Le Villi

Timeless traditions and contemporary anxieties clash musically and theatrically in Leonard Bernstein's powerful but rather neglected "Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers," The dancers are omitted in this semi-staged performance, produced for the Vatican's Jubilee 2000 celebration, but the show's eclectic musical brilliance, its adept mingling and clash of musical styles, its contrasts of hope and anxiety, faith and unbelief, ancient serenity and modern dissatisfaction are all brilliantly conveyed. More than 30 years after its premiere, for the opening of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., Mass still has the impact of this morning's newspaper headlines.

Enrico Castiglione directs this 2001 production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's seminal two-act 1787 dramma giocoso Don Giovanni, an opera mounted at Teatro Argentina in Rome, with musical accompaniment by the Rome Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Michael Halaz. The production includes arias by Renato Bruson, Luca Canonici, Amarilli Nizza, Rossana Potenza, Stefano de Peppo and Alessandro Battiato, Anna Laura Longo; Stefano Cucci serves as choir master. Mozart culled the by-now-familiar story from the legend of Don Juan, the world's most gifted lover. Nathan Southern, Rovi

Don Alfonso bets with Ferrando and Guglielmo that their brides, Dorabella and Fiordiligi, will be unfaithful if they go to war.

First performed in 1889, Edgar was Puccini's second opera. The libretto is a medievalist phantasmagoria dealing with a Flemish knight torn between love for virtuous Fidelia and erotic enslavement to Tigrana. Dario Balzanelli, Montserrat Marti, Halla Margret, Andrea Rola, Giovanni Tarasconi, Coro e Orchestra Filarmonica Mediterranea, Tamas Pal, directed by Enrico Castiglione. Sung in Italian.

Recording of the Italian opera "Le Nozze di Figaro" ("The Weddings of Figaro") with José Fardilha as Figaro, Rossana Potenza as Sussana and Madelyn Renée Monti as La Contessa di Almaviva, among others. Performed in Rome in 2002 with the direction of Enrico Castiglioni and conducted by Maurizio Picconi.

Young Maria, the embodiment of tango, leaves the outskirts of Buenos Aires and tries her luck in the chaotic downtown, where she triumphs in dark places ruled by crime and debauchery, unaware that a menacing presence stalks her, seeking her doom and death.