Category Archives: DVD review

Spectacular Die frau ohne Schatten from the Mariinsky

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Richard Strauss’ Die Frau ohne Schatten is a problematic work on many levels.  Hofmannsthal’s complicated and heavily symbolic libretto places considerable demands on both audience and director.  There are ideas about women, marriage and child bearing in the libretto that sit very uncomfortably with modern audiences.  It’s also a beast to cast requiring not just a truly Helden tenor and soprano but a second soprano of almost equal heft who can handle some fairly tricky coloratura.  It’s also long and requires a large orchestra.  In some ways it’s surprising that it gets performed as often as it does although when done well it’s a piece of quite extraordinary beauty and power.

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First, the sound quality

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The MetHD broadcast of Strauss’ Capriccio has been issued on Blu-ray.  I enjoyed the original broadcast but found watching it again on disk rather unsatisfying.  The main problem is the production.  It’s a John Cox effort from 1998.  The period is updated from ancien régime France to just after WW1, apparently to make the people more contemporary while allowing an opulent, old style Met “all the things” production.  Peter McClintock’s direction of the revival emphasizes the most obvious comedy (the ballerina falling over with her legs in the air, for example) while doing little or nothing to bring out the sheer cleverness of this opera, about an opera, within an opera.  It all seems very heavy handed, in fact the word that popped into my head several times was “vulgar”.

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How can peace come from so much pain?

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Making a film of an opera rather than filming an opera involves interesting choices and one of the strengths of the DVD of Penny Woolcock’s film of John Adams’ and Alice Goodman’s The Death of Klinghoffer is that includes 47 minutes of Woolcock, Adams and others discussing just how one takes a rather abstractly staged opera (the original staging was, inevitably, by Peter Sellars) and turn it into an essentially naturalistic film.  Of course, naturalism will only go so far with opera but this goes a long way in that direction.  The soloists are filmed mainly on location and they sing to the camera.  The choruses, mainly backed by documentary footage, and the orchestra were recorded in the studio but the actors sing ‘live’.  The one concession to “being operatic” is having a mezzo voice one of the Palestinians though he is played by a male actor.

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Love polygon

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Handel’s Partenope is a bit unusual.  It feels lighter than a lot of Handel’s Italian operas and it is basically a romcom, albeit one that still has a vaguely classical setting.  Handel also plays with opera seria conventions by, for example, writing “heroic” arias for non-heroic texts and putting accompagnato in odd places.  The number of potential match ups that need to be tracked is fairly staggering.  Basically everybody is in love with, or pretending to be in love with, Partenope, queen of Partenope aka Naples.  These include the invading prince of Cumae, Emilio; Arsace, prince of Corinth; Armindo, prince of Rhodes and Eurimene, an Armenia who is really Rosmira, princess of Cypress and formerly betrothed to Arsace.  The only character who isn’t in love with Partenope is the philosophical captain of the guard, Ormonte, who is easy to spot as he’s a bass.  At the start of the piece Partenope is in love with Arsace but Eurimene/Rosmira isn’t having that and engineers a duel with Arsace.  This takes most of two acts but it’s the only essential bit of plot.  In Act 3 Arsace, who really doesn’t want to fight his former fiancée finally comes up with the wizard wheeze of demanding that the duel be fought bare chested.  Apparently this was perfectly normal under Neopolitan duelling conventions.  maybe it’s what gave Patrick O’Brian the idea of having Stephen Maturin always duel bare chested?  Anyway the modest Rosmira isn’t about to do any boob flashing (somewhat ironically as Inger Dam-Jensen, in the title role, has been bosom heaving with the best since the overture) so confesses to being, shock horror, female.  Arsace and Rosmira are reunited and Partenope awards herself as a consolation prize to Armindo.  Got that?

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Looks better than it sounds

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Massenet’s Don Quichotte is one of those works where one does a double take on learning when it was composed.  It dates from 1910 but sounds like it was composed at least 50 years earlier.  It’s lushly romantic and dressed up with elements of flamenco but to nothing like as good effect as in de Falla’s La vida breve.  There’s also plenty of schmaltz.  The intro to Act 5, for example, being highly reminiscent of the Meditation in Thaïs. The plot’s pretty thin too.  Don Quixote loves the unattainable Dulcinea.  He goes off and encounters some bandits who eventually take pity on him and rather than killing him give him Dulcinea’s necklace, which they have stolen.  He returns it to her.  She is grateful but still not interested in marrying him.  He dies.  Great!

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Vogt and Nylund bring dead city to life

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Kasper Holten shows his customary inventiveness in his production of Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt, recorded at Finnish National Opera in 2010.  He places the whole opera inside Paul’s “Marie museum” with a chaotic, higgledy, piggledy model of the the city of Brugge as a back wall.  He emphasises the dream elements of acts 2 and 3 through devices such as having the troupe of players and their boat emerge through Paul’s bed or assorted ecclesiastics popping up randomly in the “city model”.  He also inserts a non-speaking Marie who is present throughout the piece, often to very interesting effect.

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Stark Jenůfa from Madrid

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Stéphane Braunschweig’s production of Janáček’s Jenůfa, recorded at Madrid’s Teatro Real, is austere and effective.  The sets are almost empty.  Mill sails appear from a slot in the floor to suggest the family mill, there’s a cot for the baby in Act 2 and some church benches in Act 3.  That’s it.  The rest of the “setting” is carried by a very effective lighting plot.  I don’t think there are any big ideas here but it’s an effective, straightforward way of telling the story.  Braunschweig also makes effective use of the chorus, especially in Act 1.

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Seamen from a distant Eastern shore

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Berlioz’ Les Troyens is one of those pieces that really deserves the descriptor “sprawling epic” and, if anyone can make an epic sprawl it’s David McVicar.  This production, recorded at the Royal Opera House in 2012, is typical of McVicar’s more recent work.  It’s visually rather splendid and the action is well orchestrated but it’s short on ideas and long on McVicar visual cliches; acrobats, gore and urchins (but mercifully no animals).  I don’t want to be too hard on McVicar.  This piece is based on the sort of “Ancient History” one used to learn at prep school (British usage) and McVicar pretty much runs with that making no attempt to find deeper meaning, despite superficially translating at least the first two acts to the time of first performance; the era of European colonialism.

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Kleiber’s Rosenkavalier

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Carlos Kleiber didn’t record much despite enjoying something of a cult following as a conductor.  In 1994, shortly before his death, he conducted four performances of Der Rosenkavalier at the Wiener Staatsoper; the first of which was recorded.  It’s clearly Kleiber’s night.  His appearances at the start of each act are greeted with cheers and wild applause.  One can only guess at the reception he got afterwards because the curtain calls don’t make it onto the recording.  And, yes, it is a masterly conducting performance with fine support for the singers, beautifully shaped lines and an infectious sense of fun.

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Kupfer/Barenboim Ring – 4. Götterdämmerung

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I think it’s only with the final instalment of the Kupfer/Barenboim Ring that its true power is apparent.  The first three instalments are very fine but Götterdämmerung is devastating.  All the elements that have been progressively introduced are seamlessly combined.  Add to that extraordinarily intense performances from Siegfried Jerusalem (Siegfried), Philip Kang (Hagen) and, above all, Anne Evans (Brünnhilde) and one has something very special indeed.

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