“The Tutto Verdi series, in its goal of being complete, makes it possible to not only hear but see performances of works one seldom encounters outside of Parma...One does not have to be a Verdi completist like me to find a lot to enjoy in Tutto Verdi. The rarities are worth knowing to expand your sense of the composer’s output. The seven operas with Nucci are fascinating on so many levels, not the least of which is that his younger colleagues respond to his work not by being in awe but by allowing themselves to dig deeper and bring their performances to a higher plain than they imagined they were capable of. What would Peppino say?” – Fred Plotkin, WQXR
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Giuseppe Verdi TUTTO VERDI – The Operas, Vol. 3 (1855–1893) (11-DVD Box Disc Set)
I Vespri Siciliani (Teatro Regio di Parma, 2010) Simon Boccanegra (Teatro Regio di Parma, 2010) Un Ballo in Maschera (Teatro Regio di Parma, 2011) La Forza del Destino (Teatro Regio di Parma, 2011) Don Carlo (Teatro Comunale di Modena, 2012) Aida (Teatro Regio di Parma, 2012) Otello (Salzburg Festival, 2008) Falstaff (Teatro Regio di Parma, 2011)
Bonus: - Introduction to each opera
Picture format: NTSC 16:9 Sound format: PCM Stereo / DTS 5.1 Region code: 0 (worldwide) Subtitles: Italian, English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese Running time: 20 hours 41 mins (operas) + 1 hour 27 mins (bonus) No. of DVDs: 11 (DVD 9)
Rossini: La Cambiale Di Matrimonio / Bordogna, Rancatore
Naxos AudioVisual
DVD
$15.49$30.99Save 50%Mar 25, 2008
Gioachino Rossini LA CAMBIALE DI MATRIMONIO
Tobia Mill – Paolo Bordogna Fanny – Désirée Rancatore Edoardo Milfort – Saimir Pirgu Slook – Fabio Maria Capitanucci Norton – Enrico Maria Marabelli Clarina – Maria Gortsevskaya
Orchestra Haydn di Bolzano e Trento Umberto Benedetti Michelangeli, conductor
Luigi Squarzina, stage director Giovanni Agostinucci, sets and costumes
Filmed at Rossini Opera Festival, Pesaro, Italy, August 2006
Picture format: NTSC 16:9 Sound format: Dolby Digital 2.0 / Dolby Digital 5.0 Region code: 0 (worldwide) Subtitles: English, Italian Running time: 83 mins
WOLF-FERRARI, E.: Vedova scaltra (La) (La Fenice, 2007) (NTS
Naxos AudioVisual
DVD
$18.99$37.99Save 50%Jun 24, 2008
Wolf-Ferrari's comic opera La Vedova Scaltra (The Cunning Widow), is among the works he based on plays by Goldoni. It matches closely the conventions of 18th-century opera buffa in it's witty if skeptical look at the mechanisms governing the interplay of human relations. This production, filmed live at the Teatro La Fenice in February 2007 in celebration of the 300th anniversary of the birth of Goldoni in Venice in 1707, is the first to appear on DVD. Anne-Lise Sollied, Maurizio Muraro, and Emanuele D'Aguanno star with Karl Martin conducting in this 2 DVD set.
Described as 'the great Verdian bass' (Le Figaro) and a 'Mefistofele who stood out over all the others' (Der Neue Merker), Carlo Colombara brings some of the most famous bass roles to life in this wide-ranging programme. Emotions range from the pride of Escamillo in Bizet's Carmen, through the terrors of Verdi's Attila, to the tender recollections of Rachmaninov's Aleko. Mephistopheles strides powerfully through both Gounod and Boito's operas, and Rossini's comic wit contrasts with the darkness of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov.
In 1986 he won the prize for the best Italian singer in the G. B. Viotti Competition and the following year he won the As.Li.Co competition before making his début at the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome in Ernani. His subsequent career has brought appearances in the most important theatres of the world, in Tokyo, London, Berlin, Vienna, Milan, New York, Zurich, Barcelona, where he now lives, Verona and elsewhere.
