Wagner Meets The Playground In "Step Brothers" Film

In a scene not for the faint of heart, Will Ferrel and John C. Reilly play step brothers that get beat up by a gang of young kids on the playground. The end of the scene is sophomoric, but underscores the ineptitude of the characters. The music accompanying the scene is the Liebestod from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. "Step Brothers is a 2008 American buddy slapstick comedy film starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly. The screenplay was written by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, from a story written by them with Reilly. It was produced by Jimmy Miller and Judd Apatow, and directed by McKay. The film was released on July 25, 2008, two years after the same group of men wrote, produced, and starred in another comedy, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. 39-year-old Brennan Huff (Will Ferrell) and 40-year-old Dale Doback (John C. Reilly) are two unemployed, middle-aged, offensive, and self-centered men who still live with (and are reliant on) their parents. They have no intention of moving out or finding jobs and behave childishly. When Brennan's mother Nancy (Mary Steenburgen) and Dale's father Robert (Richard Jenkins) marry, Brennan and Dale are forced to live with each other as step brothers." [Source] Watch the movie scene, and listen to Hildegard Behrens singe the complete arias, after the jump.

Joyeux Quatorze Juillet!

Celebrate Bastille Day by listening to Hildegard Behrens interpret

 "Les nuits d'été" of Hector Berlioz.  

Les nuits d'été (Op. 7):
I. Villanelle
II. Le spectre de la rose
III. Sur les lagunes
IV. Absence
V. Au cimetière
VI. L'île inconnue

Hildegard Behrens Rare 1977 Verdi Duet With James King

Otello: "Già nella notte densa" by Giuseppe Verdi

Performer: Hildegard Behrens (Soprano), James King (Tenor)

Conductor: Heinz Wallberg

Orchestra/Ensemble: Munich Radio Symphony Orchestra

Period: Romantic

Written: 1887; Italy

Date of Recording: 03/27/1977

Venue: Live Bavarian Radio, Munich, Germany

Language: Italian

Elektra Brings Her Complex to Dresden in 1909

"Allein! Weh, ganz Allein"
Hildegard Behrens

Elektra is a one-act opera by Richard Strauss, to a German-language libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal adapted from his drama of 1903—the first of many such collaborations between composer and librettist. It was first performed at the Dresden State Opera on January 25, 1909 conducted by Ernst von Schuch. The cast included Annie Krull (Elektra), Margarethe Siems (Chrysothemis), Ernestine Schumann-Heink (Klytämnestra) and Karl Perron (Orest). The plot of Elektra is based upon the great Greek tragedy of the same name by the tragedian Sophocles. The unrelenting gloom and horror that permeate the original play produce, in the hands of Hofmannsthal