Category Archives: DVD review

Bieito’s Wozzeck is beautifully presented by Opus Arte

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After what seems like an interminable series of reviews of DVDs that don’t do full justice to the product on stage I finally got to look at one that presented the production almost as if one had been in the theatre. It’s an Opus Arte disc of Calixto Bieito’s production of Berg’s Wozzeck staged in Barcelona in 2007. Bieito is seen by many as the epitome of Regietheater directors and many people will write off any of his productions without further ado. Not me. I found this Wozzeck by turns powerful, compelling, revolting and sometimes puzzling but never dull or disrespectful.

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Worthwhile Peter Grimes marred by poor DVD production

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Britten’s Peter Grimes is pretty well served on DVD. Peter Pears’ performance was captured in a BBC broadcast in 1969 and John Vicker’s radical interpretation was captured on video in 1981. More recently Christopher Ventris and Tony Dean Griffey have also made it onto video disc. There is also Philip Langridge in Tim Albery’s 1994 ENO production which is the focus of this review.

Discussions of interpreting Grimes tend to fall into a Pears vs. Vickers dichotomy. Vickers offers a rather brutal portrayal which is consistent with the libretto but tends to downplay the subtlety of the music while Pears is almost lyrical and dreamy. Notoriously the composer greatly preferred Pears’ version and had little good to say about Vickers. Langridge doesn’t really fit either of these models. His reading is intense, veers on madness from the beginning and is totally convincing in the “mad scene” in Act 3 Scene 2. What’s harder to reconcile with this reading is the violence that can’t be avoided. Langridge’s Peter just doesn’t come across as the sort of man who would suddenly strike a woman in the face. That said, it’s a fascinating and compelling reading. It’s also beautifully sung. Parts of the role lie cruelly high (certainly too high for Vickers) but Langridge copes with ease and beauty of tone. It’s a performance to stand alongside any of the others. He’s very well backed up by Alan Opie as Balstrode who is as good as anyone else who has taken on the role (and that’s an exalted list) Janice Cairns is a pretty good Ellen Orford. She starts a bit slow but by the second act she’s singing and acting beautifully. The rest of the cast is also pretty good. Unfortunately the orchestra (conducted by the usually excellent David Atherton) and chorus aren’t up to the standard one might hope for. They are certainly not in the same league as the Metropolitan Opera forces on the DVD recorded as part of the “Live in HD” series and they just don’t have either the punch in the gut impact in the final scene that one would like or the shimmering beauty that Runnicles finds in the Sea Interludes. Some of this may be the recording (see below) but some I think is intrinsic to the performance.

Tim Albery’s production is interesting. On one level it’s quite conventional with somewhat stylized but essentially naturalistic sets; fishing boats, nets, a tavern etc. Costumes too are in the same vein; set perhaps a few decades later than originally but not jarringly so. On another it’s less obvious. He makes use of video projections in the interludes. They are black and white and switch from grainy, almost posterized, sea scenes (including some rather odd fish) to projections of Peter and his apprentice later on. They also make an appearance during the storm scene in the pub. They look a bit clunky to me. Whether that’s deliberate or the best that 1994 technology could manage I’m not sure. The detailed stage direction, both of principals and chorus, is at times very good indeed. I suspect that it’s actually even better than the DVD allows us to see. The Act 1 scene between Balstrode and Grimes made me realize that Peter Grimes really is a tragedy. The protagonist has choices but his pride forces him towards his nemesis. I’ve never previously seen that so well brought out. The menace in the crowd scenes is palpable too. Where I’m less convinced is in Albery’s focus on the apprentice. We see visuals of him all the time and the opera closes on a projection of his corpse. He’s also portrayed as utterly terrified all the time. It’s somewhat at odds with the portrayal of Grimes and makes it quite hard to see why Ellen and Balstrode don’t smell a rat. Also, the focus on the relation between Peter and the boy downplay the role of the sea as a player in the drama. For me, the inexorability of the sea is a constant chorus element in this opera but it doesn’t come out in this production.