Featuring: Carlo Colombara, bass Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana • Gyorgy G. Rath Bulgarian National Symphony Orchestra • Vladimir Ghiaurov Prague Tchaikovsky Orchestra • Fabrizio Milani Oscar Martos Hidalgo, director
Picture Format: 1080i High Definition Sound Format: PCM Stereo / DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Region Code: 0 (All Region) Duration: 141 minutes Language: French Subtitles: English French, Spanish Filmed: at the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia Valencia February, 2007
Cyrano – Plácido Domingo Roxane – Sondra Radvanovsky Christian – Arturo Chacón-Cruz De Guiche – Rod Gilfry Ragueneau – Corrado Carmelo Caruso De Valvert – Roberto Accurso Carbon – Javier Franco La Duègne / Sister Marthe – Itxaro Mentxaka Le Bret – Nahuel di Pierro Lise / A Nun – Silvia Vázquez Lignière – Miguel Sola The Musketeer – Juan José Navarro
Valencia Regional Government Choir (Cor de la Generalitat Valenciana) Valencian Community Orchestra (Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana) Patrick Fournillier, conductor Michal Znaniecki, stage director and stage designer Isabelle Comte, costume design
R E V I E W:
A rare post-verismo Italian opera gets an excellent performance in convincing sets and costumes.
Alfano? I hear you ask, yet with a slight wrinkle of the brow as if somewhere in the distant memory bank there is a file. Rightly so, at least for any opera enthusiast. Alfano is mainly remembered as the man eventually chosen by the publisher, Ricordi, and Toscanini, the resident conductor at La Scala, to complete Puccini’s Turandot. It will be remembered that at the composer’s death part of the last act remained unscored.
Born near Naples, Alfano completed his first opera, still unpublished, in 1896. He had difficulty in getting later works performed in Italy, finding more success abroad. Ricordi supported his opera Risurrezione, based on Tolstoy; it was successful in Turin in 1905. It was very much in the Puccinian style and reached over one thousand performances. Later operas were only modestly received. He took up teaching at the Liceo Musicale in Bologna becoming director in 1916. It was from the Liceo that he presented his successful Sakuntala. This was an opera in a completely different idiom the orientalism of which must have been influential in Ricordi’s decision that Alfano was the man to complete Turandot. The completed Turandot, was presented at La Scala in April 1926. Alfano’s completion was abbreviated by Toscanini and in its shortened form involves around fifteen minutes of music.
Alfano wrote several orchestral works. His opera Madonna Imperia reached the Metropolitan Opera, New York in 1928, a year after its premiere. By this time his work was more influenced by the likes of Richard Strauss and Debussy rather than having its own particular distinctive patina.
Alfano took up the story of Cyrano de Bergerac as the basis for an opera in 1933. Founded on the novel by Edmond Rostand the opera was premiered in Rome in January 1936 under the baton of Tulio Serafin. It was performed in Paris in May that year in the French translation that is used in this performance. Like other artists in Italy in that inter-war period, Alfano was forced to become associated with the Fascist regime. This has tended to sully his reputation somewhat.
Cyrano de Bergerac tells the story of the proboscally challenged Cyrano. He is infatuated with Roxanne, who is also loved by Christian. Cyrano has the heroic skills as a swordsman and fighter denied to his rival. More importantly, he is also a skilful poet, well able to express his love for a woman. After various battles and duels Cyrano meets Roxanne only to discover she is in love with the young and handsome Christian. Resigned to the fact that his own disfigurement makes him unacceptable to Roxanne, Cyrano realises his own inspirational eloquence and poetry are what Christian needs and determines to help him become Roxanne’s perfect suitor. He reads with ardour his own poetry below her balcony as Christian stands by, giving the impression that it is his. Cyrano agonizes as she declares her love for the young man who climbs to the balcony and embraces her (Chs. 13-15).
Unbeknown to Christian, Cyrano writes other ardent letters in his name that are smuggled across the lines during the battle of Arras where Christian is killed. For many years Cyrano keeps this information secret so as not to sully Christian’s name. He then meets Roxanne, now in a convent. Cyrano has been mortally wounded as Roxanne asks him to read what she believes to be Christian’s last letter. Cyrano does so and she at last realises the truth. Cyrano dies as Roxanne declared her love for him despite his nose (Ch. 26).
