A musical fable inspired by Plato’s Symposium. In a shameless speech, Alcibiades, a prominent young Athenian aristocrat, propounds his strategies to seduce the old philosopher, Socrates. He believes that the wisdom and knowledge he imagines Socrates has, can be transmitted via physical contact.

Director Robert Carsen and his creative team flood the stage with summer blossoms, drifts of autumn leaves, winter snows and thunderous spring storms. The cast of 140 are attired in elegant costumes inspired by late 1940s Dior. This mythical tale of a young queen, Alphise, determined to abdicate rather than contemplate an enforced marriage to a descendant of Boreas, is nothing less than highly-charged.

Sir Simon rattle conducts the Berliner Symphony Orchestra in Mahler's Symphony No. 5 i The video is useful for conveying Simon Rattle's expressive gestures, his fine control of the Berlin Philharmonic, and its precise playing in this his first performance as the orchestra's music director. Ades's Asyla (the plural of "Asylum," used in both its meanings, as a place of refuge and a scene of madness) is available only in the video format, which is sonically quite good and visually striking. It is energetic music, with a lot of percussion, including one piece that looks like a tomato juice can, and one movement that annotator Andrew Porter describes as "a sort of Rite of Spring cum disco." A video interview of Rattle is a fine bonus. --Joe McLellan

60 minute documentary on the background of the 2003 production of Les Boréades at the Opéra national de Paris, including interviews with Robert Carsen, William Christie, Barbara Bonney, Paul Agnew and Laurent Naouri and other members of the cast.