Norma

It's hard to imagine a video opera collection without this superbly sung MET production of Bellini's I Puritani. Not that it's perfect by any means, but its excellences--most especially Anna Netrebko's electrifying singing and acting of Elvira--banish carping about other aspects of this memorable night at the opera. Netrebko is fragile from the start, her facial expressions and hand movements immediately conveying the girl's vulnerability. She has a mad scene in each act; the first when she realizes her fiancé has disappeared with another woman, the third, in the final act, a brief relapse when her returned fiancé is taken by the army to be executed. But it's in the second act that the real fireworks occur, with a Mad Scene that rivals Donizetti's Lucia for bel canto primacy. Here, Elvira is first heard off-stage, after the chorus has informed us that she's deranged. She enters wearing her wedding gown and begins Qui la voce in a voice as frail as her psyche.

Oroveso, a Druid High Priest, gathers his people in a sacred forest and prays to their gods for help in vanquishing the Romans who have taken over Gaul. Unbeknownst to Oroveso, his daughter, Norma, a High Priestess, has for some time been the lover of Pollione, the leader of the Romans; she has, in fact, not only broken her sacred vow of chastity but has borne two children to the warrior. Norma uses her position to dissuade the Gauls from attacking the Romans, claiming that the gods have told her that the time is not favourable. Recorded at Théâtre Antique d'Orange, 1974

Australian Opera Chorus and Elizabethan Sydney Orchestra production of Donizetti's opera

A working class Catholic family in Sydney endure tough times and misery in the 1940s. In the middle of it all, the 16-year-old son tries to cope with falling in love with a male friend.