Während eines Urlaubs an den Niagara-Fällen will sich Rose Loomis ihres seit dem Koreakrieg nervenkranken Gatten George entledigen. Gemeinsam mit ihrem Geliebten Ted schmiedet sie ein Komplott. Als George „verschwindet“, alarmiert Rose plangemäß die Polizei. Kurze Zeit später wird unter den Wasserfällen eine Toter entdeckt. Bei der Identifizierung der Leiche trifft Rose beinahe der Schlag …
Enttäuscht von der Ehe mit einem armen Landarzt, die ihr nicht die Erfüllung ihrer romanhaften Wunschvorstellungen bringt, stürzt sich die Titelheldin in Liebesabenteuer und Luxus. Neuerliche Ernüchterungen und der finanzielle Ruin ihres Mannes treiben sie schließlich in den Tod.
Anna Holm ist eine kalte und berechnende Frau, deren eine Gesichtshälfte infolge eines Hausbrands in frühester Jugend gräßlich entstellt ist, was ihre Mitmenschen abstößt. Sie führt eine Gaststätte, nützt das Etablissement jedoch dafür, wohlhabene Gäste um ihre Geheimnisse zu erleichtern und sie anschließend damit zu erpressen. Eines Abends macht sie so die Bekanntschaft von gleich zwei Menschen, die ihr Leben verändern werden
In Puritan Boston, seamstress Hester Prynne and kindly Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale fall in love. After Dimmesdale must go away for a time to England, he returns to discover that Hester has given birth to their child and is the focus of local censure.
A serial killer preying on unfaithful wives sets his eyes on an investigator's wife.The culprit is a debonair director, whose compulsion to prey on married women stems from a deep psychological trauma.
A young woman in her late teens, a reader of novels and with high hopes of romance and passion, marries a widowed country doctor. Although he dotes on her, she is soon bored and discontent. First, she gives her imagination to a law student in town, and next she takes a lover. When he refuses to run away with her, she takes up again with the law clerk. Her spending on dresses and furnishings mounts; these debts and her ill-advised professional counsel to her husband bring his ruin.
An actress hopes to regain her lost son by making it to the top.
The Wrecker is a flinty-eyed demolition engineer named Regan (Jack Holt). While he's off on another assignment, Regan's wife Mary (Genevieve Tobin) and supposed best friend Cummings (Sidney Blackmer) engage in some heavy petting. About to wash his hands of his faithless wife and his back-stabbing chum, our hero is compelled to save both their lives when they're pinned under the wreckage of a collapsed schoolhouse. George E. Stones supplies some good-natured ethnic humor as Regan's junk-dealer pal Shapiro.
When a wealthy Turkish aristocrat arrives in a humble Italian town, the married women roll their eyes in delight, their rival lovers lose out, and the husbands rage with jealousy. These may be silly clichés, but they are the subject of IL TURCO IN ITALIA and the composer plays with them – quite deliberately. He knows that he is putting archetypes of Italian comedy on stage with figures such as the exotic lady-killer Selim, the young woman Fiorilla, who is chained to the stove at home, but adventurous, and her husband Geronio, who is ridiculous because he is much too old – and relishes the ironic exaggeration. Franz Welser-Most conducts the Zurich Opera House Chorus and Orchestra in this performance of Rossini's opera buffa.