An opera primer on DVD

If you’re curious about opera but not quite ready to pop for a ticket, you can always get a taste of it at home. Some first-rate performances have been captured on celluloid and video, and they might just whet your appetite for the real thing.

*

Barber of Seville Rossini’s enduring comedy pits two young lovers and a wily barber against a greedy older guardian who wants the girl -- and her dowry -- for himself. Cecilia Bartoli stars in this 1988 Schwetzingen Festival performance. (Arthaus Musik)

*

La Boheme Puccini made penniless young Parisian artists falling in and out of love with each other immortal. Long before his Broadway version, Baz (“Strictly Ballroom”) Luhrmann staged the work in 1993 for the Sydney Opera House, casting singers who looked exactly right in the parts. (Arthaus Musik)

*

Boris Godunov The only opera the probing Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky ever directed was Mussorgsky’s epic. The performance filmed in 1990 in St. Petersburg is spectacularly good. (Philips)

*

Carmen Masterly Italian director Francesco Rosi made this 1984 version of Bizet’s 1875 crowd-pleaser. Julia Migenes and Placido Domingo star as the seductive cigarette girl and the patsy who falls for her, against Spanish locations captured with Rosi’s customary flair. (Columbia TriStar Home Video)

*

Cosi fan tutte Outrageous and very funny German director Doris Dorrie’s polyester production of Mozart’s humanely witty work epitomizes what many regard as the Eurotrash approach to putting on opera. Though goofy as all get-out, the staging can also be curiously touching, and Daniel Barenboim’s conducting is another plus. (TDK)

*

Cunning Little Vixen Janacek’s animal fable celebrating nature and the cycle of life was inspired by a Czech cartoon strip. It was superbly adapted for television in a bewitching animated version. (BBC Opus Arte)

*

The Death of Klinghoffer English director Penny Woolcock’s filmed version of John Adams’ controversial opera about the Palestinian hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise liner in 1985 has an extraordinary realism that practically glues you to the screen. (Decca)

*

Falstaff Verdi’s last opera, and one of the most revered in the musical theater canon, re-imagines Shakespeare’s immortal Sir John as an irresistible baritone. A DVD of the 1999 Royal Opera production stars enormously popular Welsh singer Bryn Terfel -- who will make his Los Angeles Opera stage debut in the role in May. (Opus Arte)

*

Fidelio Beethoven’s tale of a brave woman risking all to save her imprisoned husband thunders with hope and power in a live Metropolitan Opera production led by James Levine. (Deutsche Grammophon)

*

The Magic Flute Director Ingmar Bergman reached magical, still unsurpassed heights when he created this touching, lively 1974 production of Mozart’s final opera for Swedish TV. (Criterion Collection)

*

A Night at the Opera The ringer in this bunch, but no survey of opera on film would be complete without the Marx Brothers’ assault on high culture. Famous for its stateroom scene, the 1935 picture pokes fun at Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” -- quite justifiably in the opinion of some tastemakers. (Warner Home Video)

*

Porgy and Bess Gershwin’s poignant musical drama about love between a crippled beggar and a hard-bitten but vulnerable woman was captured in a 1993 production by Trevor Nunn of “Cats” fame. It proved, hands down, that this is the great American opera. (EMI Classics)

*

Theodora Handel’s late oratorio about Christian redemption (think “Messiah,” but even better) features some of the most stunning singing on film from Dawn Upshaw and Lorraine Hunt in a Peter Sellars Glyndebourne production. (Kultur)

*