The latest video recording of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas is from Versailles. It’s a 2024 recording using the same production, by Cecille Roussat and Julien Lubek, as the 2014 Rouen recording and, like that one, there’s a lot of additional instrumental/dance music consistent with the idea that the piece was conceived as a court entertainment in the French style. There’s not much point in repeating what I said back then about the production. Check out the earlier review.
George is a new CD from soprano Sonya Yoncheva and friends made up of music George Sand would have listened to and some readings fro her works. There’s a particular emphasis on Pauline Viardot; close friend of Sand and sister of Maria Malibran.
The music includes Chopin piano pieces played by Olga Zado, who also accompanies the songs. His Casta diva, based on the Bellini aria, is particularly interesting. There are songs by Leoncavallo, Delibes, Offenbach, Tosti and Liszt as well as piano music and songs by Viardot. On two of the songs Yoncheva is accompanied by mezzo Marina Viotti and Zado is joined by violinist Adam Taubitz for a Viardot Romance.
It’s an interesting idea for a CD to couple an exuberant early Strauss tone poem with a extremely introspective Mahler song cycle and that’s what L’Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal have done for their upcoming release with conductor Rafael Payare. I’m not especially familiar with Richard Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben Op. 40 but it sounds suitably Straussian and it gets a full blooded treatment from Payare with the solo violin part played quite beautifully by Concertmaster Andrew Wan. Continue reading
I’m really not sure what to make of the recent recording of Giodarno’s Siberia made at the Maggi Musicale Fiorentino in 2021. It’s certainly a rather weird experience. It’s partly that it’s a bit of an oddball of an opera, partly Roberto Andò’s production and partly that it was recorded under COVID conditions with the chorus masked and blocking that seems, if rather inconsistently, to be designed for social distancing.
Richard Jones’ production of Puccini’s La Bohème recorded at the Royal Opera House in 2020 is, at first glance, a highly conventional “traditional” La Bohème. There’s no subtext. The story unfolds strictly in line with the libretto. And yet there’s something going on that raises it above the level of the typical canary fanciers’ La Bohème. Ultimately I think it’s a combination of avoiding sentimentality or glitz or glamour and really focussing on the characters and the relationships between them. It seems that the revival direction team of Julia Burbach and Simon Iorio and the cast have really worked on this.
In 2015 the Metropolitan Opera premiered a new production of Verdi’s Otello directed by Bartlett Sher. It was broadcast in the Met in HD series and subsequently released on Blu-ray and DVD. It’s a bit hard to judge the production on video because of the video direction. I don’t think there are any big ideas but it’s decorative enough with arrangements and rearrangements of plexiglass wall/rooms and some effective video projections for things like the storm scene. Only Act 4 breaks the mould with a sparse stage with just a bed and a few chairs. I strongly suspect though from the occasional wide angle shot that there was a lot more going on visually than one sees on the video. Costumes are 19th centuryish and quite decorative.
The recording of Bellini’s Norma made at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 2016 is about as good as video recordings of opera go. It has it all; a well thought through and well executed production concept, very fine musical values, great acting, judicious camera work and top notch sound and picture. It doesn’t get much better.
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