Unitel GmbH & Co.KG |
True to its motto "Music to Watch," UNITEL produces operas, concerts, operettas and ballets with acclaimed artists and in the highest technical quality. Currently boasting a film stock of more than 2500 productions, UNITEL was one of the first companies to produce music films in color and stereo, and records today exclusively in UHD and in Surround sound quality. UNITEL arose from Cosmotel, the firm which Dr. Leo Kirch founded with Herbert von Karajan in 1964 to produce classical music for film and television. The company is part of Jan Mojto's corporate group today.
Celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2016, UNITEL has been working for half a century with the world's leading artists in order to capture on film great musical interpretations in landmark productions. Legendary conductors such as Herbert von Karajan, Leonard Bernstein and Carlos Kleiber were exclusive partners of the production company for many years, just as the Wiener Philharmoniker and the Bayreuth Festival. Today UNITEL owes its one-of-a-kind catalogue and its outstanding position in the field of audiovisual production of classical music to these long-term artistic partnerships. They are being continued – some of them on an exclusive basis – to this day with Christian Thielemann, Anna Netrebko, the Wiener and Berliner Philharmoniker, as well as with such renowned cultural institutions as the Bayerische Staatsoper, the Salzburg Festival, the Bregenz Festival, the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, the Teatro alla Scala, the Wiener Musikverein and the Teatro Regio di Parma.
UNITEL cooperates with all major public-law and private broadcasters, including ORF, ZDF, 3sat, Arte, NHK and BBC. In conjunction with major and independent labels such as Universal Music (Deutsche Grammophon/Decca), Warner Music, Sony Classical, C Major Entertainment, EuroArts and Arthaus, UNITEL has released about 850 DVDs and Blu-Rays to date, which are distributed in Germany and around the world. In December 2016, the world's first opera production in 4K Ultra High Definition, the Nozze di Figaro from the Salzburg Festival, will be released on Blu-Ray. It offers a visual experience never before seen on the home screen.