Beniamino Gigli

Imagine a window into the past. Imagine finally connecting singers' bodies to the voices you have always treasured on record, watching footage of performances from another era. All of singers featured here have something in common (with one exception, Sutherland): they sang and performed on stage before the advent of filmed opera. . And it shows, for the first time, a few tantalizing minutes of recently recovered footage from Callas' legendary Lisbon Traviata, featuring Addio dal Passato and Parigi oh cara with Alfredo Kraus. This DVD will leave you asking for more.

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The plans of a publicity agent to put on a charity concert are nearly wrecked by a lawyer who wants to take over a restaurant, but the situation is saved by local co-operation.

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A taxi driver, with singing ambitions, finds an abandoned baby in his cab and begins to look for his mother. He doesn't find her but succeeds in finding two people who want to adopt the child.

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A comedy set behind the scenes at Cinecittà studios in Rome during the war, focusing on a famous, demanding tenor and his love interest.

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A dramatization of the melodramatic story that inspired the popular opera, Pagliacci.German language version of a film simultaneously shot in an Italian version.

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Movie adaptation of the Leoncavalo's famous opera. A troupe of traveling actors is being welcomed by villagers in Calabria in the summer of 1866.

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The well off daughter of a tenor breaks up a romance with a helpful youth from a misunderstanding. But she continues to cover him with his gambling debts despite her delicate health.

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Matilde Sarni lives in her villa near Rome. She has a son who has just married Donata and who is coming home after a series of recitals in the States. Mario, her son, is a famous opera singer and he is twenty years older than his wife. Besides Donata doesn't like country life. So when Mario leaves for a tour of recitals and Donata meets Giulio...

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Released from prison after 20 years, Canio finds his daughter adopted by a wealthy family and about to marry. When he meets Leoncavallo, the composer is moved to create one of history's greatest operas.

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The young opera singer Carla is in love with the talented young composer Michele, who wants to make it big with classical music and writes his first opera, "The Return of Odysseus," for Carla. But Carla is more successful than he is and gets a gig at La Scala in Milan. Through her connections, she manages to find a publisher for Michele's opera. But when Michele learns what the publisher really thinks of his work, he leaves and abandons Carla. A year later, Carla finds Michele again. He has since become a sought-after composer, but is embittered because he is only successful with pop songs. His new revue "Dream Music," a reworking of his opera, is about to premiere. Carla then arranges for Michele's original opera to premiere in Budapest with her in the lead role.

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A famous American tenor, relaxing on a farm near Naples and singing for pleasure in the fields, is mistaken by a lady journalist as an unknown talent she has discovered.He plays along with her and even falls in love.

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The great Italian opera composer recalls his eventful life on his deathbed: his childhood in Busseto, his studies in Milan, his first opera "Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio", the death of his wife and his children killed by smallpox.

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A romance between two temperamental singing stars. Highlights include a lengthy selection from Faust, with Gigli making a most impressive Mephistopheles. The plot takes a melodramatic turn towards the climax, with the lives of the characters mirrored in their on-stage behavior. Director Carmine Gallone was something of an expert in the field of filmed opera, as witness his Tosca, Rigoletto and Il Trovatore.

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A princess visiting in the hotel where a famous singer is staying,helps him out on the piano when he has dismissed his accompanist. he uses her again later,but when her betrothed,a prince,suspects her of being in the singer,s bedroom she runs away to another city to work incognito.But the singer turns up there as well and reconciles the lovers.

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A young British woman, tricked into believing she was used during a whirlwind romance, marries a gentle widowed Italian opera star, whose songs she and her first love shared.

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Tenor Mario Monti is searching for his wife Bianca's daughter, who is believed to be dead. Before Mario, Bianca was married to Carlo Scarpia, Mario's patron. When Carlo discovered that his wife and Mario were having an affair, he left them both and, as he was leaving, told Bianca that their daughter Mary had died. In reality, she grew up without knowing her real parents. Mario tracks Mary down in Munich, where she works as a ballerina at the State Opera.

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Ave Maria was the second film-starring vehicle for legendary operatic tenor Beniamino Gigli. Mourning the loss of the only woman he ever loved, concert singer Tino Dossi (Gigli) is temporarily shaken from his doldrums by vivacious Montmartre entertainer Claudette (Kaethe Von Nagy). Dossi doesn't realize that Claudette is merely using him to advance her own singing career. Ultimately won over by Dossi's sincerity and courtesy, Claudette falls in love with him for real, only to suffer the pangs of conscience as a result. About to kill herself, she decides instead to return to Dossi's arms, vowing never to confess her original mercenary intentions.

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Tenor Enzo Curti, a widower with a young child, falls in love with a secretary from New York. Liselotte has experienced disappointment in her first love, Helmut, an ocean liner officer. She marries Enzo Curti, but later, when she meets Helmut again, she experiences emotional stress as love struggles with a sense of duty in her heart.

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This rare 1935 film (the title translated means "do not forget me") features Beniamino Gigli as, of course, an Italian singer who warbles his way through a touching love story. Features musical selections from "Il Trovatore" and "Rigoletto" as well as a lullaby and some Neapolitan songs, including the title tune. Distributed by New York's Bel Canto Society (an organization of hard-core opera buffs).

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Marion Talley (soprano) and Beniamino Gigli (tenor) of the Metropoitan Opera Company sing "Verranno a te sull'aura" (Borne on the Signing Breeze) from Act I of Lucia di Lammermoor in Vitaphone #499.

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