Now for the disappointing bit. The DVD sucks. I so wish I had seen this live! The video direction was very clearly for small screen (its from a BBC broadcast) and odd angles and super close-ups abound. One has to work quite hard to mentally reconstruct what Albery was aiming for. The sound too is poor. The only option is Dolby 2.0 and it lacks clarity. The chorus at times sounds pretty awful and I’m sure a big part of that is the recording. To cap it off there are no subtitles. That might not matter if the recording were super clean but it isn’t. The only documentation is a chapter listing. Now I was watching the North American release on the notorious Kultur label (when I hear the word “Kultur” I reach for my Browning). In Europe it was released on Euroarts and based on past experience and reviews that might well be a different story.

If the best you can do is a copy of the Kultur pressing I’d say this is definitely worth a look, if only for Langridge’s performance, but it’s by no means the best recording out there.

This recording was rebroadcast in HD by the BBC on June 1st 2025.  My revised thoughts based on that broadcast are here.

A fistful of tenors

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I put Rossini’s comedies in the category of “guilty pleasures”. They are silly, trivial, lack real human emotion and are musically pretty trite but they are frothy and fun and sometimes even funny. Rossini’s tragedies on the other hand are just that, tragedies. Ermione is no exception. The plot is emotionally beyond credibility, despite being (or perhaps because of) being based on Racine without managing to descend into the unintended humour of, say, Armida. The music is more suited to a comedy and so all that’s left is visual spectacle, vocal virtuosity and a lot of opportunities for the leading lady to chew the scenery. That, ultimately, is probably what it’s about. It was written for Isabella Gilbran. Presumably she coerced Rossini into providing a vehicle for her to display her talents as a tragedienne. Otherwise the whole thing is inexplicable.

The production given at Glyndebourne in 1995 has a lot going for it. Anna Catarina Antonacci sings the title role, the majestic Diana Montague sings Andromache and Andrew Davis is in the pit. There are also four tenors, which is plenty though not quite in the Armida class. They all seem to be less than about five foot six tall which given that the bass role is sung by the lofty Gwynne Howells looks decidedly odd. Director Graham Vick sets the work in an opera house in the mid 19th century but for reasons obscure everything is tilted at odd angles. It looks like a wedding cake gone badly wrong. Blocking is all very basic, partly at least because Antonacci’s gowns have enough train to seriously inhibit movement. It’s basically park and bark with the odd swoon.

As a musical performance I can’t fault it. Antonacci, Montague, Howells, Jorge Lopez-Yanez (who plays King Pyrrhus) are all near perfect. Antonacci in particular runs through the whole arsenal of Rossinian fireworks with consummate ease. The other roles are never less than competent. Andrew Davis does his level best to breathe some life into the score but there’s really not much he can do about the jolly little tunes that keep popping out of the woodwinds at the least opportune moments.

Humphrey Burton video directs. It was originally filmed for Channel 4 and opens with the obligatory Glyndebourne sheep shots. It is very much a 1995 production for the small screen so lots and lots of close close ups. So many of these are of Antonacci’s cleavage that one wonders whether a dedicated boob cam was employed. Given the original motivation for the opera this may be a case of Historically Informed Videography. The disc package is typically basic Kultur label; 4:3 barely DVD standard picture, Dolby 2.0 sound, no extras. There are subtitles in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and (oddly) Portuguese. The only documentation is a chapter listing.

One for the Rossini completist only.

As lovely as sin itself

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Alban Berg’s Wozzeck is without doubt a work of genius but it’s also a huge downer from start to finish and that can make it pretty difficult to watch. Perhaps the true measure of the 1996 recording from Frankfurter Oper is that it manages to be so consistently visually engaging that the relentless cruelty and horror becomes much more bearable. The production is described as “recorded under studio conditions from the stage of the Frankfurter Oper”. I’m not entirely sure, beyond the absence of an audience, what that means. It looks pretty much like any other DVD filmed from a stage production but maybe some of the scene to scene transitions incorporate non-stage effects. Who knows?

