Georgina Parkinson Movies

Kevin McKenzie's spectacular Kennedy Center Opera House production of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake arrives on home video in this release from Image Entertainment. Starring Gillian Murphy and Angel Corella and featuring Ormsby Williams conducting the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, this production will no doubt be a must-see for opera fans. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is given the Ken Russell treatment in The Music Lovers, which means that there is plenty of music, plenty of passion, plenty of debauchery, and plenty of excess. Tame by Russell's later standards (Lisztomania), The Music Lovers nevertheless thrives on creative and sexual anguish. Richard Chamberlain plays Tchaikovsky with a bug-eyed intensity as a composer consumed by his art -- so consumed that his romantic attachments become bisexual and irrational. He falls in love with Nina (Glenda Jackson), the hysterical trollop he marries with dire consequences. As he explodes emotionally, his public performance of Piano Concerto in B flat minor becomes a cue for flashbacks to a series of discomforting childhood events that suggest incestuous relations with his sister. Back in real time, Tchaikovsky has to deal with Nina's outbursts while juggling his homosexual urges and his almost hidden desire for Count Anton Chiluvsky (Christopher Gable). The film also details the curious relationship between Tchaikovsky and his rich patroness, the middle-aged widow Madame Nadedja von Meck (Isabella Telezynska), who loves Tchaikovsky deeply, but refuses to meet him -- their only communication being through letters, even though he lives on her estate. Andre Previn and the London Symphony Orchestra perform Tchaikovsky's music. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

Writer/director Paul Czinner, who in 1936 adapted Shakespeare's As You Like It to the screen, was the guiding force behind the 1966 feature Romeo and Juliet. Unlike Czinner's earlier Shakespeare film, however, not a word of the Bard's text is spoken in the 1966 production. Rather, this is a filmed record of a performance of Prokofiev's ballet version of Romeo and Juliet, as originally presented at the Royal Opera House. The stars are the matchless Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn, who brilliantly overcome the disappointingly bland choreography of Kenneth McMillan. For the benefit of non-ballet aficionados, each of the production's three acts is introduced by a spoken synopsis. Others in the corps de ballet include David Blair as Mercutio, Desmond Doyle as Tybalt, Gerd Larsen as Nurse and Ronald Hynd as Friar Lawrence. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi