide vocals and verve. Lights down. Curtain up. Showtune standards embraced by generations are yours to enjoy in "Night and Day."

Soviet film based on Nikolai Gogol stories "Nevsky Prospekt" and "The Overcoat".

World War II was not just the most destructive conflict in humanity, it was also the greatest theft in history: lives, families, communities, property, culture and heritage were all stolen. The story of Nazi Germany's plundering of Europe's great works of art during World War II and Allied efforts to minimize the damage.

Biographical film about the composer Rimskiy-Korsakov. Belongs to the gallery of costume historical and biographical films of the postwar cinema of the Soviet Union. The film tells about the last two decades in the life of Russian composer.

A ghost and a French marquis wander through the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, encountering scenes from many different periods of its history.

Through the magic of editing and animation, Claude Jutra is seen in dialogue with himself at various stages of his life – becoming the spirited narrator of his own biography. Excerpts from family films, interviews, and clips from some of Jutra's well-known works are seamlessly intertwined with these sequences, forming a portrait of a man whose life was devoted to creativity. Jutra is simultaneously a homage, a love letter to cinema, and the dramatic story of a brilliant artist whose life was all-too-short.

Using a marriage broker,a Prince in dire financial straits plans to marry the wealthy daughter of a merchant, The girl is in love with the nephew of the prince. Forced by her father into the unwelcome match, she finds a friend in another matchmaker. They arrange it so that the prince will not like the girl when he meets her.

In 19th century Russia a woman in a respectable marriage to a senior statesman must grapple with her love for a dashing soldier.

Stefan and Dolly Oblonsky have had a spat and Stefan has asked his sister, Anna Karenina, to come down to Moscow to help mend the rift. Anna's companion on the train from St. Petersburg is Countess Vronsky who is met at the Moscow station by her son. Col. Vronsky looks very dashing in his uniform and it's love at first sight when he looks at Anna and their eyes meet.

In Imperial Russia, Anna, the wife of the officer Karenin, goes to Moscow to visit her brother. On the way, she meets the charming cavalry officer Vronsky to whom she is immediately attracted. But in St. Petersburg’s high society, a relationship like this could destroy a woman’s reputation.

A young Irishwoman comes to the United States to live and work with her mother as a cleaning lady at Carnegie Hall. She becomes attached to the place as the people she meets there gradually shape her life. The film also includes a variety of performances from some of the foremost musical artists of the times: conductors Bruno Walter & Leopold Stokowski, solists Arthur Rubinstein & Jascha Haifetz, singers Lily Pons & Jan Peerce and bandleader Vaughn Monroe among many others.

Like the play from which it derived, the film tells of the early struggles of composer Edvard Grieg and his attempts to develop an authentic Norwegian national music. It stars Toralv Maurstad as Grieg and features an international cast including Florence Henderson, Christina Schollin, Robert Morley, Harry Secombe, Oskar Homolka, Edward G. Robinson and Frank Porretta (as Rikard Nordraak). Filmed in Super Panavision 70 by Davis Boulton and presented in single-camera Cinerama in some countries, it was an attempt to capitalise on the success of The Sound of Music.

A peasant in rural Russia comes to St. Petersburg to escape absolute poverty and find work at the outbreak of the First World War. He comes to stay with his friend, a Bolshevik worker who has organized a strike at his factory. The peasant betrays his friend to the factory's greedy management, leading to the arrest of the striker. Feeling remorseful at his actions, the peasant attempts to plead for his friend’s freedom, but the situation escalates and he is imprisoned without trial and sent to fight in the war. After returning from the front, the peasant joins the revolutionary fight along with the Bolshevik worker.

The incredible tale of Mozart's Prague years.

Hymn of the Nations, originally titled Arturo Toscanini: Hymn of the Nations, is a 1944 film directed by Alexander Hammid, which features the "Inno delle nazioni," a patriotic work for tenor soloist, chorus, and orchestra, composed by Italian opera composer Giuseppe Verdi in the early 1860s. (For this musical work, Verdi utilized the national anthems of several European nations.) In December 1943, Arturo Toscanini filmed a performance of this music for inclusion in an Office of War Information documentary about the role of Italian-Americans in aiding the Allies during World War II. Toscanini added a bridge passage to include arrangements of "The Star-Spangled Banner" for the United States and "The Internationale" for the Soviet Union and the Italian partisans. Joining Toscanini in the filmed performance in NBC Studio 8-H, were tenor Jan Peerce, the Westminster Choir, and the NBC Symphony Orchestra. The film also included the overture to Verdi's opera La Forza del Destino.

Danny has been in the army for 4 years, yet all he thinks about is Brooklyn and how great it is. When he returns after the war, he soon finds that Brooklyn is not so nice after all. He is able to share a place with Nick, the janitor of his old High School, and get a job as a singer in a music store. He also meets Leo, a talented pianist and his teacher Anne, whose dream is to singing Opera. When Jamie arrives from England, Danny tries to show him the Brooklyn experience and help him compose modern swing music. Together, these four also try to help Leo get the Brooklyn Music scholarship.

The life of Blues and folk singer Huddie Leadbetter, nicknamed Leadbelly is recounted. Covering the good times and bad from his 20s to 40s. Much of that time was spent on chain gangs in the south. Even in prison he became well known for the songs he had composed and sung during and before the time he spent there.

In Imperial Russia, Anna Karenina falls in love with the dashing military officer Count Vronsky and abandons her husband and child to become his mistress.

A portrait of Leonard Bernstein's singular charisma and passion for music as he rose to fame as America's first native born, world-renowned conductor, all along following his ambition to compose both symphonic and popular Broadway works.

Composer, conductor and teacher Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky struggles against his homosexual tendencies by marrying, but unfortunately he chooses a wonky, nymphomaniac girl whom he cannot satisfy.

