Category Archives: DVD review

Brueghelland

Posted on by
1

ETA 6th December 2019:

Rewatching Le Grand Macabre after four years has rather changed my opinion.  It still seems weird and sometimes hard to watch but I think I see a certain logic in it now that completely escaped me before.  So the End of the World is approaching and all the Powers that Be can do is squabble, exchange scatological insults and get very, very drunk while the one sane (if rather weird) character (Gepopo) can’t find a language to communicate the enormity of what’s happening to them.  Sound vaguely familiar?  (Coincidentally, I’m writing this on the day that Andrew Scheer said that the Federal Government should give more heroin to the addicts in Alberta because otherwise they’ll get in a snit).  Of course, in Ligeti’s version Death gets so drunk that he screws up terminating the space-time continuum but we probably won’t be so lucky.  So yes the fart jokes and the raccoon on bins orchestra is still there but it now seems to me in service of something rather more profound than I previously gave it credit for.  Also, Hannigan is not just brilliant vocally.  It’s also, even by her standards, an amazing physical performance. (Original review under the cut).

gepopoprince

Continue reading →

Hunchback Hoffmann

Posted on by
Reply

Giancarlo del Monaco’s production of Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann recorded in Bilbao in 2006 isn’t nearly as weird as the interviews on the first disk might lead one to expect.  It has its moments but in many ways is more “by the book” than the Laurent Pelly production I looked at last week.  The interviews talk of a “Sartrian” Hoffmann and a Freudian approach to Antonia.  Ok so Hoffmann is portrayed as a hunchback and he’s fairly damaged but he’s basically your standard drunk poet fixated on a woman or women he can’t have.  I can’t actually see this dude nailing his hand to a nightclub table with a knife or drowning his cat to prove a point.

1.kleinzach Continue reading →

Lauren Pelly’s weird, dour Tales of Hoffmann

Posted on by
1

Laurent Pelly’s 2013 production of Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann at the Liceu is one of those productions that’s a bit hard to take in at first go.  Part of it is the performing edition used (Michael Kay and Jean-Christophe Keck) which seems to have added a lot of dialogue compared to any version I’ve seen before and includes Hoffmann killing Giulietta in Act 3.  This produces a constant sense of “where they heck are we in the piece”.  It doesn’t help that the DVD package contains no explanatory material at all.  There are no interviews on the disks and the documentation is sub-basic.

1.weird Continue reading →

Grumpy Otello

Posted on by
8

Verdi loved Shakespeare and tried to reflect the psychological depth of his characters in the operas he based on the bard.  You really wouldn’t know that watching the 2008 Salzburg Festival production of Otello.  There’s a lot to like in both production and performance but the emotionally monochromatic performance of the title role by Aleksandrs Antonenko, who can do every mood from fairly grumpy to furious, and the moustache twirling Jago of Carlos Álvarez rather reduce the piece to pathologically jealous nutter with anger management problem kills wife.

1.orgy Continue reading →

La Grand-Duchesse de Gérolstein

Posted on by
Reply

Despite a thin to non-existent plot and music that sounds like a remix of all the other Offenbach operettas, La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein, performed by largely French forces and recorded at the Théâtre du Châtelet in 2004 is a highly enjoyable romp.  The plot centres on the susceptibility of the Grand-Duchess to fall rather hard for younger men.  This makes it a perfect vehicle for Felicity Lott who rather seems to specialise in such roles; whether Strauss’ Marschallin or La Belle Hélène.  She’s brilliant.  She sings gorgeously except where she doesn’t want to and her comic timing is impeccable.  She’s well backed up by Yann Beuron as the young soldier Fritz who she promotes from private to général-en-chef without swaying his affections for his sweetheart Wanda sung by the irrepressible and cute Sandrine Piau.  The slapstick element is provided by François Le Roux, as Le Général Boum, Franck Leguérinet as Le Baron Puck and Eric Huchet as Le Prince Paul who are set on getting the Grand-Duchess to marry Paul even if it means murdering Fritz.  They get lots of up tempo numbers that sound as if they are singing a Korean restaurant menu.