Director and designer Peter Mussbach offers us a largely abstract expressionist staging. Each scene takes place in a cube at centre stage, framed in neon and populated for the most part by a few shapes in primary colours. Only at the beginning of Act 3, where Wozzeck watches Marie “betray” him with the Drum Major does it just for a moment bend towards a more naturalistic aesthetic. Costumes are similarly stark. The Hauptmann in particular wears something that looks like a red and pink chicken suit with epaulettes whereas Wozzeck is dressed in a simple white (almost) shirt and trousers. Only the drum major gets the almost realistic over the top military tailoring look. In the transitions between acts a cube filling, well, cube, apparently made of breeze block or cork or some similar textured substance, appears and spins around and does stuff before dropping back to give us a new cube set. Only right at the end are there characters or scenery outside the cube, albeit grotesquely masked children, as the camera pulls back to reveal the whole artifice of the stage machinery. It’s hard to describe but it does work rather well.

 

The singing and acting are very good indeed. Dale Duesing gives a horrifically convincing performance as the mentally tortured Wozzeck while remaining absolutely vocally secure and even lyrical on the odd occasion he has the chance. Kristine Ciesinski is equally affecting as Marie. Dieter Bundschuh’s Captain and Frode Olsen’s Doctor are well over the top but that’s clearly what the production calls for. The acting is as stylized as the sets. Ronald Hamilton’s Drum Major is a seething mass of testosterone (is there a more unpleasant character in all of opera?). Barry Banks, as Andres, comes close to bringing a touch of sanity to proceedings and is lovely to listen to. Sylvain Cambreling conducts and is quite satisfactory.

No video director is credited so I assume Mussbach took on that role. He uses a lot of close ups but given how stark the sets are and how little is going on apart from the main characters that seems perfectly reasonable. The only place it becomes problematic is in the last scene of act 2 where there is quite a lot going on including puppet doubles for Marie and the Drum Major and a cart load of musicians. I would like to see more of the overall picture here. Small caveats aside it all works pretty well as a film.

The DVD package is pretty basic. The picture is a decent quality 16:9 anamorphic. The only sound option is Dolby 2.0. The only subtitles are English and they are huge; at least twice the size they need to be, and quite intrusive. The only documentation is a chapter listing.

Haydn’s Il Mondo della Luna

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Haydn’s operas aren’t performed much but he has a champion in Nikolaus Harnoncourt In 2009, to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the composer’s death and his own 80th birthday, he was asked by der Theater an der Wien to pick a Haydn opera for performance. He chose the 1777 work, Il Mondo della Luna. It’s a quirky comedy composed for the marriage of one of the Esterhazys. Given it’s unfamiliarity, here’s a plot summary. The fake astrologer, Ecclitico, and the young gentleman, Ernesto, are in love with the daughters (Clarice and Flaminia) of the extremely misogynistic but rich, Buonafede who refuses to agree to the matches. Buonafede has designs on his maidservant, Lisetta, who is in love with Ernesto’s servant, Cecco. Ecclitico claims to have built a telescope that can see into the world of the moon and uses it to show Buonafede the “delights” of that place( i.e. how women are properly subordinated to men). Buonafede is entranced and when Ecclitico tells him that he has been summoned to the moon to serve the emperor he is easily able to persuade Buonafede to come too as long as the girls can come along later. An elaborate charade is played out in Eccletico’s garden whereby Buonafede is convinced by the open and honest dealings pf the moon people under their benevolent emperor (Cecco) to allow the marriage of his daughters. Cecco takes Lisetta as his empress. When the fraud is revealed Buonafede, after much huffing and puffing, takes it in good grace and they all live happily ever after. It’s silly but no more so than most Mozart operas and given its fine music its very enjoyable.

The Vienna production is directed for stage by Tobias Moretti and it’s given a modern setting. The “telescope” involves lots of computer screens and a “total immersion” helmet and so on. The sets help make it clear what is going on without being fussy. In places effective use is made of video projection. The video is particularly crucial during the telescope scene which is played out on two levels. Upstairs Buonafede is wired up to watch and, I think, what he thinks he is seeing is projected behind him. Meanwhile downstairs what he is “seeing” is being acted out in front of a camera. There seems to be a significant disconnect between the two but it’s almost impossible to be sure from the DVD which rarely gives us the whole picture at once. The videos also make a crucial appearance in the “ballet” at the start of Act 2.  Here’s the scene with the Nymphs.In the accompanying interview Moretti is very clear that his production concept is driven by the music and I think he does a really good job of realising a pretty tricky piece for a modern audience.

