Category Archives: DVD review

Poppea; stylised but stylish

Posted on by
4

Klaus Michael Grüber’s production of Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, recorded at the Aix-en-Provence festival in 2000, is both stylish and stylised.  The stage and costume designs, by Gilles Aillaud and Rudy Sabounghi, are extremely elegant and, at times, very beautiful.  The Seneca scenes at the beginning of Act 2, set in a sort of lemon grove, are especially effective as ai the use of painterly backdrops looking like Greek vase paintings reinterpreted by a fauviste.  The director complements the designs with a somewhat formalised acting style that fits rather well. He also makes some changes to the narrative to tighten up the drama, dispensing with Ottavia’s nurse and ending with Pur tí miro, rather than Poppea’s coronation.  Coupled with excellent acting performances it’s a straightforward but effective way to tell the story.

1.entrance Continue reading →

Gruberova’s Zerbinetta

Posted on by
6

A chance to see the young Edita Gruberova’s near legendary portrayal of Zerbinetta would be reason enough to watch the 1978 Vienna recording of Ariadne auf Naxos but, as it happens, there’s much more.  For a start the cast includes Gundula Janowitz, Walter Berry, René Kollo and Trudeliese Schmidt plus Karl Böhm, a man who worked closely with Strauss, is conducting.

1.haushofmeister Continue reading →

Makes me want to cut my throat too

Posted on by
5

Philippe Boesmans’ opera Julie; libretto by Luc Bondy and Marie-Louise Bischolberger after Früken Julie by August Strindberg, is unremittingly bleak.  In fact, if it lasted much longer than its 75 minutes I could well imagine audience members cutting their throats long before the title character.  That said, it’s pretty compelling stuff.  It’s a tight drama about a young aristocratic woman kicking against the constraints of her privileged life aided and abetted by her father’s rather spineless valet Jean; a suitable occupation as he is one of nature’s lackeys.  The only likeable character is Jean’s young fiancée Kristin, a cook in the household.  Buried in this simple melodramatic plot of lust, betrayal and suicide are all kinds of ideas about heredity, social class and behaviour.  Broadly speaking the message is “The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate” and woe betide you if your plebeian mother married above herself.

1.kitchen Continue reading →

Abduction in Aix

Posted on by
5

Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail is perhaps the most difficult of his major operas to bring off successfully.  I dealt with some of the issues in a review of Hans Neuenfel’s production so I won’t repeat myself here.  Jérôme Deschamps and Macha Makeïff’s production for the Aix-en-Provence Festival, filmed in 2004, has several interesting features that cast an interesting light on the main characters.  The most drastic is the treatment of Osmin.  Here he’s rather dignified and far from the fat, brutal, somewhat comic lecher of convention.  That side of his character is conveyed by five, mostly silent, sidekicks.  These guys are everywhere, portraying both Osmin’s baser nature and the “walls have eyes and ears” aspects of the story.  They are made to look rather dim and get some fairly funny business to play with.  Next we have Bassa Selim played by a dancer.  This makes it easier to portray him as sensitive but not a wimp through the use of extremely virile choreography.  Clever!  Finally, both Pedrillo and Blondchen are sung by people of colour.  That can’t be a coincidence.  It certainly puts a very interesting spin on the confrontation between Osmin and Blondchen about how English girls are different from Turks.  These ideas are played out against rather dramatically colourful sets and costumes with lots of comic business to make a fast paced and enjoyable romp that makes one think just enough about the underlying meanings.

1. goons Continue reading →

Ciboulette

Posted on by
2

Reynaldo Hahn’s 1923 piece Ciboulette is considered one of the last great French operettas.  It’s certainly tuneful and highly sophisticated.  I lost track of the number of times the word “raffiné” is used during the interviews with production team and cast.  It’s certainly a highly involved piece of meta theatre running the gamut of operatic conventions and adding a few touches of its own.  It’s just as well really as all of this is wrapped around a conventionally paper thin plot.

