Best movies like Rossini's Ghost

A workman finds a singing frog in the cornerstone of an old building being demolished. But when he tries to cash in on his discovery, he finds the frog will sing only for him, and just croak for the talent agent and the audience in the theater he's spent his life savings on.

Behind the Hollywood Bowl stage which is playing the opera The Barber of Seville, Bugs Bunny flees into the backstage area with Elmer Fudd in close pursuit. Seeing his opportunity to fight on his terms, Bugs raises the curtain on Elmer, trapping him on stage. As the orchestra begins playing, Bugs comes into play as the barber who is going to make sure that Elmer is going to get a grooming he will never forget.

A strange love story set in Las Vegas.

Sylvester sings opera and popular tunes while standing on a back alley fence; Elmer, who wants to sleep, tries to thwart him.

In Seville, Juan is starting to enjoy his weekends outside of prison when tragedy strikes: his little girl is killed in what looks like an accident.

A deep-sea salvage expert enacts an elaborate plan to infiltrate and take revenge on a criminal organization that dealt him a foul misdeed.

Twisted tale about a crazy, preaching redneck named Jake who kidnaps people off the highway and performs sick medical experiments on them. He then proceeds to sell their organs on the black market to Mr. Stone. Everything is fine until he kidnaps the handicapped April and finds that she is harder to control than the others.

The Full Monteverdi follows the simultaneous break-up of six couples, from shocking revelation, vengeful anger and erotic longing for reconciliation, as an ensemble film. Vulnerable and disarming, it draws viewers into its emotional journey and intensely moving portrait of contemporary love.

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.

Roger Daltrey of The Who stars as 19th century genius pianist Franz Liszt in this brash, loud and free-wheeling rock 'n' roll fantasia centered around an imagined rivalry between Liszt and composer Richard Wagner-- painted here as a vampiric harbinger of doom and destruction.

After he is rejected by the Great Poochini as an opening act, Mysto the Magician gets his revenge by conducting his next operatic performance.

Old Jerusalem: Matathias, spiteful over his lover's illness, spits on Jesus along the road to Calvary, and is cursed to live endlessly until His return. The Crusades, 1150: Matathias, now an anonymous knight, competes for glory in combat and for the wife of a soldier. Palermo, 1290: Matteos Battadios witnesses the death of his young son, leading to conflict with his wife over whether to take comfort in Christianity. Seville, 1560: Dr Matteos Battadios dedicates himself to the treatment and comfort of the poor, but his life and work are endangered by the arrival of the Spanish Inquisition.

Jumah is about to turn 16 and is already in need of a fresh start. Burdened with the shameful legacy of a past as a child soldier in the Congo, he lives with his adoptive mother in west London, where he struggles to keep a lid on his history of violence. One night, enjoying a rare carefree evening out with a new friend, Jumah witnesses something that draws him seemingly inescapably into his old ways. As he and others around him begin to question whether he can ever stop being a soldier, he’s set on a path to find out who he truly wishes to be.

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

Because of a bad investment, Captain and Mrs. Peabody are evicted from their home. Mrs. Peabody finds lodging at a retirement home, but as only single women are allowed, the Captain has to make other arrangements. However, after witnessing their tearful goodbye, the home's residents vote to allow the couple to move in together. The Captain is a reluctant lodger, uncomfortable at being surrounded by so much femininity, and bristles when his pals start referring to him as "Old Lady". The time has come for Captain Peabody to reassert his manhood!

When her father seemingly goes missing, divorcee Laura LeCrois is forced to return home after a 20-year hiatus. However, home is not the way Laura remembers it. Her father is in major debt with the bank, her ex-boyfriend is the town sheriff, and her ex-husband has quit his job as a world-renowned professor who is now suspiciously buying up swampland in the area. In an effort to save the swamp and to pass the time, Laura decides to work the dying family business giving boat tours of the Louisiana swamp. But on her first sunset tour, deep in the swamp, Laura and her passengers witness two Bayou swamp rats toss a squirming body into a gator pit, only the gators aren't the ones that feast on the flesh. Instead it's the most terrifying creature Laura has ever seen...(IMDB,com)

A restaurant owner falls in love with an opera singer and, desperate to impress her, travels to Italy to learn how to sing.

Take a roller coaster ride full of high octane adventure as 12 year old Sammy takes to the skies. With the help of a magical flying skateboard, Sammy ends up the hottest skateboarder in town. But a group of local thrashers don't like the extra competition. They plot to destroy any chance of Sammy competing against them in a local tournament. But they don't have a clue of what they're up against.

When a boy decides his father is spending too much time at work, he starts his own company and ends up buying a controlling interest in his father's company.

Eleven Gilbert & Sullivan numbers are melded within the murder-mystery plot of "Girl on the Spot", with a result that either G&S and/or the plot are always seemingly on stage-wait or in the wings awaiting a cue. Lois Collier is the girl-on-the-spot of the title because she was on the scene of a murder. The police conclude she didn't do it and they use her to set a trap for the real killer, a G&S addict, by financing a Broadway production starring Collier.

When a container washes ashore the residents of a sleepy cul-de-sac are plunged into violence, terror and paranoia. Ring fenced by the military a single mother must overcome all the odds to save her daughter.

