Produced in Italy in breathtaking Technicolor, this biographical story of Puccini (played by L'avventura's Gabriele Ferzetti) spans his creative life from early student days to the height of success, including his early flop Madama Butterfly and his incomplete Turandot. Along the way he encounters three women who change his life, including a sexy, beautiful singer (Two for the Road's Nadia Gray) whom he drops for a small town girl (Sirocco's Marta Toren), and a servant girl who commits suicide over him. Well-selected excerpts from Manon, La Boheme, Madama Butterfly and Turandot are featured along with other Puccini music, including the voice of Beniamino Gigli. Sets, costumes and production values are first class, all sumptuously filmed by Claude Renoir.
Italy Italy
Gabriele Ferzetti Märta Torén Nadia Gray Paolo Stoppa Myriam Bru Sergio Tofano Mimo Billi Jacques Famery Gino Sinimberghi Nelly Corradi Silvio Bagolini Carlo Duse Piero Palermini René Clermont Oscar Andriani Enrico Urbini Alessandro Fersen Mario Feliciani Vittorina Benvenuti Renato Chiantoni Attilio Dottesio Evar Maran Glauco Cortini Antimo Reyner Giulio Neri
Similiar movies
Forget Me Not
A young British woman, tricked into believing she was used during a whirlwind romance, marries a gentle widowed Italian opera star, whose songs she and her first love shared.
House of Ricordi
The film covers a hundred years in the lives of the Ricordi family, the Milan publishing house of the title, and the various composers and other historic personalities, whose careers intersected with the growth of the Ricordi house. It beautifully draws the parallel between the great music of the composers, the historic and social upheavals of their times, as well as the "smaller stories" of the successive generations of Ricordi.
The Devil's Violinist
The life story of Italian violinist and composer, Niccolò Paganini, who rose to fame as a virtuoso in the early 19th Century.
The Life of Giuseppe Verdi
The great Italian opera composer recalls his eventful life on his deathbed: his childhood in Busseto, his studies in Milan, his first opera "Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio", the death of his wife and his children killed by smallpox.
Angel in a Taxi
Marietto is a very lively and creative orphaned child, housed in a boarding school of nuns. One day, while browsing a newspaper, he sees a photo of a beautiful opera house dancer, Camilla, and is convinced that she is her mother.
I, Don Giovanni
A drama based on the life of 18th century Italian lyricist Lorenzo da Ponte, who collaborated with Mozart on his "Don Giovanni" opera.
La Boheme
Giacomo Puccini's bittersweet opera of high-spirited bohemians and the doomed love between Rodolfo, the idealistic poet and Mimi, the consumptive flower-maker, is a beautifully balanced series of tableaux depicting the infectious joie de vivre of youth and the tragic waste of disease and separation. The legendary and incomparable partnership of Mirella Freni and Luciano Pavarotti as the two lovers has been captured in this special live recording from stage of the San Francisco Opera. Brian Large has adapted Francesca Zambello's production for video, further illuminating the fascinating interaction of Puccini's characters. Gino Quilico sings Marcello, the colorful and moody painter, whose tempestuous relationship with the flirtatious Musetta (sung by Sandra Pacetti), comically mirrors the more profound love of Rodolfo and Mimi. Nicolai Ghiaurov sings Colline.
Manon Lescaut
"Manon", wrote Puccini to his publisher Giulio Ricordi in 1889, "is a heroine I believe in and therefore she cannot fail to win the heart of the public." This turned out to be a truly prophetic statement since none of Puccinis other world successes were received on their first nights as rapturously as Manon Lescaut. The popularity of Puccinis great masterpiece has never waned and the highly acclaimed Götz Friedrich production at Covent Garden was hailed as an operatic milestone. Two of the worlds leading stars--Kiri Te Kanawa and Placido Domingo--head a strong cast conducted by the brilliant Italian conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli.
Puccini Festival, Torre del Lago - Turandot
Recorded on the 13th. of August 2016 in the city Torre del Lago doing the Festival Puccini at the Gran Teatro Puccini venue.
Puccini: Madama Butterfly
Cio-Cio-San, the young Japanese bride of dashing American officer Lieutenant Pinkerton, finds her romantic idyll shattered when he deserts her shortly after their marriage. She lives in hope that one day he will return. Three years later, Cio-Cio-San and her little son see Pinkerton’s ship in the harbour. She excitedly expects his visit – but Pinkerton and his American wife Kate have come only to take the boy away, to raise him in America. Cio-Cio-San bids her son farewell and then takes her own life.
