Gounod: Faust / Ettinger, Royal Opera Chorus & Orchestra
Opus Arte
DVD
$24.99Jul 05, 2024
Disillusioned with life, the aged philosopher Faust calls upon Satan to help him. The devil Méphistophélès appears and strikes a bargain with the philosopher: Faust can have youth and the love of the beautiful Marguerite, but only in exchange for his soul... Gounod’s masterpiece is given the grandest of Royal Opera stagings in David McVicar’s richly layered and theatrically exuberant production, with the drama moved to Second Empire Paris, spectacular sets and costumes, and extensive dance. Michael Fabiano as a seductively witty Faust, Erwin Schrott as a devilish Méphistophélès and Irina Lungu as a passionate Marguerite are joined by the Royal Opera Chorus and a cast of Royal Opera favourites. Dan Ettinger conducts the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House in Gounod’s gloriously tuneful score.
The plot of Gounod’s opera La Nonne sanglante (‘The Bleeding Nun’) is drawn from Matthew Lewis’s once famous 1796 novel The Monk. The subject is a Gothic melodrama featuring warring families, two lovers, and the vengeful spectre of the Nun, to which Gounod responds with music that fuses Romanticism with the supernatural on the grandest scale. This ground-breaking production features memorable set pieces enhanced by the stark drama of the stage setting and brilliant cinematic lighting effects. This production was staged by David Bobee and the video director was Francois Roussillon. The recording took place in June 2018 at the Opera Comique in Paris, France.
Charles Gounod was enchanted by the young Provençal-born Frédéric Mistral’s epic love poem Mirèio, and enlisted the distinguished Michel Carré to fashion a libretto. Against the grain of prevailing operatic practice in the 1860s, and its promotion of glamour and spectacle, Gounod relished instead the lives of modest country people and their idyllic world. He utilizes folk dances and a shepherd’s lament to chart the story of his tragic heroine whose desire to marry her true love ends in her death. ‘Everything feels true to the opera’s pastoral spirit’ wrote Gramophone about this production, which marked the opera’s first appearance at the Paris Opera.
REVIEW:
Vocally, and visually, the cast is outstanding, the Albanian, soprano, Inva Mula, ravishing vocally and beautiful of countenance, while the American tenor, Charles Castronova, as Vincent and quite young at the time of filming, has a nice ringing tone to the top of his voice. As the respective fathers, who cause so much grief, we have Nicolas Cavailier and Alain Vernhes acting-out their respective roles to perfection. The chorus are excellent, with conductor, Mark Minkowski, obtaining a fulsome orchestral partnership in an ideally painted accompaniment, the whole video—both in sound and visually—is excellent, and one of the best I have seen.
The second volume in Bel Air Classique’s collection “Great Ballets from the Bolshoi” is a four-ballet limited edition release, featuring the Bolshoi Ballet’s most recent successes: La Bayadere, Marco Spada, Swan Lake, and The Golden Age. Marius Petipa’s exotic ballet La Bayadere is set in legendary and mysterious India. It is a story of love, death and vengeful judgement. Yuri Grigorovich presents a sumptuous recreation of Petipa’s choreography. Recreated specifically for the Bolshoi by French choreographer Pierre Lacotte, Marco Spada, or the Bandit’s Daughter, is a grandiose and unique ballet both on a technical and dramatic level: it includes complex choreography, five lead roles created for five principals, and several changes in scenery. With Tchaikovsky’s famous, lyrical score, Swan Lake depicts the tragic love between Princess Odette and Prince Siegfried, and is performed to perfection by the unparalleled virtuosity of Russia’s great Bolshoi Ballet. A modern and visionary work, The Golden Age, set to music by Shostakovich, was created in 1930. Its central theme was the highly moralized battle and triumph of the proletariat against the decadent bourgeoisie, set in Europe during the roaring twenties. All performances were recorded in high definition at the State Academic Bolshoi Ballet of Moscow.