1.soldiers Continue reading →

Bergman’s Magic Flute (Trollflöjten)

Posted on by
9

Despite having seen many Magic Flutes and pretty much every Bergman movie it’s only now that I’ve got around to watching his famous film of the Mozart opera, or rather Bergman’s version of the opera, because it differs in important ways from Shikaneder’s libretto.  The basic concept is that Pamina is Sarastro’s daughter, who he has removed from the evil influence of her mother.  He intends Pamina to inherit his kingdom and leadership of the Brotherhood but only after he’s found a suitable chap to keep her out of trouble which is, of course, where Tamino comes in.  So whatever else has changed, the misogyny is intact.  There are other changes too.  Monostatos is almost written out of the script and a good deal of dialogue is changed or omitted, as are some musical numbers.  The whole thing comes in at 135 minutes so maybe 30 minutes of material have been cut.  None of this seems very radical today but must have raised a few eyebrows in 1975.

1.dragon Continue reading →

Transcendent Tristan

Posted on by
2

There may be better video recordings of Tristan und Isolde than Daniel Barenboim and Heiner Müller’s 1995 Bayreuth collaboration but I haven’t seen one.  It combines a deeply satisfying production, outstanding conducting and brilliant performances from the principals; Siegfried Jerusalem and Waltraud Meier.  The only downside, and it’s not serious, is that, as a 1995 recording, it’s a bit short of the latest and greatest in audio and video quality.

1.potion Continue reading →

Dense and dramatic Ariadne

Posted on by
1

Claus Guth’s 2006 production of Ariadne auf Naxos recorded at the Opernhaus Zürich in 2006 is a compelling piece of theatre.  It’s one of those Regietheater pieces that combines a workable concept with compelling Personenregie to create a whole that’s extremely illuminating.  The entire Vorspiel is played out, in modern dress, in front of a grey curtain.  We get an immediate idea of how Guth is going to explore/exploit metatheatricality as soon as the Haushofmeister appears.  He’s played by none other than Zürich Intendant Alexander Pereira.  Who is calling the shots?  This is reinforced when he drops the bombshell that the opera seria must be combined with Zerbinetta’s farce.  This speech is delivered by Pereira from among his guests in the Intendant’s box.  It’s very clever.  But there’s so much more going on during the Vorspiel.  The Komponist is getting seriously deranged; perhaps even more so after he begins his infatuation with Zerbinetta.  There’s a moment when it looks like a love triangle is being set up.  The diva just gives one look that suggests that she’s got her eyes on the Komponist.  It’s a typical moment.  A look, a gesture, seems to convey so much.  It all concludes with the deranged Komponist shooting himself.

1.pointing Continue reading →

Overstuffed Carmen

Posted on by
5

It’s nearly five years since I saw the MetHD broadcast of Carmen with Alagna and Garanča.  I remember being quite impressed at the time.  Watching it again on Blu-ray I came away with a less favourable impression.  It’s not that it’s bad.  It’s not.  It just feels a bit lacklustre in a very crowded field.  Let’s start with the positives.  Elina Garanča is a very good Carmen.  She sings superbly and grows into the role dramatically as the work progresses.  She’s also a very good dancer and the production exploits that.  In fact dance is used very well throughout with specialist dancers used to stage a sort of prologue to each act as well as the obvious places being reinforced with “real” dancers.  As always, the Met doesn’t stint on this element and the dancers used are first rate.

1.crowd Continue reading →

Filming Gloriana

Posted on by
3

Phyllida Lloyd’s 2000 BBC film of Britten’s Gloriana, based on her production for Opera North, is quite fascinating.  The bonus interviews reveal the utter disdain for films/videos of stage opera productions held by pretty much everyone involved in the project.  It’s an interesting perspective to hear in a world where Cinema and streaming HD broadcasts are increasingly common and where Blu-ray/DVD has clearly overtaken CD as the preferred medium for opera recordings.  In some ways, of course, it’s because the technology has improved enormously.  DVD was still relatively new in 2000 and widescreen, flat screen TVs were yet to come.  In any event, this attitude led to the creation of a rather interesting film.

1.entrance Continue reading →