Category Archives: DVD review

How much of what we did was good?

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Two years ago I got a chance to see a live COC performance of John Adams’ Nixon in China followed, on the next day, by a live cinema broadcast from the Met of the same piece.  I wrote them up at the time on Dreamwidth.  I’ve now got my hands on the recently released Blu-ray/DVD release of the Met broadcast.  Interestingly it’s just that; a Blu-ray and DVD copy of the recording in the same box for a pretty typical opera video price.  I think it’s a neat solution to the two SKU dilemma of releasing on Blu-ray and DVD separately.  Packaging aside, how does it look after a lapse of two years?

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Babes in bodices

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After a less than satisfactory introduction to Donizetti’s Anna Bolena in a MetHD broadcast last year it was with some trepidation that I approached the DVD version recorded at the Wiener Staatsoper and also starring Anna Netrebko.  I need not have worried because it’s very good indeed.  It has a stronger cast, Eric Genovese’s relatively simple production trumps David McVicar’s overstuffed effort and Evelino Pido doesn’t try and make the orchestra sound like it’s playing Wagner.  The sound on the DVD is also way better than it was on that broadcast.

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Sister swap

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Richard Strauss’ Arabella is a bit of a peculiarity.  The music is top notch Strauss and the libretto is by von Hofmannsthal so it ought to be quite superb.  It doesn’t quite get there though.  It’s hard not to think that if von Hofmannsthal had lived a little longer he would have tightened up the libretto.  Act 1 works fine but Acts 2 and 3 seem rather contrived and could definitely use a few cuts.  I’m not sure that the whole Fiakermilli thing works either.  It’s almost as if Prince Orlofsky’s party mislaid Johann and found Richard by accident.  That said there is some very beautiful music.  Aber der Richtige, wenn’s einem gibt is going straight onto my list of top soprano duets.

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Into the woods

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Claus Guth’s 2008 Salzburg production of Don Giovanni divided the critics along entirely predictable lines.  It’s a very unusual treatment of Don Giovanni but the concept is stuck to with real consistency and it works to create a compelling piece of music theatre.  The treatment on video too is not straightforward and, in a sense, the DVD/Blu-ray version is as much the work of Brian Large as it is of Claus Guth.

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Let us laugh at heaven and earth

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Rameau’s Plateé is a comedy in three acts with the obligatory allegorical prologue and lots of ballets.  It tells the story of the bizarrely ugly water nymph Plateé.  In an attempt to calm down Juno who, as usual, is angry at Jupiter’s infidelities, Mercury and the satyr Citheron arrange for Jupiter to pretend to fall in love with and marry Plateé.  Juno arrives during the wedding in a fury but when she sees Plateé she realises the joke and is reconciled with Jupiter.  Plateé returns, distraught, to her swamp.  It’s all really rather cruel but does have a few good jokes.. and lots of ballets.

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At any price

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Hans Werner Henze conceived of L’Upupa und der Triumph der Sohnesliebe as his farewell to the stage although, as it turned out, it wasn’t.  It’s a combination of Arabian Nights type themes crossed with elements from German folklore not unlike Die Zauberflöte, which is an obvious infuence.  So obvious, in fact, that in the scene where Kasim rescues his beloved she is given a line straight out of Schikaneder.  For the 2003 world premiere in the Kleinesfestspielhaus in Salzburg, director Dieter Dorn and designer Jürgen Rose chose a simple stage concept.  The action is encircled by an arch, at the apex of which is a tower room.  The old man, the ruler of the principality, inhabits the room.  The action mostly takes place in brightly coloured scenes under the arch.

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There were rats

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I guess Lohengrin is one of those operas that’s so loaded up with symbols it just begs directors to deconstruct it.  Well that’s what Hans Neuenfels’ Bayreuth production, recorded in 2011, does and then some.  There is so much going on in this production that I think it would take many viewings to really get inside it.  The bit most critics have fastened on is the costuming of the chorus as rats or, on occasion, half rat, half human.  It’s visually interesting and since there are also ‘handlers’ in Hazmat suits it’s clear that some sort of experiment is being alluded to.  Add in bonus rat videos at key points and there’s a lot to think about.  One thing this does do is solve the Teutonic war song problem.  A chorus of rather timid looking rats singing with martial ardour is a good deal less Nurembergesque than a similar chorus in armour or military uniforms.  Rats aside the story is really told in a quite straightforward and linear way while providing all sorts of moments that one might want to interrogate further,

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Staging Messiah

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It’s a rare and valuable experience when a performance makes one reconsider a perhaps overly familiar work.  That’s the effect that Claus Guth’s 2009 staging of Handel’s Messiah had on me.  I don’t think that there is any piece I’m more familiar with than Messiah.  I feel like I’ve known it all my life.  I’ve sung it.  I own a vocal score (rare indeed for me!).  I couldn’t begin to count how many times I’ve heard it.  And yet here it came up entirely fresh and had me thinking about it in completely new ways.

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Do not expect the form before the ideal

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headThat headline is pretty typical of the English translation of the libretto of Schoenberg’s Aron und Moses.  “Holy is genital power” is another gem.  The whole thing is basically an extended debate about the nature of God with Moses arguing for an extreme degree of abstraction and Aron championing a more populist version that “the people” can relate to.  There are ideas in there that could probably be staged quite spectacularly, such as the Golden Calf scenes and a spot of human sacrifice.  There’s even a fairly decent opportunity for an orgy.  In their 1975 film Daniele Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub reject any opportunity for visual excess or even representation almost as rigidly as Moses himself.

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Can’t get no Atisfaction

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Despite also featuring William Christie, Les Arts Florissants and François Roussillon, the 2004 Châtelet production of Rameau’s Les Paladins could hardly be more different from the recording of Lully’s Atys that I reviewed yesterday.  The work is based on Orlando Furioso and is an utterly anarchic parody of pretty much everything that Rameau had previously written.  It was considered shocking in its day.  The production by José Montalvo with choreographic help from Dominique Hervieu is completely mad and tremendous fun.

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