After languishing in neglect for many years, Alfano’s Cyrano was seen in a production at Montpellier in 2003 with Roberto Alagna in the title role. This has appeared on DVD. Plàcido Domingo took up the role, as his one hundred and twenty first, and a production was mounted at the Metropolitan Opera, New York in May 2005, by Francesca Zambello with designs by Peter J Davidson. This production has since transferred to Covent Garden where it was seen in May 2006 and onwards to La Scala. It should have been the basis of these performances celebrating the new theatre Reina Sofia, in Valencia whose impressive, futuristic, exterior is seen in the introduction (Ch. 1). It seems there were problems with a collapse of part of the theatre stage-machinery required for the sets. The upshot was a new, simpler but affective staging by Michail Zananiecki. Its main focus is a central rotunda with steps and openings through which entrances and activities take place. His staging may not be as spectacular as reports of the Zambello production indicate, but like his direction, aided by drapes and lighting, it is effective. My only question is as to the relevance of what appear to be acrobats descending on ropes and drapes from time to time. The costumes are in period.
Above anything else what Cyrano de Bergerac needs beyond even an accomplished production and sets, are two committed and affecting singing actors in the title role and that of Roxanne. As far as the eponymous role is concerned it has an outstanding protagonist in Plàcido Domingo. His acting is fully integrated into his singing to add a further histrionic portrayal to his many others. The tessitura of the music suits his now baritonal tenor perfectly, with no demanding high Cs or the like and plenty of opportunity for dramatic involvement. His portrayal of the death of Cyrano, after hearing Roxanne’s true thoughts (Ch. 26), is as powerfully sung as his well known reading of the death of Otello in act four of Verdi’s opera. In this histrionic tour de force Domingo is aided, as in the Verdi, by the composer’s music. This ending, in the manner of its portrayal and its poignancy, reminded me also of the death of Boris in Mussorgsky’s opera. As Roxanne, Sondra Radvanovsky matches Domingo in dramatic involvement - no mean feat. Her lustrous soprano is warm and vibrant and allied to her vocal and dramatic capacity it is an instrument to savour. Radvanovsky lacks some clarity of diction to convince me that she is a major force in the operatic firmament. Her outburst of love to Christian (Ch. 20) is delivered via powerful and committed singing of a high order.
Cyrano de Bergerac also depends on a cluster of lesser parts the most important of which, along with Christian, is De Guiche. This vital role is sung with strong even tones and dramatic involvement (Ch. 17) by North American baritone Rodney Gilfry; not ‘Rod’ as the booklet refers to him, I must note. In the cameo role of Ragueneau, Corrado Carmelo Caruso’s well tuned bass is a virtue. The Christian of Arturo Chacón Cruz lacks the qualities of persona and vitality that could be seen as appropriate to that of the role. I rather doubt that Cruz had anything better to offer being unpoetic not only in his acting and inflections but also in his singing.
-- Robert J Farr, MusicWeb International Reviewing DVD version
Benvenuto Cellini – Burkhard Fritz Teresa – Maija Kovalevska Fieramosca – Laurent Naouri Giacomo Balducci – Brindley Sherratt Pope Clemens VII – Mikhail Petrenko Ascanio – Kate Aldrich Francesco – Xavier Mas Bernardino – Roberto Tagliavini Pompeo – Adam Plachetka Innkeeper – Sung-Keun Park
Vienna State Opera Chorus Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra Valery Gergiev, conductor
Philipp Stölzl, stage director and stage designer Kathi Maurer, costume design Duane Schuler, lighting design Mara Kurotschka, choreographer
Filmed at the Großes Festspielhaus, Salzburg, 5, 10 and 15 August 2007.