1.boum
Continue reading →

The Solti show

Posted on by
2

The recording of Richard Strauss’ Die Frau ohne Schatten made at the Salzburg Festival in 1992 is very much Sir Georg Solti’s show.  The conducting is superb and the Vienna Philharmonic, of course, respond for Solti.  From the opening, shattering cords through the various orchestral interludes to the final ensemble and chorus Solti is utterly convincing in his command of tempi and dynamics.

1.ammekaiserin Continue reading →

Puzzling Genoveva from Zürich

Posted on by
5

Schumann’s Genoveva is a rarity. It premiered in 1850 and quickly slipped into obscurity.  Recently it has been championed by Nikolaus Harnoncourt who has gone so far as to call it “the most significant opera of the second half of the 19th century”; a slightly eye popping claim.  So what’s it about?  On the face of it it’s a pretty typical German opera of the period, set during the wars against the Moors in Spain.  Siegfried (Graf in the libretto but mysteriously translated as Duke in the disk subtitles) is recently married but must lead his men off to the war leaving behind his young, beautiful, pious and virtuous bride Genoveva. He leaves Golo; a knight but a bastard so apparently not OK for active service, to guard his lands and wife.  Golo has the hots for Genoveva but when she rejects his advances he concocts, with the aid of a witch, a plot to make it appear that she’s having an affair with an elderly retainer.  She’s locked up by the servants and word is sent to Siegfried; returned from Spain but recovering from wounds in Strasbourg, of what has transpired.  He gives Golo his sword and ring and tells Golo to kill Genoveva.  Instead Golo tries to get her to run away with him but she refuses and he disappears.  The servants too are happy enough to humiliate Genoveva but pretty slow about killing her.  This gives time for Siegfried to arrive, having learnt of his wife’s innocence, and save the day.  All sing a hymn of praise to God.  Along the way there’s a magic mirror, a ghost, a magic potion and a whole lot of cloying sentimentality and piousness.

1.quartet Continue reading →

A weirdly eclectic Fidelio

Posted on by
5

I’m really not sure what to make of Jürgen Flimm’s 2004 production of Fidelio for the Zürich Opera House.  It’s not offensive and it doesn’t really get in the way of the story but it seems quite devoid of originality beyond mixing styles in a way one might describe as anachronistic if one could figure out when synchronistic would be.  Rocco wears a sort of frock coat with, apparently, goatskin pants, Marzellina’s dress looks probably 20th century, bolt action magazine fed rifles are apparently muzzle loaded and metal cartridge cases filled by hand.  Then to cap it off when Don Fernando shows up he looks like he’s stepped straight out of a Zeffirelli production of Der Rosenkavalier.  So “nul points” for coherence.  For once one rather appreciates that so much of the action takes place in the dark.

1.marzfid Continue reading →

Abstract Freischütz

Posted on by
8

Nikolaus Harnoncourt has long been one of my favourite conductors, particularly for pieces that require a strong sense of period.  The same goes for the wonderful Zürich Opera House Orchestra who, uniquely as far as I know, can change up their instruments to suit the piece.  For Weber’s Der Freischütz, recorded in 1999, they use valveless brass but, as best I can tell, modern woodwinds and it all sounds great especially in the many hunting scenes.

1.chorus Continue reading →

Gounod’s Mireille

Posted on by
Reply

Gounod’s Mireille is a bit of a rarity and with good reason.  It’s got everything that modern audiences find hard to take in 19th century French opera.  It’s revoltingly wholesome with a bit of the supernatural, some patriarchal nastiness and a whole lot of Catholic schmaltz thrown in culminating in a final scene where the dying heroine (of course the heroine dies!) is carried off to heaven by angels while everybody else is suitably pious.  It also has some pretty good tunes and a fiendishly difficult soprano lead part.

1.cornfield Continue reading →