A young boy runs away from boarding school and an old professor takes care of him.

The film covers a hundred years in the lives of the Ricordi family, the Milan publishing house of the title, and the various composers and other historic personalities, whose careers intersected with the growth of the Ricordi house. It beautifully draws the parallel between the great music of the composers, the historic and social upheavals of their times, as well as the "smaller stories" of the successive generations of Ricordi.

Produced in Italy in breathtaking Technicolor, this biographical story of Puccini (played by L'avventura's Gabriele Ferzetti) spans his creative life from early student days to the height of success, including his early flop Madama Butterfly and his incomplete Turandot. Along the way he encounters three women who change his life, including a sexy, beautiful singer (Two for the Road's Nadia Gray) whom he drops for a small town girl (Sirocco's Marta Toren), and a servant girl who commits suicide over him. Well-selected excerpts from Manon, La Boheme, Madama Butterfly and Turandot are featured along with other Puccini music, including the voice of Beniamino Gigli. Sets, costumes and production values are first class, all sumptuously filmed by Claude Renoir.

Film version of the Verdi opera about lovers on the run after the accidental death of the girl's father.

Goethe's drama and Gounod's opera "Faust" is treated here like a movie rather than the usual photographed-opera from a stage method. Faust is a man who sells his soul to Mephistopheles in exchange for eternal youth, and the latter, with guileful glee, leads Faust to disaster along the paths of pleasure. Marguerite falls in love with Faust, and suffers as a consequence.

A courtesan sacrifices her relationship with a youthful admirer after the man's father pleads with her. Adapted from Giuseppe Verdi's 1853 opera in the three acts "La Traviata".

A crafty barber acts as a go-between for a count in disguise and rescues Rosina from marriage with her guardian. An operatic comedy.

Nemorino is hopelessly in love with Adina but she is attracted to a dashing captain.

A decadent noblewoman, whose stranded husband has dilapidated their whole fortune on gambling, tries to keep her daughter in school while hiding their state of poverty from her, by leading a double life as an exotic dancer.

Directed by Marco Elter.

Gaby is expelled from school after a married teacher commits suicide after telling her he can't live without her. Though she has done nothing, she is punished for his act.