Category Archives: DVD review

Arma virumque canunt

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Berlioz’ Les Troyens is widely considered to be his masterpiece and it does have a lot going for it both dramatically and musically, especially when given the full on star studded treatment that it got at the Chatelet in 2003. That said, it’s dramatically rather odd, it’s very long (well over four hours) and it requires huge forces; twenty soloists, massive chorus, dancers, supers, acrobats, jugglers etc. It also has preludes, ballets and masques on a scale that seem more appropriate to the 17th than the mid 19th century. Act 4 is particularly marked in this respect. It’s perhaps no wonder that it was never played complete in Berlioz’ lifetime. The story is taken from Books two and four of Virgil’s Aeneid; the first dealing with the wooden horse and the fall of Troy (Acts 1 and 2) and the second with the Trojans at Carthage (Acts 3-5). The problem is that there isn’t much connecting them. In the first part the drama centres around Cassandre. By the end of Act 2 she’s dead and we move on to Carthage where Didon makes her first appearance. The Trojan hero Énée links both halves but he’s a pretty minor presence in the first bit.

In Acts 1 and 2 Troy is a sparse stage with a reflector above it projecting much of the action onto a backdrop of an Italianate cityscape of Troy. It’s a good idea as for most of the act there are a lot of people on stage and it’s not easy to take it all in. Occasionally the cityscape dissolves into some kind of symbolic back projection as with the the horse itself which is just a rather grim projection of a horse’s head. It works pretty well. A similar approach is used to introduce the scene where Hector’s ghost tells Énée he’s got to rebuild Troy in Italy. The camera work for the DVD switches between stage and backdrop with the usual close ups and just occasionally pulls back to let us see what the theatre audience is seeing. All in all I think Peter Maniura is giving us as good a look at Yannis Kokkos’ staging as could reasonably be done on DVD.

Vocally, the first part is all about Cassandre, here played by Anna Caterina Antonacci. She’s stunning. She gives a totally committed performance as the prophetess who everyone thinks is mad until it’s all too late. She stands out visually in a simple white dress against the rest of the Trojans who wear greatcoats of mixed military provenance and otherwise look generally scruffy giving an effect somewhere between Colditz and Les Miz. Her singing and acting are both quite mesmerizing. She is well backed up Gregory Kunde’s Énée although he doesn’t have too much to do. He manages to sound like a bel canto singer while upping the heft to cope with some pretty dense orchestration.

Here’s a clip of Antonacci which gives a pretty good idea of the overall idea.

Act 3 involves a total shift of dramatic and aesthetic gear. Now we are in Carthage where Didon (Susan Graham) is presenting the results of the first Five year Plan to what looks like a cross between a Druidic gorsedd and a meeting of the Carthage Soviet of Workers and Peasants. The plan has met its targets but their idyllic existence is threatened by the king of Numidia who wants to marry Didon and is marching on Carthage. Énée appears and offers to save the peace loving Carthaginians (nb these are not the baby burning, general crucifying Carthaginians I remember from history) by doing the fighting for them. This is followed by a longish section where Didon’s sister Anna (the very fetching Renata Pokupić) tries to persuade her that hooking up with Énée would be a smart move. This continues into Act 4 which rather drags. There’s a long, almost Wagnerian, prelude after which Didon enters, obviously head over heels in love. We can tell this from her little interpretative dance and her spending the next half hour looking like a contented hamster watching several ballets complete with jugglers and acrobats.. The entertainmet concludes with singing, dancing Nubians who could have come straight out of National Geographic c. 1950. Finally we get going again and Didon decides that maybe the Énée thing isn’t such a bad idea after all. She and Énée sing the gorgeous duet “Nuit d’ivresse”. Kunde and Graham are very fine indeed in this as you can see below. Both these acts are played out on a brightly lit stage with lots of bright whites and colours.

The act concludes on an ominous note as Mercure reminds Énée of his Italian destiny.

In Act 5 we are back dramatically and aesthetically more or less where we started. It’s dark, Trojans in greatcoats, the reflector. The ghosts of the dead Trojans remind Aeneas of his quest. He decides to obey. Most of the rest of the act is Susan Graham going through a full gamut of emotions; anger, grief, vengeance, resignation. It gets a bit over the top but she is elemental and always musical. Graham steals the show in the final three acts but she is very well supported by Pokupić’s Anna and Laurent Naouri’s Narbal as well as Kunde. Cassandra (or her ghost) get the last word but nobody is going to believe her.

