My review of the Chateau de Versailles Spectacle video recording (Blu-ray/DVD) of Zingarelli’s Giulietta e Romeo is now up at Opera Canada.
Giulietta e Romeo
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Category Archives: DVD review
Minimalist Onegin
Laurent Pelly’s production of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin was recorded for video at La Monnaie – De Munt in 2023. It’s a severely minimalist production set somewhere, around 1900 or so. I say somewhere because there’s nothing very Russian about it. It could be any country gentry and peasants scenario followed by a society ball. There are no uniforms in sight. Even Gremin wears ordinary evening clothes, albeit with orders and medals.
Elegant 1930s Tosca
Puccini’s Tosca was recorded for video last year at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in a production by Massimo Popolizio. It’s set in the 1930s but other than sets and costumes appropriate to that period it’s played dead straight. Although there’s some kind of mafia/fascisti vibe it’s not really explored and one really experiences it as a “traditional” Tosca. The 30s aesthetic though certainly suits Vanessa Goikoetxea who comes over as very glamorous.
La caravane du Caire
My review of the Versailles video recording (DVD/Blu-ray) of André Grétry’s La caravane du Caire is now available at Opera Canada.
An operatic triptych
Resphigi’s 1931 work Maria Egiziaca was originally conceived as a concert work but very early on it became more common to perform it fully staged. That’s how it’s presented in a production earlier this year from Venice’s Teatro La Fenice though it actually took place in the smaller Teatro Maliban. It’s quite a short work; a little over an hour, and as the composer’s description of it as a “symphonic triptych” suggests it takes place in three scenes.
Metallic Mitridate
Mozart’s Mitridate, re di Ponto is definitely one of his less often performed works even though it’s astonishingly accomplished for a fourteen year old composer. One can see why. It adheres very faithfully to the opera seria model. Far more so than, say, La clemenza di Tito. The libretto is based on a play by Racine which, frankly, lacks dramatic interest and has a contrived ending. The opera wraps all the loose ends up in about three minutes. Structurally da capo aria follows recitative follows da capo aria with little variation and the arias all adhere pretty rigidly to the formal range of baroque emotions. That said there is some spectacular vocal writing; both lyrical and dramatic, which allows the singers to fully display their skills.
Fiddling with Nero
Arrigo Boito is better known as Verdi’s ibrettist on several well known operas but he did write a couple of his own. Mefistofele is probably the better known of the two but it feels like the one he put pretty much heart and soul into is Nerone. Now it’s a matter of some controversy whether he finished the opera or not. Four acts were completed and the composer is on record, in 1911, as describing the opera as “finished” but there’s a prose summary of a possible fifth act which is generally regarded as so unstageable that the composer couldn’t possibly have made opera out of it. In any event the version staged at Cagliari in 2024 and recorded for video is the four act version.
Butterfly by the book
The production of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly recorded at Covent Garden earlier this year is a remount of the 2003 production by Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier directed this time by Daisy Evans. It’s about as conventional as a Butterfly production can be. There’s the odd bit of visual interest like a shedding cherry tree in the finale but mostly it’s standard operatic Japanese bar, perhaps, the cut and colour of Pinkerton’s suit in Act 3.
Recreating the staging of Carmen’s première
My review of Palazetto Bru-Zane’s new video recording of Bizet’s Carmen aimed at recreating the original staging of 1875 is now available at La Scena Musicale.
Catalogue information: Bru-Zane BZ3001
The Passion of the Dollar
Walter Sutcliffe’s staging of Handel’s Brockes Passion, recorded at the Halle Festival in 2023, would be disturbing under any circumstances. Watching it during and just after the US elections borders on the unbearable.
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