Movies: Franco Zeffirelli

In rural Sicily, the fishermen live at the mercy of the greedy wholesalers. One family risks everything to buy their own boat and operate independently....

Paolo Anselmi is a happily single man. He lives in a flat with a friend but is forced to leave when the friend gets married. He then goes to a boarding house where he flirts with a girl but ditches her when she proposes marriage. When he goes and vis...

Promotional omnibus film, made for the 1990 FIFA World Cup in Italy, featuring portraits of 12 Italian cities....

This revealing documentary from director Philippe Kohly examines the storied life of renowned soprano Maria Callas, from her troubled childhood in New York City to her scandal-laden but triumphant international career in opera. Featuring archival int...

This 2003 performance of Georges Bizet's 19th century opera Carmen was produced and directed by filmmaker and stage director Franco Zeffirelli, best known to many for the Academy Award-winning big-screen adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. ...

Puccini’s evergreen paean to young love and the bohemian life has captivated generations of Met-goers through Franco Zeffirelli’s iconic production. Movie theater audiences for the high-definition transmission of this staging got to see it with fresh...

Jon Vickers was one of the most magnetic singing actors of the 20th century and Otello one of his greatest roles. He understood how to combine Shakespeare’s rich characterization and Verdi’s dramatic music to create an overwhelming figure, one whose ...

A fanciful biopic of legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini as a very young man....

Giacomo Puccini’s final operatic masterpiece, Turandot, is one of the repertory’s most extravagant spectacles. And in the Met’s production, by legendary director Franco Zeffirelli, this tale of an icy Chinese princess and the mysterious prince vying ...

The Franco Zeffirelli production of Puccini's "Turandot", recorded live at the Metropolitan Opera in April, 1987. Éva Marton stars as Turandot, with Plácido Domingo as Calaf, Leona Mitchell as Liù, Paul Plishka as Timur, and Hugues Cuenod as L'Impera...

Violetta, a courtesan much wooed by Parisian society, organizes a grand party that is attended, amongst others, by the young Alfredo Germont. He confesses his feelings to Violetta, who is already suffering from consumption. She vacillates between gen...

Japan, early twentieth century. U.S. Navy Lieutenant B.F. Pinkerton inspects the house he has leased from a marriage broker. The broker, Goro, has procured him three servants and a geisha wife, Cio-Cio-San, known as Madama Butterfly. He is enchanted ...

Verdi’s grand opera “Aida” is given an intimate treatment in Busetto, Italy, in 2001, in a staging with young singers, all coached by the legendary tenor Carlo Bergonzi and staged by Franco Zeffirelli. The result is an astonishing musical and dramati...

The story is set in southern Italy and recounts the tragedy of Canio, the lead clown (or pagliaccio in Italian) in a commedia dell'arte troupe, his wife Nedda, and her lover, Silvio. When Nedda spurns the advances of Tonio, another player in the trou...

It is to composer and librettist Arrigo Boito and his constant pestering of the octogenarian Verdi that there remained within him one last great comedy fighting to get out that we owe this absolute miracle of an opera. Produced in 1893 as Verdi turne...

The artistic evolution of the great composer, whose work left an indelible mark in the history of Italian cinema. In this documentary Nino Rota's extraordinary musical production relives in the words of his friends and colleagues. His collaboration w...

Dame Maggie Smith stars in the 1967 screen version of Franco Zeffirelli's exuberant National Theatre production of Shakespeare's romantic comedy, in which young lovers Hero and Claudio conspire to make sharp-tongued rivals Beatrice and Benedick fall ...

A dramatic, solemn and refined work, "Per Firenze" spread throughout the world the cry for help that was rising in those hours from the city of Dante and Brunelleschi, giving rise to one of the greatest phenomena of solidarity that has gone down in h...

Puccini’s timeless love story, which includes some of its composer’s most beloved music, has moved generations of opera lovers since its 1896 world premiere. It has also proved incredibly popular with the Met’s global HD audiences and has been featur...

Cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus relive the creation, rise and fall of their independent film company, Cannon Films. This documentary recounts their many successes and discusses their eventual downfall....