I don’t think I’d seen any of the cast before but they are all young, attractive and very good physical actors as well as very decent singers. The exception is Dietrich Henschel who plays Buonafede. He isn’t young but ypu wouldn’t know it as he throws himself into some of the toughest physical acting in the piece while singing in a very solid bass and being very funny. Bernhard Richter plays Eccletico and he, too, is excellent. He’s almost, but not quite manic, and he has a very pleasing lyric tenor voice. Cecco is played tenor Markus Schäfer. It’s a very broad, perhaps too broad, buffo interpretation with lots of eye rolling and the like. It might not look so extreme in the theatre as it does on DVD. The castrato part of Ernesto is taken by American mezzo Vivica Genaux. She’s technically very assured, especially in the coloratura passages, but the voice has a reedy quality I don’t much care for. Lisetta is sung by Maite Beaumont who manages to be very funny without being as eye rolling as Schäfer This is a Despina sort of role that relies more on acting skills than singing though she sings well enough. Flaminia (the good, dutiful daughter) is well sung by Anja Nina Bahrmann. She has one fiendish display aria, Ragion nell’alma siede which comes off pretty well but without perhaps the assurance that say, Schwarzkopf brought to Come scoglio (and it is that sort of aria!). Christina Landshamer gets to be the disobedient daughter, Clarice. She is very good especially in the first act where she is caught by her father escaping from the house (though we don’t get to find out why he is carrying a wooden coat hanger all through his confrontation with her). So all in all it’s a solid ensemble cast with really good acting and more than adequate singing.

Harnoncourt of course conducts and I imagine he’s also playing the harpsichord for the recitatives but it’s not credited. He gets just the right sound out of the Concentus Musicus Wien. The natural string tones and blaring horns are exactly right. This is not polite court music. This is mature Haydn experimenting at the boundaries as ever and Harnoncourt doesn’t duck bringing this out. I can see how conducted by someone like Karajan this could be a pretty dull score but not here!

The video direction by Felix Breisach is problematic. This cannot have been an easy production to film especially if the director were imagining it being watched on a fairly small screen. There’s a lot happening and yet a good deal of close in action going on too. As I indicated above there are crucial points where I don’t think the video allows us to follow the director’s intention which is unfortunate. For example, here’s one of Buonafede’s “fantasies” from Act 1.That said, it’s better filming than many opera DVDs. The picture itself is very good. It was filmed in HD and it shows. Sound options are PCM stereo and DTS 5.0. The latter is very good and sounds naturally balanced to me. The documentation is good and there’s a useful bonus interview with Morretti and Harnoncourt. It’s available as a 2xDVD9 package (which is what I watched) or Blu-Ray.

I’m converted. I want to see more Haydn operas.

Mozart and sheep puppets

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When the Salzburg Festival decided to do all 22 Mozart operas for the 25th anniversary in 2006 there must have been a fair amount of thought put into to what to do about the lesser works. I have to say that the solution they came up with for Bastien und Bastienne, written when Mozart was twelve, and Der Schauspieldirektor is most ingenious. The director, Thomas Reichert, came up with the ingenious idea of combining the two singspiels and performing them with puppets in the Salzburger Marionettentheater. The work breaks into three parts; a largely spoken prologue based on Der Schauspieldirektor where Frank (Alfred Kleinheinz) and Buff (Radu Cojocariu) audition the puppets for the roles in Bastien und Bastienne. The puppetry in this section is quite wonderful. The decision is made to split cast Bastienne which sets up the soprano rivalry for the final part of extracts from Der Schauspieldirektor. In between we get the performance of Bastien und Bastienne with Cojocariu singing the magician Colas on stage with the puppets while Bernhard Berchtold, Evmorfia Metaxaki and Aleksandra Zamojska sing from the pit. It’s charming complete with puppet sheep. The finale well exploits the difference in voice between the fuller, more mature Zamojska and the brilliant coloratura of Metaxaki. It’s lots of fun with some good gags and excellent singing from the young cast, especially Cojocariu. The orchestra is the Junge Philharmonie Salzburg conducted by Elisabeth Fuchs.

