Damiano Michieletto’s production of Rossini’s La donna del lago filmed at the Rossini Festival in Pesaro in 2016 has some odd features but at least it’s not as all around annoying as the Met production the year before.

First off there’s an issue of period, complicated by the fact that the director has chosen to tell the story as tghe recollection of events, in old age, by Elena and Malcolm.  Silent “old Elena” and “old Duncan” show up throughout.  So we have the action, which seems to be set around the time that the poem was written (1810), and the setting which is the dilapidated Casa Duncan some forty years later (though oddly it features a lot of electric table lamps).  Visually it works well enough if you can get over the slightly ridiculous idea of clan warfare in Scotland in 1810.  It’s also a very large stage and very dark most of the time; pitch even on occasions.  This actually makes it quite hard to watch on video and thank Sony for Blu-ray!

The casting is possibly even stronger than in the Met recording.  Juan Diego Florez is once again Uberto/Giacomo, Michael Spyres sings Rodrigo and Salome Jicia is Elena.  They are backed up by Varduhi Abrahamyan as Malcolm and Marko Mimica as Duglas.  Some of the singing is just fantastic.  It’s perhaps best illustrated by the big Act 2 trio that leads up to the duel with the two tenors exchanging ringing high notes and octave leaps while Elena interjects some stunning coloratura of her own.  The duel itself seems anti-climactic after this.  How much more humane Scottish history would have been if succession disputes had been settled by a singing contest rather than bashing babies’ brains out on Falkirk Cross!

It’s not just fireworks either both Florez and Jicia show that they can sing really very beautifully too.  “Nume! se a’miei sospii” is gorgeous.  Abrahamyan and Mimica are also excellent and, best of all, Michieletto gets his principals to act, and act well.  The overall result is really quite exciting and Michieletto’s concept works quite well with some nice touches such as “Vivere io non potro” where young Duncan is dancing wit old Elena and vice versa.  The orchestra and chorus are from the Teatro communale di Bologna and they are really good.  They can be properly dramatic but there’s also some rather lovely delicate playing, for example from the harp at the beginning of Act 2.  Michele Mariotti conducts idiomatically.

It’s a really tough production to film (and I do wonder if that’s one reason it hasn’t been released before now) but Paolo Filippo Berti does quite well.  There are places where it’s really hard to see what’s going on but mostly it’s OK.  I can’t imagine watching this on standard DVD.  Blu-ray is only just adequate from a video point of view.  The sound tracks though are fine; both surround (DTS-HD-MA) and stereo.  The booklet has the usual track listing, synopsis and short essay (quite useful) and the subtitle options are Italian, English, German, French, Spanish, Korean and Japanese.

I would rate this superior to the Met offering in all departments.  I think even the singing is slightly better and in every other respect it’s much better.  It’s really quite exciting to watch.

Catalogue number: C Major Blu-ray 764404