The film is dedicated to the great Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840-1893). It tells of the last twenty years of the great master’s life, of his friendship with Baroness von Meck, an outstanding woman of her time, who for many years was Tchaikovsky’s guardian angel. The film also includes retrospections of the composer’s childhood and adolescent years, with Tchaikovsky’s life poetically recounted against the background of fragments from his operas and ballets performed by the best Russian musicians.

The story of the great Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) and his life and career during the rule of Stalin.

After their production "Princess Ida" meets with less-than-stunning reviews, the relationship between Gilbert and Sullivan is strained to breaking. Their friends and associates attempt to get the two to work together again, which opens the way to "The Mikado," one of the duo's greatest successes.

Composer Johann Strauss risks his marriage over his infatuation with a beautiful singer.

The romantic story of Hungarian pianist Franz Liszt, whose scandalous love affair forced him to abandon his adoring audiences.

The young composer Mikhail Glinka performs his new work at a soiree at earl Vielgorsky's house. However, the public is accustomed to Western music, and reacts coldly to the creation of the composer. This makes him very sad, but soon he decides to go learn the art of music in Italy. After returning from Italy, he is full of desire to write national Russian opera. Vasily Zhukovsky proposes a subject: a feat of Ivan Susanin. Tsar Nicholas I change the name of the opera to A Life for the Tsar and assigns a librettist - Baron Rosen. Acquaintance with the future co-author shocked Glinka: Rosen speaks Russian with a noticeable German accent. The premiere was successful, but Glinka was still not entirely happy with the libretto: "False words were written by Rosen". When Nicholas I learned that Ruslan and Lyudmila was written on Pushkin's subject, he sees it as sedition. The bitter experience of the composer brighten his supporters.

The story of the country and western singer Hank Williams.

The girl Frosya Burlakova comes to Moscow from the remote Siberian village of Eltsovka to become a singer. She stops at the sculptor Nikolai Vasilyevich, who studied at a school in Zaporozhye, where their mutual friend worked — a school caretaker, who then moved to Siberia. Completely unfamiliar with the life of big cities, Frosya amuses Nikolai Vasilyevich himself, his girlfriend Natasha and the housekeeper with his provinciality and spontaneity. However, the absolute sincerity and spiritual purity of Frosy make the sculptor think that he himself has long been stuck in lies, vanity and commercial work, exchanged his artistic talent for trifles and lost his creative path.

Modest Mussorgsky's opera in prologue and four acts is performed by the Kirov Opera with performances from Olga Borodina, Alexei Steblianko and Sergei Leiferkust. Boris Godunov has obtained the throne of Russia by murdering the rightful heir Dmitry. An old monk, Pimen, witnessed this, and convinces his apprentice Grigory to avenge Dmitry's death. In the following years Grigory poses as Dmitry, raising an army against Boris, who is now convinced that he is being punished for the murder. Filmed in Russia during the collapse of the Soviet Union, this particular production of Mussorgsky's 1872 tale of political upheaval is considered a highly unique and historical moment in opera. Robert Lloyd stars in the title role of Boris Godunov.

Based on the Fyodor Dostoevsky novel about a young woman who leaves her family to live with her lover whose father dead set on keeping them apart.

In the mountain village comes a group of young musicians in Tbilisi. Here they are going to relax and rehearse. Sad story about the final rupture occurred, the peasants do not sing beautiful old songs, the musicians play music incomprehensible to them ... Far from the idyllic image of rural life.

Massenet composed his opera about Cenerentola nearly 80 years after Rossini did his. And if you are looking for the outburst of the non-stop hilarity and the musical jokes of Rossini, you won't find it here. Also, while the Cendrillon was highly successful and popular in its time, it does not reach up to the artistic and musical levels offered by Massenet's other operas, like Manon, or Thais or Werther. Nevertheless, this is a delightful opera and it is well presented by The Royal Opera. Laurent Pelly created a ingenious setting with movable walls which are covered [in French] with the story of Cinderella, and which open and close book-like.

Soviet propaganda film in two episodes about Stalin's strong and cruel suppression of the 1919 anti-communist uprising in St. Petersburg, Russia. Stalin and Lenin are shown as heroes who destroyed the efforts of anti-communists led by White Russians with support from "bad" British capitalists headed by Sir Winston Churchill and Lloyd George.

His right hand having been wounded during the war, concert pianist Andrei Balashov is unable to perform his art. As a result, the young man feels so depressed that he considers his life wasted. One day, he decides to leave the capital and flee from the woman he loves, Natasha, a rising singing star. Andrei takes refuge in Siberia, his native land. Once there, he gets a job in a sawmill, where he entertains his fellow-workers playing the accordion during leisure hours. Some time later, Natasha and her company are expected in America where they are to do a tour. But an airplane breakdown forces the pilot to land next to the village in which Andrei lives and works...

Rolando Villazón Triumphantly Returns To The Stage As Don Carlo In The 2007/2008 Royal Opera House'S Producton Of Don Carlo. National Theatre director Nicholas Hytner's new staging of Verdi's grandest-- and arguably greatest -- opera, Don Carlo, was the highlight of the 2007/2008 Royal Opera House season. This new production marked Rolando Villazón's much anticipated and triumphant return. Set amidst the political, religious and sexual intrigue of the 16th century Spanish court, this epic work tells the tragic story of Don Carlo, a virtuous young prince who is pitted against the powers of a dominant, corrupt society. First staged at The Royal Opera House in 1886, this new production is the first new version of the 5-Act complete opera to be staged at Covent Garden in 50 years. With sets and costumes by Bob Crowley, direction by Nicholas Hytner, and an enviable cast, this production of Don Carlo is worthy of the greatness of Verdi's original, masterful work.