Able Seaman Dick Deadeye is charged by Queen Victoria to find the stolen Ultimate Secret. His ugliness means that his life has always been lonely but a buxom barmaid takes a shine to him. Together, they battle pirates and an evil magician before discovering that the Ultimate Secret is nothing but LOVE! Using songs based on the original works of Gilbert and Sullivan (but updated with modern lyrics), this film was created to commemorate the centenary anniversary of the first collaboration of the composers of the Savoy Operas.

A tomboyish juvenile delinquent, Paschal Draney, is sent to live in a foster home run by a well-known horse breeder where he befriends a Thoroughbred seemingly crippled by a congenital eye defect.

Getting an internship at NASA just to find out that space is fake on the first day, Barber has to navigate their family life, a cult preacher dad and complicated friendships in search of meaning and belonging.

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.

Recorded at the Glyndebourne Festival Opera in 1995, this acclaimed presentation of composer Gioachino Rossini's epic opus ERMIONE is based on Jean Racine's play "Andromache." Set in Troy after the city fell to the Greeks, the production recounts the rancorous battle between widow Andromache and Helen of Troy's green-eyed daughter, Ermione for the love of Pyrrhus

Since its debut in 1934 the Glyndebourne Festival has put a focus on Mozart operas and developed a great competence in staging them. Mozart s operas seem to be made for the small but fine opera house in Glyndebourne and it's not surprising that the 1977 Don Giovanni, one of Mozart's great masterpieces, was a huge success. This production is conducted by Bernard Haitink, who holds the opinion, that no other composer had more opera in his blood than Mozart. It has been proven, for example, that Mozart had no overture for Don Giovanni until the evening before the premiere in Prague and wrote it down in just one night. Like the premiere's success of the opera in Prague in 1787 the Glyndebourne's version staged by Peter Hall was praised by audience and critics alike: We witness a lively and wide-awake ensemble piece that has easily survived all these decades, and still manages to teach many directors the art of playing theatre.

23-year-old Gioachino Rossini completed his masterpiece IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA incredibly quickly – legend has it in just 13 days – which Rossini attributed to ‘facility and lots of instinct’. The opera, characterized by youthful energy and bold wit, has all the ingredients for comic chaos: an imprisoned young woman, her lecherous guardian and a young noble suitor. Skilfully plotting behind the scenes is Figaro, an irrepressible and inventive character in whom many have seen a resemblance to the young Rossini himself. The score fizzes with musical brilliance, from Figaro’s famous entrance aria to the frenzy of the Act I finale. This recording sees Joyce DiDonato (Rosina) bring literal meaning to the old theatrical motto Break a leg! She did just that in an earlier show but was determined to finish her commitment and was re-staged into the production to allow for the additional challenges that come when a leading lady in a lively physical role must wheel around the other performers...

A student nun falls in love with a Mexican singer starring in a cafe next door to her convent.

What happened to Figaro and his friends after the events told in Rossini’s and Mozart’s operas? One possible sequel is told in John Corigliano’s “grand opera buffa” The Ghosts of Versailles—an uproariously funny and deeply moving work inspired by Beaumarchais’s third Figaro play, La Mère Coupable, and commissioned by the Met to celebrate its 100th anniversary. This telecast captures its world premiere run, conducted by James Levine. Håkan Hagegård is Beaumarchais, Figaro’s creator, who is deeply in love with Marie Antoinette (Teresa Stratas in a heart-searing performance) and determined to rewrite history and save her from the guillotine. A young Renée Fleming, at the beginning of her international career, sings the unfaithful Rosina. Gino Quilico is the wily Figaro who tries to take matters in his own hands, and Marilyn Horne stops the show as the exotic entertainer Samira.

Passion, jealousy and betrayal take center stage at Londons Royal Opera House in a spectacular production of the worlds most popular opera. Bizets Carmen is packed with some of the best-loved and memorable music in all of opera. In this characteristically vivid and vibrant stage production by Francesca Zambello, beautifully filmed in 3D by Julian Napier, Seville is brought to life with ranks of soldiers, crowds of peasants, gypsies and bullfighters as well as a magnificent horse, a donkey and even some chickens! This spectacular RealD and Royal Opera House production features a supremely talented cast, gripping drama and Bizets energetic and passionate score. It is truly a musical event to remember!

A young girl and her uncle who run a traveling medicine show lend their efforts to salvage an old plantation.

Young Gallito (Allan Forrest) wants very badly to become a matador. His sweetheart, Dolores (Priscilla Dean), does everything she can to help him and she wheedles Pedro, a renowned bullfighter (Matthew Betz), into helping him, too. Gallito becomes a success, but he is vamped by Ardita (Claire Delorez) after Pedro is killed in the ring.

Conceived as an electronic road movie, this documentary investigates cutting edge technologies and their influence on our culture as we approach the 21st century. It takes off from the idea that mankind's effort to tap the power of Nature has been so successful that a new world is suddenly emerging,an artificial reality. Virtual Reality, digital and biotechnology, plastic surgery and mood-altering drugs promise seemingly unlimited powers to our bodies, and our selves. This film presents the implications of having access to such power as we all scramble to inhabit our latest science fictions.