The 2023 video recording of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor from Milan’s La Scala is quite interesting. The production is not especially exciting but the singing; especially the partnership of Lisette Oropesa, as Lucia, and Juan Diego Flórez as Edgardo is. The rest of the singing is excellent as is the orchestral playing. It’s also given without the usual cuts.
There’s a French version of Verdi’s Macbeth dating from 1865 and based on the 1847 Italian version. It was performed at the Verdi festival in Parma in 2024 and recorded for video. It’s not enormously different from the original though, unsurprisingly, there’s more ballet (at the beginning of Act 3). The ending is just as weirdly abrupt at least (*). In 1847 this was a transitional work with Verdi moving away from bel canto but here’s there’s still lots of rather jolly music accompanying either sinister or bloody scenes. By 1865 that must have sounded a bit odd.
Matthias Hartmann’s staging of Carmen for the Opernhaus Zürich recorded in 2008 is starkly simple but very beautiful and provides a perfect vehicle for the considerable talents of Vesselina Kasarova and Jonas Kaufmann. The set consists of a plain backdrop and a raised elliptical disk, reminiscent of a bull ring. A few, very few, props are added as needed. A dog lies asleep at the front of the set (replaced by a cattle skull in the final act).
operaramblings 