John Eliot Gardiner conducts the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. He pushes things along well without sacrificing grandeur at the needed points. The period instruments give some pleasing variation of tone colour. The chorus is the ever excellent Monteverdi Choir. No problems in those departments.

Peter Maniura’s screen direction maintains its high standard through the second half. So what of the disk package? It’s an Opus-Arte production and it was filmed in high definition. The 16:9 anamorphic picture is superb even on DVD (which is what I watched) but it is also available on Blu-Ray which should be even better, especially as the Blu-Ray is cheaper and two discs versus three DVDs. Sound is LPCM stereo or DTS 5.1 (DTS HD on the Blu-Ray). The DTS track is really good with real depth. There is even adequate documentation and an hour long “Making of” documentary. All in all, it’s what an opera DVD/Blu-Ray release ought to be.

Handel for the Handelians

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I think maybe Handel’s Rodelinda is one for the hard-core Handelians. It’s got some lovely music but it’s long (200 minutes), not very dramatic (it’s based on Corneille) and, structurally, is a succession of recitative and da capo arias. There is no chorus and I only recall two numbers that weren’t solos; the concluding quintet and a rather lovely duo between Rodelinda and Bertarido at the end of Act 2. Jean-Marie Villégier’s 1998 production for Glyndebourne rather tends to emphasise the leaning to elegance rather than drama. The basic look and feel is “silent movie era”. Sets and costumes are near monochrome and that tends to be emphasised by the lighting. At least when there is a any. Much of this production is very dark, as was fashionable at the time.

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More Carsen genius

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I’m a big fan of Robert Carsen. His Orfeo ed Euridice was one of the highlights of last year’s COC season and his Iphigénie en Tauride promises to be one of the events of the upcoming season. So, as you can imagine, I had high expectations for the DVD of his 2002 Paris production of Dvořák’s Rusalka with Renée Fleming in the title role. I wasn’t disappointed. The production is pure magic. It’s almost a mathematician’s production. In Act 1 he gives us symmetry in the horizontal plane. There’s a bedroom reflected horizontally floating above the water sprites’ abode which resolves itself into the bedroom that is the setting for Rusalka’s initial encounter with the prince. In Act 2 we get the same bedroom but in a left right symmetry and the movements of the characters are also mirrored with non singing actors mirroring the singers. The symmetry continues with Rusalka balanced against the foreign princess. It’s very cool. I’m guessing that Carsen is suggesting the distance between the world of the sprites and the human world diminishing then opening up again. In Act 3 we get geometrical chaos as Ježibaba’s hut is presented at crazy angles poised above the stage and all sorts of dissolution goes on before we again get the symmetrical bedroom in which the final tragedy plays out. The general concept is supported by a superb lighting plot (Carsen and Peter van Praet) that brilliantly brings out the moods of the different scenes. And there’s no clutter. Scene follows scene pretty much seamlessly. It’s terrific stagecraft.

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Stylish gender bending

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I guess Serse gets performed as often as any Handel opera but there only appears to be one DVD version in the original Italian available. It’s a 2000 production from the Dresdner Musikfestspiele. Michael Hampe directs a cast of, then, fairly young singers, few of them familiar to me. Christophe Rousset conducts Les Talens Lyriques and the Ludwigshafener Theaterchor. It’s a really good DVD. The costumes and sets, by Carlo Tommasi, are a sort of mid 19th century European with “exotic” touches. There’s a consistent palette of black, white, grey and silver with a little deep blue and cream intruding. It’s all very elegant. The direction is more than competent. The relationships between characters are explored and Sandrine Piau, as Atalanta gets to exploit her considerable comic talents. To cap it all off we get a few, very apt, pyrotechnic surprises right at the end.

