Category Archives: DVD review

A Fidelio in two halves

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I have long been of the opinion that Beethoven’s Fidelio is structurally flawed.  The first and second acts are so different intone and dramatic intensity that it never seems quite to hang together.  Tobias Kratzer obviously shares this view but being smarter than me finds a way to leverage it.  For his production at the Royal Opera House in 2020 he takes the two acts and effectively makes the second a commentary on the first.  It’s worth quoting his own words:

Like no other opera, Beethoven’s Fidelio falls into two unequal halves.  Act I is a historical melodrama on freedom and love in the post-Revolutionary era.  Act II is a political essay on the responsibility of the individual in the face of the silent majority, a musical plea for active empathy.

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Lucie de Lammermoor

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Lucie de Lammermoor is Donizetti’s reworking of his Scottish opera for a smaller, non-subsidised Paris theatre.  It’s not just a translation.  Some scenes are rearranged and minor characters are pruned leaving only six in the cast plus chorus.  Donizetti also incorporated what had become performance practice in Italy, substituting an aria from Rosmonda d’Inghilterra; “Que n’avons nous des ailes”, for “Regnava del silencio”.  Otherwise the plot is much the same.

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Almaviva’s gangster gang

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Martin Kušej’s production of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro at Salzburg in 2023 came 20 years after he had last directed a Mozart opera at Salzburg.  My reviews (and follow up pieces) of his productions of Don Giovanni (2002, revived 2006) and La clemenza di Tito (2002) are probably two of the most commented on on this blog.  So I’m interested to see where this goes.

1.figarosusanna

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The Greek Passion

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Bohislav Martinů’s The Greek Passion is a 1961 opera based on the novel Christ Recrucified by Nicos Kazantzakis.  The English language libretto is by the composer.  It was staged in the Felsenreitschule in Salzburg in 2023 in a production directed y Simon Stone and recorded for video.

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A fascist Macbeth

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Krysztof Warlikowski’s production of Verdi’s Macbeth; recorded for video at Salzburg in 2023 is certainly not short of ideas.  Whether it all hangs together is another matter.  There seem to be two main ideas in play.  We are in a 1940s-ish fascist state with party armbands and so on.  This gets more explicit as the piece develops.  On top of this there’s a foregrounding of Lady Macbeth as the real driving force of the drama coupled with the idea that what’s driving her is her inability to provide an heir.  For example, she’s clearly the one being crowned after Duncan’s murder and babies are a recurrent visual motif.

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Don Giovanni at Versailles

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The first video disk review in Opera Canada in a while is now up on that site.  It’s a review by me of a production by L’Opéra Royale de Versailles of Mozart’s Don Giovanni.  There’s plenty of Cancon with Robert Gleadow as the Don, Florie Valiquette as Donna Anna and both Marshal Pynkoski and Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg involved.

zerlina and don giovanni

De-exoticising Aida

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Robert Carsen’s production of Verdi’s Aida seen at Covent Garden in 2022 is a very good example of what Carsen can do.  In this case it’s to strip out elements he considers non-essential and focus on the essentials of the drama.  In the rather good “extra” feature on the video recording Carsen summarises it as focussing “on the story not the place”.

1.amnerisradames

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Wot, no cakes?

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I understand that the mission of outfits like the Teatro Donizetti is to “rescue” forgotten operas but, frankly, some of them ought to remain forgotten.  I would put Donizetti’s Alfredo il Grande in that category.  It premiered in Naples on 2nd July 1823 and closed after one disastrous performance not to be seen again until a run in Bergamo in November 2023 which was recorded for video.

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Siegmund as Psychopath

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Following on from Das Rheingold, the second instalment of Dmiti Tcherniakov’s Ring cycle; Die Walküre, recorded at Staatsoper unter den Linden in 2022, has now been released on video.  We are sill in the ESCHE psychological research centre.  During the Prelude we see news footage of Siegmund’s escape from the programme he is in.  He staggers into Hunding’s staff apartment to find Sieglinde.  Hunding, when he appears, is some sort of armed security guard.  This illustrates the problems I have with this production.  The psychology of the Siegmund/Sieglinde/Hunding trio works well but the back story of Wälse, Sieglinde’s forced marriage etc makes no sense at all.  Oh, and Wotan seems to be watching everything that goes on.

1.hundingsapt

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