The Dream of Butterfly
Italian filmmaker Carmine Gallone was still in his "operetta" mode when he helmed 1938's Il Sogno di Butterfly (Dream of the Butterfly) Maria Cebotari plays opera diva Rosa Belloni, currently starring in a production of Puccini's Madama Butterfly. The plot thickens when Rosa's backstage life begins to mirror the travails of the character she is portraying. The climax comes when Harry Peters (Fosco Giachetti), the American father of Rosa's illegitimate child, returns after four years with his new wife in tow, leading inexorably to a doleful ending both on- and offstage. Critics complained about the substandard photography in Il Sogno di Butterfly, but this might have been due to poor laboratory work.
Similiar TV Shows
The Borgias
Set in 15th century Italy at the height of the Renaissance, The Borgias chronicles the corrupt rise of patriarch Rodrigo Borgia to the papacy, where he proceeds to commit every sin in the book to amass and retain power, influence and enormous wealth for himself and his family.
Dancing on the Edge
An explosive 1930s drama following a jazz band in London at a time of huge change.
The Voice Kids
The Voice Kids is a German music casting show for children between the ages of 7 and 14 based on the concept of the show The Voice of Germany.
Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi was born in 1813 and lived until 1901, his life spanning nearly a century of political turmoil and considerable personal turmoil. This 1982 biographical television miniseries, as seen on PBS's Great Performances, dramatizes the life of this classic Italian composer known for operas including La Traviata, Rigoletto, and Aida and his Requiem.
Private Crimes
When a prominent businessman is found murdered, an ambitious newspaper reporter and a local police inspector will uncover a bizarre web of small-town corruption, violence and dark secrets.
The Story of Ming Lan
The Story of Ming Lan, based on the novel written by Guan Xin Ze Luan, follows our heroine through her youth, into her adulthood, and well into her marriage life as well. She’s the 6th child of the Sheng household. Though she is an intelligent and beautiful child, she was not loved by her family (her dad, her sisters, her mom dies early.) She has to hide her intelligence and suffers through the years, hoping to avenge for her mom. During this process she will meet many friends and foes, one of which is our male lead, Gu’s second son, Gu Ting Ye. He has helped and mistreated her before, but also the one to witness her sharp wits and lonely soul. After they get married, they will work together as a power couple, managing the new King’s regime as well as harvesting a world of happiness on their own.
Amici di Maria De Filippi
Amici di Maria De Filippi is an Italian talent show hosted by Maria De Filippi. Amici is a singing and dancing school involving a class of about 20 students, specially chosen, with between 18 and 25 who aspire to become professional singers, songwriters and dancers. Additional original categories of "actors", "musicians" and "TV presenters" have since been dropped in the recent seasons.
Wu-Tang: An American Saga
In the early 1990s in New York, during the height of the crack cocaine epidemic, a visionary musician named Bobby Diggs aka The RZA begins to form a super group of a dozen young, black men, who will eventually rise to become one of the unlikeliest success stories in American music history.
Hemingway
The visionary work and the turbulent life of Ernest Hemingway, one of the greatest and most influential writers America has ever produced. Interweaving his eventful biography with carefully selected excerpts from his iconic short stories, novels, and non-fiction, the series reveals the brilliant, ambitious, charismatic, and complicated man behind the myth, and the art he created.
Articulate
Articulate connects audiences to the human stories behind art, offering a trustworthy, visually stimulating, never ordinary take on classical, contemporary, and popular art forms. From acclaimed musicians and best-selling authors to designers changing the way we live, each episode explores what great creative thinkers and doers can tell us about who we are, who we’ve been, and who we might become.
The World's Most Beautiful Landscapes
Take a breathtaking visual journey through some of the world's most beautiful and extraordinary landscapes, to admire the wonders and encounter the wildlife, geology and the rich history of its people.
Other Times
Senator Merlin's battle for the abolition of houses of ill repute, told by the prostitute Maddalena through a letter. A story of redemption and female self-determination, in a historical context reconstructed with skill and accuracy.
AP Dhillon: First of a Kind
In AP Dhillon - First of a Kind, the secretive global superstar and the small, close team behind his massive success finally tell their story. Featuring unseen personal footage and unique behind-the-scenes access, AP takes us on a journey from his early days in a small village in Punjab and tells us his incredible plan to change the music industry and inspire a nation.
Giuseppe Verdi
The life and loves of great composer Giuseppe Verdi are played against a background of the great operas of the 19th Century. A tender love story of his successful and turbulent life, with more than 20 excerpts from his acclaimed operas.