Category Archives: DVD review

Tancredi in Schwetzingen

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Rossini’s Tancredi isn’t performed particularly often but it was Stendhal’s favourite opera and it’s not hard to see why both these things are true.  It’s got some really lovely music but the plot is pretty thin and it’s hard to cast.  It needs a very versatile low mezzo/contralto for the title role and a crackerjack soprano and tenor too.  I watched it in a well cast 1992 production from the Schwetzingen festival and enjoyed it despite some frustrations with the staging and the implausibly drawn out plot of the second act.  Continue reading →

Turandot in the Forbidden City

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Being an opera lover would probably be easier if I liked Puccini more, given how much air, DVD and stage time his works get, but I really struggle with him.  I think it’s that concepts like “subtlety”, “elegance”, “verisimilitude” and “cultural sensitivity” completely passed him by.  In an Italian setting his bombast and melodrama are somewhat made up for by the catchy tunes but move him to China or Japan or the United States and my ability to override my reality chip fails me.  Which is a long winded way of saying Turandot is not my favourite opera.

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Patchy Zauberflöte from Ludwigsburg

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The Gramophone Guide describes the 1992 Ludwigsburg Festival production of Die Zauberflöte as a “life-enhancing experience” so I thought I’d take a look.  I think the folks at The Gramphone Guide are rather over-egging it but it is a pretty decent production.  It’s very much geared to Ludwigsburg’s small stage and limited scenery handling capacity but it makes good use of the space and clever lighting, including a willingness to black out the stage, and some deft stage craft make up for the limitations. Continue reading →

22 minutes of Monteverdi

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Monteverdi’s Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda must be, at twenty two minutes, one of the shortest operas around.  In typical Monterverdi style though it crams a lot of music and emotion into a very short space.  Based on a story by Torquato Tasso, it concerns a Christian knight, Tancredi, and a Moorish princess, Clorinda.  Somehow they have managed to fall in love but are still fighting on opposite sides  They meet on the battlefield but as each has their visor down they don’t recognize each other.  They fight a long and bloody single combat in which Tancredi mortally wounds Clorinda.  When their helmets are removed they recognize each other and Clorinda asks Tancredi to baptize her so they can be united in heaven.  It’s pretty dodgy theology but great theatre.

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Netrebko and Villazon in Manon

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Massenet’s Manon is a glitzy 19th century set piece. It’s very French and very much a star vehicle.  In this 2007 production from the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, director Vincent Paterson’s decides to to stage it in the 1950s and make Manon somewhat cinema obsessed, in a narcissistic way, which works rather well.  It’s a self consciously glitzy affair with a bright gold curtain and technicians with Klieg lights following Manon much of the time.  Even the “squalid” bits are treated with glamour.  The only jarring element, deliberately I guess, is the use of giant reproductions of 19th century paintings as backdrops; notably Liberty Leading the People in Act 3.

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Kupfer’s Orfeo

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I’ve owned a VHS tape of Harry Kupfer’s 1991 Royal Opera House production of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice pretty much since it came out.  I really can’t bear to watch VHS anymore so I haven’t watched it in ages and was intrigued when I managed to get my paws on a DVD copy and was able to see what I thought after all this time. Continue reading →

Il Viaggio a Eurovision

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Rossini’s Il Viaggio a Reims is a curious work.  It was written as part of the celebrations for the coronation of Charles X of France, a leading contender in a relatively large field for the title of “most utterly useless king of France”.  It doesn’t really have a plot and, in a sense, is a three hour riff on “An Englishman, a Frenchman and a German go into a bar”.  It also has a huge cast; twenty solo roles of which ten or twelve are quite substantial and require no little virtuosity.  It’s small wonder that it’s not seen all that often.

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Poppea without passion

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I’m not sure whether it was director Pierre Audi’s intention or a lack of chemistry between the principals but the 1994 Amsterdam production of Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, while extremely elegant, lacks gut punch.  The stage has been extended to mostly cover the pit leaving the band (only seventeen musicians) in a triangular space cut into the extended stage.  Much use is made of a staircase into the pit for entrances and exits.  The large stage area is sparsely furnished with objects suggesting, rather than being, rocks, furniture etc.  The costumes, by Emi Wada, are odd indeed ranging from a nurse who appears to be wearing sculpture to a Seneca who wears what looks like an old bedspread that the cat has used as a scratchy toy.  Within this fairly artificial and abstract concept Audi manoeuvers his singers in complex ways (or at least he seems to when the video director lets us see) supported by a complex and atmospheric lighting plot.  It really ought to be terrific but it just doesn’t get there. Continue reading →

Queen of Spades

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Yuri Temirkanov’s 1992 Kirov Opera production of Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades is extremely traditional but not dull.  It’s given the default Catherine the Great setting and there are opulent ball rooms, gold braid, wigs and crinolines aplenty.  There’s also careful direction of the action and some good acting so it’s far from a “park and bark” snoozefest, though it has nothing new or original to say.  The lighting for the supernatural bits is especially atmospheric.

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DVD review statistics

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Just for fun, here are a couple of statistics.  They show the language and location of performance of the 100+ DVDs reviewed by this blog.

Perhaps unsurprisingly Italian is well in front but then of the Italian language operas eleven were written by an Austrian and seven others by other non-Italians.  It was a bit of a surprise that English featured so prominently.  Only two of the English language performances are ENO shows in translation.  When one thinks about it, it’s a bit remarkable that only six languages figure in total although I suppose there is some Chinese in Tan Dun’s The Last Emperor.

I was surprised by how geographically spread out the performances were.  I expected the Met to be much more prominent though my taste in directors probably biases the list away from the Met and towards Paris and Salzburg.  I really can’t account for the prominence of Glyndebourne though it may be partly Handel and Janáček related and partly a label preference towards Opus Arte.  The forty four assorted ones are a really mixed bag ranging from Perth to Los Angeles to Helsinki.