Tag Archives: la scala

Don Tom

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There are over 40 video recordings of Don Giovanni in the catalogue, dating back to 1954, and Thomas Allen sings the title role in quite a few of them.  This one was recorded at La Scala in 1987 and features a very strong cast in a careful, traditional staging.  It’s also pretty decent technical quality for the era.  The director was Giorgio Strehler in a comparatively rare opera outing.  His sets and costumes are of some vague aristocratic past with liveried footmen, big hats and twirling capes.  It’s quite handsome but not in any way revelatory.  Nor is any aspect of the production really.  We are clearly in an aristocratic milieu.  Tom Allen’s Don Giovanni is arrogant and proud with plenty of swagger.  There’s no hint of ambiguity about  Edita Gruberova’s Donna Anna or Ann Murray’s Donna Elvira and Francisco Araiza is a properly dutiful chump of a Don Ottavio.  It’s all quite serious with comic relief only in the most obvious places.  Having said that, there are some very effective scenes; especially the ending which has a an interesting lighting plot and manages not to be anti-climactic.

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Musically satisfying Tristan from La Scala

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I’ve been looking really hard for a video recording of Tristan und Isolde that I felt I could recommend because, frankly, nothing is worse than a badly executed Tristan as those who suffered through the Met HD broadcast a few years ago will know.  In the 2007 La Scala recording I have found one I feel confident about.  Is it perfect?  No.  A perfect Tristan is probably beyond mere mortals.  I’m never sure whether I find it more astonishing that anyone can sing this music or that a composer might have imagined that he could find people who could.  That said, the La Scala recording is very close to an ideal Gesamtkunstwerk.

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Grimes on Blu-ray

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There is, finally, a recording of Britten’s Peter Grimes on Blu-ray.  It’s a Richard Jones production with a largely British cast, recorded at La Scala in 2012.  The sound and picture quality are first rate.  Unfortunately the production and performances aren’t so much.

1.moothallRichard Jones has chosen to set the piece in the 1980s and to portray the inhabitants of the Borough as a sort of inbred hive mind fuelled by prejudice, alcohol and drugs.  Actually it’s not a bad concept but it comes off as exaggerated with cast and chorus repeatedly making more or less coordinated middle aged disco moves.  He also portrays the nieces as the sort of permanently stoned bubble heads one wants to avoid on the last train home. There are some neat touches.  The Moot Hall, The Boar and Grimes’ hut are all formed by box like spaces that are tilted and rotated to good effect.  The lighting is effective too.  Unusually for a modern production Jones doesn’t provide any staging for the interludes, leaving the theatre dark with the curtain down.  Overall, it’s a production I’d want to take a second look at but I suspect it’s just painted too broadly to be really effective.

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All the Grimes that’s fit to print

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opusarteoabd7119dIt will come as no secret to regular readers that I am something of a Peter Grimes completist.  Until recently this blog was probably the only place one could find detailed reviews of all the available video recordings of that great work.  Now the recent La Scala production has been released on Blu-ray and I am no longer complete.  Fear not though, the disk is in the mail as they say and the divine order will shortly be restored.

In other Grimes news, the Aldeburgh Festival is staging the work on the beach.  The estimable Chris Gillett, Horace Adams both there and at La Scala, is blogging about it in his usual inimitable style.  In some ways I really wish I could go but I know that coast.  Even on a good day the wind will freeze one’s soft bits off. Definitely a challenging place to perform or even watch opera.  It’s also just off the A12 and I still have the after effects of 24 stitches on my face from a rather unfortunate encounter on that highway in my youth.  I shall patiently await Ben Heppner, Alan Held, Ileana Montalbetti et al at the Four Seasons Centre in the fall.

Revelatory Carmélites from La Scala

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I was somewhat underwhelmed by my first encounter with Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites.  Watching this recording of a 2004 La Scala production by Robert Carsen really opened my eyes.  It’s the conducting that makes it I think,  Riccardo Muti seems to find much more in the score than Jan Latham-Koenig.  There are passages of great meditative beauty interspersed with quite shocking violence, all within an essentially tonal framework.  It’s very striking.  He’s helped by the sound on the DVD which is exceptionally vivid and three dimensional, even using the LPCM stereo option, though the Dolby 5.1 track is even better.

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The silliest opera ever?

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Even by the standards of bel canto comedies Donizetti’s Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali is insubstantial fluff.  It’s basically a farce about a no hope opera troupe failing miserably to rehearse an opera in the face of prima donnaish Prima Donna, her overprotective husband, a flaky German tenor and the overbearing mother of the Seconda Donna (played by a man, natch).  Half of the jokes turn on cast members singing badly and the rest on standard opera clichés.  None of them are particularly funny.  The music is a bit non descript too.  The best bits are when the Prima Donna and the tenor inexplicably decide to sing Rossini and Mozart in the middle of a rehearsal.

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Traditional Traviata

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The 2007 recording of Verdi’s La Traviata from Milan’s Teattro alla Scala is extremely traditional but very satisfying.  Liliana Cavani’s production is set in the mid 19th century with entirely conventional sets and costumes (with the obligatory cleavage) and nothing in the direction that adds up to an original concept or idea.  Act 1 is set in a glitzy ballroom.  Act 2 scene 1 takes us to a slightly odd sort of country house bedsit with billiard table  In Act 2 scene 2 we are back with the glitz with actual gypsies and bare chested matadors. Act 3 is set in a suitably dark invalid’s bedroom.  Angela Gheorghiu’s Violetta goes from ballgown to nightdress to ballgown to nightdress while maintaining Ange levels of, you guessed it, cleavage.  The guys are all in evening dress or operetta dress uniforms.  It’s all pretty and doesn’t distract from the music.
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Cartoonish barbiere

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So following on from Jean-Pierre Ponelle’s last film we now turn to one of his earliest, a 1972 version of Rossini’s Il barbieri di Siviglia.  It’s based on his production for La Scala but is, as usual with Ponelle, studio recorded and shot in the studio with lip synching.  It’s not an especially interesting production but it does have a starry cast including Hermann Prey in the title role.  Continue reading →

Ponelle’s Cenerentola

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There’s been a fair amount of discussion of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s film version of Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito over at The Earworm so I thought it would be a good time to dig out his La Scala production of Rossini’s La Cenerentola.  They have a lot in common; an obsession with statuary and heavy focus on verticality that makes the picture often seem taller than it is wide are just two.  The Rossini, despite being filmed at La Scala is very filmic.  It’s much more like a movie than a video recording of a staged performance.  Continue reading →

I vespri Siciliani

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Mid period Verdi in a highly traditional La Scala production isn’t usually my cup of tea but I thought that if the usually excellent Opus Arte label thought the thing was worth a reissue it might be worth watching.  With caveats, it was, even for someone who is as allergic to this kind of production as myself.
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