The video direction is by Stefan Aglassinger. He does a good job of producing a coherent video which is not easy because the action takes place on stage, in the pit and around the auditorium. It was filmed in HD and the picture is an excellent 16:9. Sound options are PCM stereo and DTS 5.1. There are English, French, German and Spanish subtitles. The disc includes a reasonably interesting “Making of” documentary.

Curiously bland Brecht/Weill

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Brecht and Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny is an awkward work for an opera company. It’s been said, rightly I think, that one can/must situate it in a triangle of which the vertices are opera, musical theatre and Brechtian theatre. John Doyle’s 2007 production for Los Angeles Opera is strong on the opera and musical theatre dimensions but decidedly unBrechtian. Despite a good idiomatic translation by Michael Feingold this production seems unwilling to skewer capitalism in the manner Brecht intended. It’s the polar opposite of the Salzburg recording that left no Marxist cliche unexplored. Maybe it’s a failure of nerve. Maybe capitalism in LA is already such a parody of itself that further skewering is impossible. Who knows? Even Act 2, which is all about the commoditization of basic human pleasures doesn’t really fire. Sure we get excess and commoditized sex but there’s no sense that the commoditization is dehumanising or transgressive. Sex for sale? Of course! It does get a bit darker in the final act with the trial and execution of Jimmy and finishes strongly on “Still we only built this Mahagonny” but by then it’s very much too little, too late. The lack of edge is reinforced by the orchestra under James Conlon. It’s all just too civilized. There’s none of the spiky dissonance one is used to in the score and the brass, in particular, sound like they are playing in the Palm Court of the Hilton.

It’s a shame because the singing performances are mostly very good. The leading female roles are played by Patti LuPone and Audra McDonald who both have Broadway backgrounds. LuPone sounds like that’s where she’s from too though McDonald manages a much wider range and pretty much steals the show. It helps that she is very good looking and practically naked. The guys are mostly from opera backgrounds; notably Anthony Dean Griffey as Jimmy McIntyre and Donnie Ray Albert as Trinity Moses. Both sing well and idiomatically. The sets are sort of Vegas lite with none of the inexplicable weirdness of the Salzburg production but not much interest either. Again things look up a bit in the last act with effective use of a giant video screen in the trial scene and moving slogans over the finale. Blocking is very Broadway, especially the big chorus numbers that look more Rodgers and Hammerstein than Brecht and Weill.

Video direction is by Gary Halvorson and it’s judicious. There’s often not much set to look at so we might as well have close ups of Ms. McDonald. The technical package is solid. The picture is high quality 16:9. The sound choices are PCM stereo, DD 5.1 and DTS 5.1. The last is nicely balanced and clear There are French, German and Spanish subtitles. There’s a useful essay in the booklet which gives full track listings and a 20 minute interview with the director.

Dido as dance

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I guess another way of dealing with the dance elements in baroque opera is to dance the whole thing. That’s what Mark Morris Dance Group do with this 1995 version of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. The work is performed as a modern dance piece with the singers off stage. As it’s a film rather than a record of a live performance, the singers can be, and are, occasionally pulled into the visuals.

The piece is played out on an elegant blue and grey stage and backdrop with a (very) few white props as required and all the dancers are dressed very simply in black so the look is very spare but very elegant. The choreography (by Mark Morris) is of a school of modern dance that I don’t really understand. It’s almost like a parody of one’s idea of modern dance. At times overly literal, at others very jerky and inelegant. It certainly doesn’t have much in common with ballet, even of the more abstract modern variety. In this case it’s not helped by Morris himself dancing both Dido and the Sorceress. Some might find this bold and exciting. I think he just looks like a very unconvincing transvestite and I’ve see more than a few of those! So, no, this approach doesn’t work for me.