This impressive four-DVD set features four documentaries that revolve around the lives and careers of four of history’s finest conductors. The first is “I Am Lost to the World,” a documentary about Carlos Kleiber, that includes several musical excerpts conducted by Kleiber. The second is “Journey of a Lifetime,” which focuses on Sir Georg Solti. The film includes interviews with Valerie Solti, Valery Gergiev, and more. “Larger Than Life” revolves around Leonard Bernstein, and includes interviews with his children and other music giants like Stephen Sondheim and Gustavo Dudamel. Finally, “Maestro for the Screen,” is about the life of Herbert von Karajan and shows the fascinating development of Karajan’s language for filming orchestral productions and starts with the very first concert production in 1957 in Japan, followed by the impressive cooperation with director Henri Georges Clouzot in 1965 to Karajan’s own film company Telemondial.
For the legendary comic actor Groucho Marx, playing the role of Ko-Ko in the Mikado "fulfilled a lifelong ambition." the Mikado was Groucho's favorite among the works of his beloved Gilbert and Sullivan, and the 1960 Bell Telephone Hour production was adapted for television and directed by Martyn Green, a man Groucho revered as an authority on interpreting the role of Ko-Ko. The strong supporting cast features distinguished veterans like Helen Traubel, Stanley Holloway, Robert Rounseville, and Dennis King, as well as young artists like the lovely soprano Barbara Meister as Yum-Yum and Groucho's 13-year-old daughter, Melinda, as Peep-Bo. Special features [46 minutes] include audio interviews with Dick Cavett, Melinda Marx, and Barbara Meister; Martyn Green in excerpts from H.M.S. Pinafore (Bell Telephone Hour, 1963, in color), cast bios, the commercials from the original telecast, and more!
Juber is among the finest acoustic finger style guitarist playing today. The music was recorded in REAL HD-Audio at 96 kHz/24-bit PCM and is presented in DOLBY Digital/MLP/96/24 PCM. Users can select from 3 different audio mixes. Bonus featured included on this double sided DVD.
Released to coincide with the reopening of France's national Gustave Moreau Museum, this DVD release from Frémeaux & Associés features Nelly Kaplan's film presentation of the masterpieces housed within the museum. The DVD also contains three short films in which she presents the graphical works of Victor Hugo and Rodolphe Bresdin together with the famous Walter-Guillaume Collection at the Orangerie Museum in Paris.
& Audio-only choral tracks by MODONVILLE, VIVALDI, BACH, HANDEL
When I received this disc I unwrapped it with some trepidation, even though it came from the new Tafelmusik label. While Messiah sing-alongs are a grand and popular tradition, at least in North America, the quality of these get-togethers seems, well, sorely lacking for the most part, no matter how dedicated the impromptu performers are. All right, so it is mainly for fun, and one does not begrudge a happy communal annual event, one I confess to having enjoyed on several occasions. But there is no doubt that however earnest the singers are, and however much good it does for making Handel’s iconic work a household name, the expectations for performance practical perfection are not, shall we say, high. Having it now presented as a DVD, two thoughts came to mind: Either it would be a film about such an event on a grand scale, or it might degenerate into one of those horrible “follow the bouncing ball” scenarios that I thought had died a merciful death back in the 1960s. I should have had more faith.
What came was almost an hour and a half of an enormously entertaining film by 90th Parallel Productions about what seems to have been an annual event taking place in Toronto for more than three decades (or at least that is what one of the participants states). The key to this is the effable director of the Tafelmusik Chamber Choir, Ivars Taurins, who plays the part of the irascible George (“because God is an Englishman and can’t say Georg”) Frederick Handel, hamming it up as the director punished by the Almighty as a joke to be sent back to earth annually to direct this thing. His paraphrase of the opening of Cabaret (“Even the sopranos are beautiful!”) is not to be missed. His straight people are the redoubtable Tafelmusik orchestra, which performs the truncated version of the oratorio with energy, precision, and good authentic performance practice. The others are the four soloists. Suzie LeBlanc’s clear soprano rings out brilliantly in her arias such as “Rejoice Greatly,” while tenor Rufus Müller easily handles (pun intended) the ebulent “Ev’ry Valley,” and countertenor Daniel Taylor, who is not given more than a tithe of the original contralto arias, smoothly and accurately conquers the changing moods of “But Who May Abide.” Bass Locky Chung almost derails on the shakes of “Thus Saith the Lord” but he provides a clarion partner to John Thiessen’s virtuoso trumpet in the famous aria of that name (and you all know which one I’m speaking of).