The singing is uniformly excellent. Paula Rasmussen, a mezzo, is cast in the castrato title role. It’s a role where personally I’d prefer a David Daniels or a Lawrence Zazzo but she manages to look and sound masculine enough. The same is true for Ann Hallenberg as “his” brother Arsamene; a genuine mezzo role. Patricia Bardon sings Amastre, Serse’s discarded lover who spends 9/10 of the opera disguised as a man. Ms Bardon manages the difficult feat of acting a woman pretending to be a man convincingly which is obviously quite different from a woman acting a man. I won’t try and describe the singing performances individually because I would just end up using “stylish” way too much. These are all thoroughly idiomatic Handel performances with tasteful decoration, lovely legato and accurate coloratura. The two sisters Romilda and Atalanta are played by sopranos Isobel Bayrakdarian and Sandrine Piau. It was a real pleasure to be reminded of what a fine Handelian Bayrakdarian was right at the start of her career. Her singing is just gorgeous. Piau is great too. She has great comic timing in a role that really needs it and she also gets the most coloratura fireworks which she handles very well indeed. The guys who play guys are Marcello Lippi as girls’ father, Ariodate, and Matteo Peirone as the servant, Elviro. These are both essentially buffo roles and both men are well up to them. I don’t think I’ve heard M.Rousset and his Les Talens Lyriques before but they are as good a Baroque band as I have come across. The chorus doesn’t have much to do but it does fine with what it does have. All in all, it’s very satisfying musically and dramatically.

Direction for TV/DVD is by Philip Behrens and it’s OK. There aren’t too many intrusive close ups though it’s a 4:3 picture so some of that is a bit inevitable. Picture quality is pretty typical of TV to VD productions. Sound options are PCM stereo or Dolby 5.1. The surround version sounded very good. There are no extras on the disk and the documentation is pretty basic. It’s a Euroarts production.

There’s a ten minute trailer up on Youtube that gives a really pretty good idea of what to expect though it’s a bit short on comedy and there’s no Sandrine Piau. Here it is.

And here’s some Sandrine Piau.

An English Ring?

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Merlin is an early 20th century collaboration between the English banker Francis Burdett Money-Coutts and his Spanish composer/protege, Isaac Albéniz. It’s an interesting work falling some way short of being a masterpiece but, when given as fine a production and performance as it gets in this Madrid DVD, definitely of interest and worth a look.

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Munich Orphée hits 11 on the WTFometer

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Back in July I reviewed John Eliot Gardiner’s Paris recording of Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice which I found musically fine, in good taste (too much so) and ultimately unengaging. Lydia pointed me to a Bayerischen Staatsoper version with Vesselina Kasarova in the title role. It’s the 1859 Berlioz version with a ballet tacked on at the end, more of which below. Musically it’s very good. Chorus and Orchestra under Ivor Bolton are excellent, Kasarova sings and acts very competently and manages an amazing cadenza in her big first act aria. Rosemary Joshua as Eurydice is perfectly adequate if a bit anonymous and Deborah York is an androgynous looking and sounding Amour which works fine for this production.

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An everyday story of country folk

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If Thomas Hardy had written an opera libretto he might well have come up with something like Janáček’s Jenůfa. It’s a simple rural love story with domestic violence, betrayal, desertion, bastardy and infanticide thrown in. It also has an absolutely gorgeous score mixing folkloric elements, incredible lyricism and some pulsating rhythmic sections. The opera was substantially modified after it’s 1904 Brno premier but in 1989 Glyndebourne put on the original Brno version in a production by Nikolaus Lehnhoff. It’s a three acter and opens with with scenes around a mill owned by Jenůfa’s fiancé, Števa. It’s all a bit cramped and old fashioned looking; probably a function of the small stage in the pre-reno Glyndebourne. Acts 2 and 3 take place inside Jenůfa’s foster-mother’s (Kostelnička) house and here the small stage makes the fairly simple room appropriately claustrophobic. What makes this performance worth seeing though is not the staging but the performances by the three principals; Anja Silja as Kostelnička, Roberta Alexander as Jenůfa and Philip Langridge as Jenůfa’s other suitor, Laca. They are backed up by a superb performance by Andrew Davis and the London Philharmonic. Davis just has an uncanny ability to wring every drop of lyricism out of score without sacrificing drama or forward momentum and he does it here every bit as well as he did in Ariadne at the COC back in May. Other reviews of this DVD that I have read have focussed heavily on Silja’s Kostelnička. I can see why. She is not far short of a force of nature and she drives the drama, especially in the horrific second act and the final scene. I think though that Alexander’s Jenůfa is just as important. She contributes the lyricism in the singing. It’s not that she lacks drama, she doesn’t, but she has a sweet toned voice that carries that element of the music through all three acts. Langridge’s Laca impressed me too. In Act 1 I wasn’t at all sure. He seemed miscast with the role not offering much for his stylish lyrical tenor but he grew on me during the more domestic bits of Acts 2 and 3.

