Stars: Margaret Price, Luciano Pavarotti, San Francisco Opera

Director: Brian Large

Summary: Classic performance of Verdi's masterpiece recorded at the San Francisco Opera in 1981. Sung in Italian.

Contrary to popular belief, AIDA, Giuseppe Verdi's homage to the late-nineteenth century penchant for exoticism, was not commissioned for or performed at the opening of the Suez Canal in November 1869, indeed it would be a full two years before the premiere of AIDA at the Egyptian Khedive's newly-constructed opera house. Over a century later, Sam Wanamaker's production stars Luciano Pavarotti as Radames, commander of the Egyptian Army, who falls for Ethiopian slave Aida, portrayed by the soprano Margaret Price.

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Writer-producer-director David Chase's extraordinary television seriesThe Sopranosis nominally an urban gangster drama, but its true impact strikes closer to home. This ambitious TV series chronicles a dysfunctional, suburban American family in bold relief. And for protagonist Tony Soprano, there's the added complexity posed by heading twin families, his collegiate mob clan and his own nouveau-riche brood.

The brilliant first series is built around what Tony learns when, whipsawed between those two worlds, he finds himself plunged into depression and seeks psychotherapy--a gesture at odds with his midlevel capo's machismo, yet instantly recognisable as a modern emotional test. With analysis built into the very spine of the show's elaborate episodic structure, creator Chase and his formidable corps of directors, writers and actors weave an unpredictable series of parallel and intersecting plot arcs that twist from tragedy to farce to social realism. While creating for a smaller screen, they enjoy a far larger canvas than a single movie would afford and the results, like the very best episodic television, attain a richness and scope far closer to a novel than movies normally get.

Unlike Francis Coppola's operatic dramatisation of Mario Puzo's Godfatherepic, The Sopranossustains a poignant, even mundane intimacy in its focus on Tony, brought to vivid life by James Gandolfini's mercurial performance. Alternately seductive, exasperated, fearful and murderous, Gandolfini is utterly convincing even when executing brutal shifts between domestic comedy and dramatic violence. Both he and the superb team of Italian-American actors recruited as his loyal (and, sometimes, not-so-loyal) henchman and their various "associates" make this mob as credible as the evocative Bronx and New Jersey locations where the episodes were filmed.

The first year's other life force is Livia Soprano, Tony's monstrous, meddlesome mother. As Livia, the late Nancy Marchand eclipses her long career of patrician performances to create an indelibly earthy, calculating matriarch who shakes up both families; Livia also serves as foil and rival to Tony's loyal, usually level-headed wife, Carmela (Edie Falco). Lorraine Bracco makes Tony's therapist, Dr Melfi, a convincing confidante, by turns "professional", perceptive and sexy; the duo's therapeutic relationship is also depicted with uncommon accuracy. Such grace notes only enrich what's not merely an aesthetic high point for commercial television, but an absorbing film masterwork that deepens with subsequent screenings. --Sam Sutherland

Aspect Ratio:	4:3
Main Language:	Italian
Region:	Region 2
Subtitles:	English, French, German, Italian, Spanish
Year:	1981
Release Date:	August 26, 2002
Runtime:	163 minutes
Certification:	Exempt.
Catalogue Number:	3984223662
Keywords:	Music, Aida, Opera, Works, Stage, Giuseppe, Classical, Performing, Operetta, Arts, Verdi's
Genre:	Music/Performing Arts