Jessye Norman

Glimpse behind the curtain at opera legends Kathleen Battle and Jessye Norman’s famed concert at Carnegie Hall on March 18, 1990, featuring performance clips and new interviews with opera star Angel Blue, Met Opera General Manager Peter Gelb, and more.

On the occasion of the fourty years anniversary of François Mitterand's election, a look back to the relationship between the President and artists, from admiration to manipulation.

Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison is America's first lady of literature. Her books encompass black American history but live and breathe in the present, rich in vivid characters, haunted by ghosts. Born poor in Ohio in 1931, she now lives in New York. She tells Alan Yentob how her father hated whites so much he wouldn't let them in the house. Her masterpiece, Beloved, shows the horrors of slavery perhaps better than any other artwork. She talks as she writes - with warmth and wit. Contributors include Angela Davis (whose biography she edited) and singer Jessye Norman.

Over twenty-five years after his death in July 1989, the controversial Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan remains an enigma. He was the most successful conductor in the history of classical music. Many of his recordings - of Italian opera, of Wagner and Richard Strauss, of Sibelius, Beethoven and Brahms - are treasured by music lovers around the world. Yet, even at the peak of his fame, his performances were variously criticised for being too opulent, too manicured, lacking warmth or spiritual depth. This musical profile explores the many paradoxes in the life and music of this controversial figure, who forged his international reputation in London with the Philharmonia Orchestra shortly after the end of the Second World War and went on to reign supreme in the classical music world during his three decades with the Berlin Philharmonic. The film also examines Karajan's belief in the visual power of music, and his determination to leave behind a substantial legacy of music on film.

The concert setting of the Temple of Zeus in Athens could not be more atmospheric if it tried and those cosmic and Hellenic artefact images projected onto the backdrop are superbly integrated with the music.Whoever edited the footage deserves an oscar,because every fade,cut-away and image-meld is executed with a supremely expert eye and ear,and more than one image will stun you with it's breathtaking beauty.Very well done to all concerned!

In 2001, twelve singing divas from all over the world gathered in Taormina, in the world-famous Greek amphitheater. Under the direction of André Heller, they let their unique voices ring out in the magically illuminated venue. This "festival of the last prima donnas" included, among others, the American star soprano Jessye Norman, the "Voice of Africa" ​​Ami Koita, the jazz singer Dee Dee Bridgewater, hailed as the "new Ella Fitzgerald," as well as the highly successful Israeli pop singer Noa and her Arab-Palestinian counterpart Amal Murkus, the "Piaf of the Gypsies" Esma Redzepova, and the reincarnation of Naples music, Lina Sastri.

Impressed by Jean Cocteau’s rewrite of Antigone, Stravinsky asked the poet for an adaptation of Oedipus Rex. The resulting libretto brings together the key scenes of Sophocles’s tragedy translated by the Abbé Jean Daniélou into Latin—a language that, according the composer, “is not dead but engraved in stone, and so imposing that it is immune to any popularization”.

An impressive lineup of international stars puts on a spectacular "Symphony for the Spire" to kick off the world-famous Salisbury Arts Festival in 1991, held on the Salisbury Cathedral's West Green. Segments feature individual performances by Spanish tenor Placido Domingo, American soprano Jessye Norman and cellist Ofra Harnoy, as well as a special staging of Shakespeare's "Henry V" starring Kenneth Branagh and Charlton Heston.

A Christmas Concert at Notre-Dame in 1991

A filmed concert of two famed sopranos.