The best part, however, is the chorus, filling the entire hall like a political convention with placards indicating the four voices. To be sure, they too have backup in the form of the Tafelmusk choir standing behind the instruments, but when Taurins exhorts them to “raise the roof” at the Hallelujah chorus, one can feel the power and energy of the mass of voices. They are good, too, for if there are any tone-deaf enthusiasts among them, they are submerged in a superb wash of sound that would no doubt make the real Handel smile (that is, if he didn’t faint). What is more, they take the faster tempos of the conductor with hardly a falter or stumble.
In case you find it overwhelming, the DVD also includes a number of bonus audio tracks of a more serious nature. Granted, these are choral movements without any sort of cohesion, but it is a chance to compare the normal professional concerts of Tafelmusik’s choral and orchestral groups with the raucous and effervescent cast of hundreds.
What can one say? This is not just a community sing-along, it is a happening and one that demonstrates that such events can be done both joyously and efficiently. Taurins, of course, is the glue, and he provides continuity both through his rather pithy introduction, and with sporadic commentary throughout (even a gruff “Go home!” at the end as the credits roll by). If you are in the market for (yet another) period Messiah, this truncated version will probably not be for you. There are other DVDs or discs out there that will serve. But if you wish for some unmitigated fun, you should give this a try. For myself, I shall haul it out every Christmas, and who knows, if you are passing by you might even hear me warble along with crowd.
During his years in Italy, Handel absorbed the music of his contemporaries and mastered new stylistic trends. Though the staging of La resurrezione was a memorable event in the Roman musical world, it was the production of Agrippina that marked Handel’s definitive investiture as an operatic composer. It met with enormous success and an unprecedented number of performances followed. Its melodic power is overwhelming and in his creation of credible and vivid characters, the alternation of recitative and arias, and sheer theatrical power, Handel established the template that was to last for the remainder of his operatic career. The production on the present release was filmed in March 2016 at the Theater an der Wien, Vienna, Austria, and was directed by Robert Carsen.
GEORG FRIDERIC HANDEL: Veronique Gens, soprano; Philippe Jaroussky, male alto; Ingrid Perruche, soprano; Nigel Smith, baritone; Thierry Gregoire, male alto; Bernard Deletre, bass; Fabrice Di Falco, male soprano; AlainBuet, bass; La Grande Ecurie et la Chambre du Roy/Jean-Claude Mal GEORG FRIDERIC HANDEL: Agrippina.
Influential German poet Barthold Heinrich Brockes reinvented the Passion oratorio tradition, transforming it's textures into a much-admired poetic meditation that took hold of the imagination of many German Baroque composers. Of several settings Handel's is by far the most famous, creating an eloquent and moving score from his friend's libretto. This acclaimed staged version directed by Walter Sutcliffe extends the vision of the original by asking fundamental questions about the evolution of mankind and it's dangerous implications for planet Earth.
Described by librettist Charles Jennens with typical English understatement as “a fine entertainment,” Handel’s Messiah was initially controversial as a biblical oratorio written for secular theatres. Within years it was however being “received with universal applause” and its composer’s purpose in delighting and charming his listeners has made this masterpiece an international favorite ever since. This eye-catching, audiovisual recording of Handel’s masterpiece with its cast of renowned soloists captures the 2016 Easter concert in the impressive Baroque Basilica of Klosterneuburg, Austria.
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![Gounod: Mireille / Mula, Castronovo, Minkowski, l'Opera national de Paris [DVD]](http://arkivmusic.com/cdn/shop/files/0397848_mireille.jpg?v=1786710155&width=800)
![Gounod: Mireille / Mula, Castronovo, Minkowski, l'Opera national de Paris [DVD]](http://arkivmusic.com/cdn/shop/files/3964303-2704499.jpg?v=1786710155&width=400)
