The Final Passage

the beethoven thing

Dreamlike satire about a young man who resists getting a job at the lone employing conglomerate in his dreary industrial town, but changes his mind when he discovers the plant's boiler room has the perfect climate to assist him with his pet horticultural (fungal) project.

In a dreary North London flat, the site of perpetual psychological warfare, a philosophy professor visits his family after a nine-year absence and introduces the four men - father, uncle and two brothers - to his wife.

Val Xavier is a drifter in 1940's Mississippi who brings new life to an Italian immigrant woman trapped in a loveless marriage.

A 1965 BBC adaptation of William Shakespeare's first historical tetralogy (1 Henry VI, 2 Henry VI, 3 Henry VI and Richard III), which deals with the conflict between the House of Lancaster and the House of York over the throne of England, a conflict known as the Wars of the Roses. It was based on the 1963 theatre adaptation by John Barton, and directed by Peter Hall for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Sir Peter Hall directs and Raymond Leppard conducts this 1984 Glyndebourne Festival Opera production of Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi's final opera, "L'Incoronazione di Poppea," often considered his very best. Set in ancient Rome, Monteverdi's historically based opera seria chronicles the passionate love affair between Emperor Nero and his deceptively seductive second wife, Poppea.

Don José is a guard who begins an affair with the tempestuous Carmen. He is imprisoned and loses his job, then flees with her to the mountains. When the relationship starts to break down José refuses to acknowledge it and will not leave, even when he gets news that his mother is dying. Carmen, meanwhile, has taken up with the bullfighter Escamillo. Bizet's most famous opera is brought to the Glyndebourne Festival Opera by Sir Peter Hall, with Maria Ewing and Barry McCauley heading an international cast.

Recorded live at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London on 2 June 1992.

As a young man, Tom, prepares to leave the Suffolk village of his birth, voices and experiences from his family's past crowd in on his mind, weaving a poetic tapestry of the love of home and the longing to get away from it.

Live from Glyndebourne 1987.