Lightyear Entertainment’s 30th Anniversary Re-Release of ARIA, Restored from the Original Film Materials and Available in HD
for the First Time, Arrives March 7th on Blu-ray
“Ten directors work magic!”
–Time Magazine (Critics Choice)
“ARIA reminds viewers of the original arithmetic of cinema: sight + sound = sensation.”
–Richard Corliss
In ARIA, ten of the world’s most creative and celebrated directors were each given the same brief: to choose a piece of opera music and then present a visual interpretation of that music with complete artistic freedom. Music was sourced from the massive RCA Red Seal catalog; the score features some of the world’s best opera singers.
The ten directors of ARIA are Robert Altman, Bruce Beresford, Bill Bryden, Jean-Luc Godard, Derek Jarman, Franc Roddam, Nicolas Roeg, Ken Russell, Charles Sturridge and Julien Temple.
Actors featured in this one-of-a-kind film include the late, great John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, Bridget Fonda, Theresa Russell, Buck Henry, Beverly D’Angelo, Julie Hagerty and Anita Morris.
ARIA was produced by British filmmaker Don Boyd for Lightyear in 1987. Going back to the original 35mm internegative, the film now has been painstakingly restored and transferred to a widescreen HD master and will be released on Blu-ray ($25.99 SRP) for the first time on March 7, 2017 in a special 30th Anniversary Edition. A new DVD ($19.99 SRP) has also been authored from the HD master, and both skus will be distributed on the Lightyear Entertainment label through Momentum Pictures/Sony Home Entertainment.
The film previously was screened in recent retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the Toronto International Film Festival. ARIA was originally released in U.S. theaters by Miramax in 1987, after it debuted in Cannes as the closing night film.
Composers featured in ARIA include Verdi, Lully, Korngold, Rameau, Wagner, Puccini, Charpentier and Leoncavallo.
Singers include Enrico Caruso, Leontyne Price, Robert Merrill, Rachel Yakar, Anna Moffo, Carol Neblett, René Kollo and Birgit Nilsson.
The HD trailer can be seen here: www.lightyear.com/videos/aria
Lightyear Entertainment, a distributor of independent films and music, was founded in 1987, as a management buyout of RCA Video Productions, just before ARIA was completed. So 2017 is also Lightyear’s 30th Anniversary. www.lightyear.com
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