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Surrounded by these ghouls; the living and the dead

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Britten’s Owen Wingrave is one of very few operas written for television. It’s also the second opera Britten wrote based on a Henry James ghost story. Owen Wingrave comes from a family of soldiers and their portraits and their ghosts dominate the family mansion. Owen is an officer cadet and a brilliant student who, for reasons of conscience, decides to abandon the family line of work. The family, his fiancée, his ancestors and the house are not at all keen on the idea. There is no happy ending.

The version I watched is a 2001 production directed by Margaret Williams for Channel Four. The story has been updated to the 1950s which works fine. Filming is extremely atmospheric mixing location shots with archive footage of troops parading in London. Clever use is made of fades into black and white and a certain ambiguity surrounds the ghost figures. Musically and dramatically it is very strong throughout. The ever reliable Gerald Finley sings the title role brilliantly. He often seems at his best in modern music and this is no exception. He is both powerful and sensitive while always remaining thoroughly musical. The other stand out is Peter Savidge as the military academic Coyle; the one character who makes a real effort to understand Owen. His is a really sensitive, nuanced and finely sung performance. I also enjoyed the rather fetching Swedish mezzo Charlotte Hellekant as Kate, Owen’s girlfriend. The only singer I have reservations about is Josephine Bairstow as Miss Wingrave, Owen’s aunt. She seems a bit shrill to me but maybe that’s intentional. It’s certainly one with the role. All of the singers articulate clearly, sound idiomatic in English and are well recorded. This is more than usually important as there are no subtitles on the disc. Kent Nagano directs the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin in a neat, tight reading of the score which is twelve tone influenced with a lot of tuned percussion. There seem, appropriately enough, to be a few references back to the War Requiem buried in there. The choral contribution, which is pretty small, is from the choristers of Westminster Cathedral Choir. All in all this is a very fine realisation of a work I’m glad I have now seen as, up until today, it was one of only a couple of Britten operas that I had neither seen nor heard.

Technically it’s a pretty limited affair. The picture is 16:9 anamorphic and the only sound option is Dolby stereo. As mentioned before there are no subtitles. The disc does include an hour long documentary about Britten called The Hidden Heart. It’s a bit vague and waffly but it does include some interesting archive footage. The disc is available from Kultur in North America and Arthaus in Europe.

Here’s the preview:

Second thoughts (2013) here.

The Most Ghastlie Murther of Mr. Henry Purcell

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Purcell’s semi-operas are notoriously difficult to recreate for the stage though it can be done, and brilliantly, as the recent The Fairy Queen at Glyndebourne showed. M. Hervé Niquet and his collaborators (co-perpetrators might be a better term) in Montpellier take the Purcell/Dryden piece King Arthur and provide an object lesson in how not to do it. Starting with a campy explanation of how he couldn’t inflict five hours of John Dryden on us, M. Niquet inflicts upon us a travesty each five minutes of which seem to last longer than five hours of Dryden, or even Racine. The objective, we are told, was to create a narrative to link the Purcell numbers and create something coherent. Except the “plot” (more or less non-existent) which M. Niquet has cooked up with the help of a hitherto unknown to me french comedy duo, Shirley and Dino, doesn’t actually do that. It’s not helped by the fact that no differentiation is made between British and Saxon characters but that’s really minor compared with the overall lameness of it. Most of the linking action is camped up. It’s supposed to be Pythonesque apparently but this lot of Frenchmen are about as convincing as Pythons as the Pythons are as Frenchmen. All the action, except Purcell’s songs, is in French which also seems odd. The Purcell is sung in English, though with the exception of the solid and idiomatic bass, Joao Fernandez, it’s not always obvious. The other singers really aren’t adequate in any department; shrill, forced and unidiomatic to a man/woman, though being forced to camp it up all the time doesn’t help. I couldn’t watch it all. I got half way through Act 2 then fast forwarded to Act 5. I wish I hadn’t. The suffering that is inflicted on that gorgeous song “Fairest Isle, all isles excelling” is just the final straw.

Searching desperately for positives besides Joao Fernandez I would say that the band, Le Concert Spirituel, is very good indeed. Everything else is almost enough to make one forget how good the music Purcell wrote for King Arthur actually is.

Watch if you dare…