Certainly looks very appetising - the Budd and Grimes clips, especially.

I believe John Culshaw was involved in producing most, if not all, of these.
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Winterreise with folk songs, and Idomeneo have just arrived from Amazon. I was so excited I sliced through the transparent covering on Winterreise thinking it was the cellophane wrapping - no damage to the actual text or disc, luckily. I've only watched a bit so far. I started with the only bit I hadn't seen before - some short extracts from a Schubert workshops in 1968 where they perform Frühlingstraum, Im Dorfe and Der Leiermann, and discuss the cycle briefly, Pears predictably doing most of the talking. I was delighted that almost the first thing they say is that this is not a young man's cycle, whatever Schubert's age when he wrote it, something I am forever saying to sceptical people! They certainly don't look (or sound) young. Pears would have been 58, Britten 54 - they could easily be ten years older than that.  I remember commenting to a local woman I was staying with in Aldeburgh on the occasion of Pears's 70th birthday that although he was good-looking man he looked old for his age - much older than my father, who was 3 years older than Pears. She said, "40 years of living with Ben - that would age anyone",  a remark I have often recalled since in the course of my reading.

I've had the Schubert cycle and the folk songs on ancient video for years, nice to have them in a more watchable format. They're on top form in the folk songs, filmed in 1964.

 A case of real glad morning for me as my DVDs of "Grimes" and, yes, most of all, "Billy Budd" (1966), have arrived from hmv.     The pre-order price for 'BB' was £13 99 but the asking price is now £17 99!

I've hesitated about ordering "Winterreise" as I already have this on video off-air/now transferred to DVD.   It always looked a bit staid and statuesque which surprised me as Peter Pears is an exceptional performer in the mastery of stillness.   However, - thank you, Mary - the addition of the folk songs has quite won me over.   

Not a sign of my Billy Budd yet: HMV may be cheap, but they're slow.

Thanks, IGI. I saw the Met Grimes in the cinema, very loud - I don't think I'll buy the DVD, as I wasn't very impressed by the singing or the production, though neither was really bad. I've enjoyed the Britten/ Pears ones a lot, though, especially Budd, which couldn't be bettered, except perhaps for the casting of Billy himself.

I was puzzled by your comment about my avatar, because when I first read your message it looked perfectly all right to me. This morning it didn't, but I think I've corrected it now. It's been a while since I had avatar trouble.