Musically it’s not bad. Jennifer Lane sings Dido and the Sorceress. She’s fine as Dido though not in the same class as Connolly or Ewing. She, along with the two witches, witch it up more than I care for in the witchy bits. Russell Braun is Aeneas and he’s more lyrical and less gruff than is often the case. The Belinda is Ann Monyious and, to be honest, she doesn’t sound entirely secure in the role. Mercury is sung by a soprano (uncredited) which is a bit odd and jarring. Tafelmusik supply the orchestra and chorus and are as good as you might expect. I think Jeanne Lamon is conducting but it’s not entirely clear from the disc or the package.

The filming is very good with the singers and chorus being effectively, if infrequently, inserted into the picture. The video quality is standard DVD with hard coded English subtitles. Dolby 2.0 is the only sound option. Documentation is minimal.

I think this one is strictly for the Mark Morris fans.

Burnt Toast

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So this has to be the weirdest opera related thing I’ve seen in a while. It’s a 2005 CBC production of eight very short comic operas (the whole thing only lasts an hour) going through the stages of a relationship from Attraction to Starting Over via Marriage and Murder. The characters are mostly played by actors lip-synching while someone else sings. The music is by Alexina Louie and the libretto by Canadian comic, Dan Redican. Each piece is introduced by Redican as a mad toast scientist and the cast includes some of the best known names in Canadian theatre and opera including Colm Fiore, Isabel Bayrakdarian and Russell Braun. It sounds like a great idea but unfortunately it’s pretty ordinary. The music is mostly dull but it livens up a bit when it’s more obviously pastiche. The humour is a bit lame though the piece about a woman slicing her husband’s head off then disembowelling and liquidizing him for leaving the toilet seat up has its moments; especially her acquittal by an all female jury. Also you get to hear Isabel Bayrakdarian sing about kitty litter and Russell Braun do a version of Der Hölle Rache.

All in all, it’s as Canadian as moose jokes and about as funny.

toast

ETA February 1, 2016

So it’s been four years since I last watched this and the funny thing is that in that time I’ve come to know, one way or another, most of the singers involved in this thing who include Michael Colvin, Krisztina Szabó, Shannon Mercer, Peter McGillivray, Barbara Hannigan and Doug McNaughton.  It does make it more fun but I guess that doesn’t really work for a general audience.  It also makes me a bit baffled about who got to be played by an actor and who got to sing and act.  There are some pretty good actors involved here who never get seen.

Dido on film

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Long before I got my hands on the Royal Opera House/Royal Ballet Dido and Aeneas, the film version from 1995, directed by Peter Manuira and with Maria Ewing in the title role, was my go to version. How does it stack up today?

Some things that strike me.  It’s very naturalistic. It seems to be set in and around a Tudor mansion and the costumes are vaguely that way too. The interludes that are normally danced are filled in with “busy” scenes that try to inject some feeling but aren’t nearly as effective as Wayne McGregor’s dancers. The hunt scene has dogs and spears and a real boar’s head (which Aeneas touchingly present to Dido in her bath). There is a lot of fire including a full blown pyre at the end. For all that it doesn’t seem any more “true” than Wayne McGregor’s much sparer vision. It’s also very emotionally restrained. It’s not really until the final confrontation between Aeneas and Dido that any real emotion intrudes and even then it’s quite restrained This is actually very effective and Maria Ewing is truly affecting in the final couple of scenes. Ewing is good throughout both in the singing and acting department and her looks help (OK I know not everyone goes for Ewing but I think she’s gorgeous!). Karl Daymond is fine as Aeneas. We get a sort of composite Belinda/Second Woman set up with some of Belinda’s music given to the Second Woman and them doubling up on other bits. While Rebecca Evans and Patricia Rosario are fine there really isn’t enough musical or emotional contrast between them and Ewing. Richard Hickox conducts the Collegium Musicum and it’s all a bit low key in common with much else. It’s worth watching for Ewing’s performance in the final act but is otherwise a bit of a snooze.

Technically it’s very 1995. The 16:9 picture is hard letterboxed in a 4:3 frame and it’s pretty soft grained. Sound is adequate LPCM stereo. There are English, French and German subtitles.