Picture format: NTSC 19:9 Sound format: Dolby Digital 2.0 / Dolby Surround 5.0 / DTS 5.0 Region code: 0 (worldwide) Subtitles: English, French Running time: 164 mins No. of DVDs: 1 (DVD 9)
BERLIOZ Benvenuto Cellini • Valery Gergiev, cond; Burkhard Fritz (Cellini); Maija Kovaleska (Teresa); Laurent Naouri (Fieramosca); Kate Aldrich (Ascanio); Brindley Sherratt (Balducci); Mikhail Petrenko (Pope Clement VII); Vienna State Op Ch; Vienna PO • NAXOS 2.110271 (DVD: 163:35) Live: Salzburg 8/5-10-15/2007
This is an eye-popping extravaganza in which stage business keeps pace with, and too often trumps, Berlioz’s most coruscatingly vibrant and scintillantly compelling score. Cellini appears in a helicopter at the rooftop porch of Balducci’s penthouse, framed against the New York skyline; robots help Teresa with her toilet (including shaving her armpits) as Maija Kovaleska delivers herself of her big aria with virtuosic aplomb; Ascanio, too, is a robot—Kate Aldrich deliciously does her “Tra-la-la” aria with head removed (at stage level); Pompeo is a pimp, and hookers are a significant portion of the Mardi Gras crowd; the wheedling Asian innkeeper brandishes an assault rifle; and so on. The animation of static moments—in terms of staging—is clever, entertaining, and often riveting. The Mardi Gras itself is a credibly incredible triumph of garish color, comic incident, choreographically turned hurlyburly, and drama. Even those who care little for Berlioz’s music will find themselves entranced by the spectacle, while those with some regard for the composer may be alternately delighted and appalled. Berlioz’s conception of the artist as a romantic hero is a major casualty. As Cellini, Burkhard Fritz is in heroic voice and magnificent swagger but portrays his man as a gangster; while, between Mardi Gras and his appearance at his atelier, the director has foisted upon him a gratuitous wound, allowing the camera to make much of his pained expressions and bloodied clothes. Why? Pompeo’s blustering aria, boasting his fencing prowess, has been transferred to Fieramosca, which makes no sense whatever as the latter is—and is played throughout to great comic effect by Laurent Naouri—a sneaking pantywaist. English subtitles render maîtres ciseleurs as “master engravers,” a literal translation that ignores Berlioz’s usage to mean master goldsmiths while making nonsense of the Dionysian hymn he lavished upon Cellini’s foundrymen. We never see the Perseus, the statue Cellini’s been commissioned to cast, instead, the mold he threatens to destroy as Pope Clement rebukes him is a picayune Winged Victory of Samothrace—another disturbing dissonance between Berlioz’s straightforward dramatic narrative and director Philipp Stölzl’s pointless, would-be-clever dinking. Within the often silly parameters just outlined, vocally and histrionically this production is beyond all praise. Valery Gergiev’s direction is surefire, though others—Sir Colin Davis, Sir Roger Norrington—have found deeper resonance through significant portions of the score, while the never less than virtuosic Vienna Philharmonic is massive where Berlioz is lean and sinewy. Nevertheless, one comes to the end stunned, thrilled, and viscerally moved. As the cast took richly deserved bows, I, alone in my hovel, stood and cheered! Naxos’s surround sound lets no detail of this teeming, overfull, overrich score escape, delivering all with overwhelming punch. Despite all caveats, highest recommendation.
The Places Peter the Great founded St Petersburg in 1703 on Swedish territory, a provocation to Sweden, then the most powerful state in the region. Over a few years, he created a new city with an outlet to the Baltic, a city to challenge Moscow and force Russia to face Western Europe. Victory over the Swedes at Poltava in 1709 secured the city’s future. The tour takes in Odessa, in the Ukraine, an important naval base for Russia on the Black Sea, and concludes with a visit to Uzbekistan.
The Music Mussorgsky was originally an army officer, ending his life in intermittent government service, as addiction to alcohol took its toll. At his death in 1881, at the age of 42, he left much unfinished. His Pictures at an Exhibition was written in 1874 as a set of piano pieces, a translation into music of paintings, designs, models and drawings by his friend Victor Hartmann, who had died the year before, heard here in the colourful orchestration by Ravel. Borodin had a successful career as an analytical chemist, a professor at the Medico-Surgical Academy. His activities as a scientist limited the attention he could give to music, so that a number of his compositions remained incomplete at his relatively early death at the age of 53 in 1887.
Picture format: NTSC 4:3 Sound format: PCM Stereo / Dolby Digital 5.1 / DTS 5.1 Region code: 0 (worldwide) Running time: 60 mins No. of DVDs: 1
Subtitles: English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese Booklet: English, German, French No. of Discs: 1 Run time: 214 minutes Disc Format: Blu-ray 50 Picture: 16:9, HD Audio: PCM Stereo, PCM 5.1 Bonus Material: Introduction to Don Carlo Subtitles Bonus: Italian, English Region Code: 0 (worldwide)
VERDI Don Carlo • Fabrizio Ventura, cond; Mario Malagnini (Don Carlo); Giacomo Prestia (Filippo II); Cellia Costea (Elisabetta); Simone Piazzola (Rodrigo); Alla Pozniak (Eboli); Luciano Montanaro (Grande Inquisitore); O Regionale dell’Emilia-Romagna; Lirico Amadeus Ch • C MAJOR 724 704 (Blu-ray: 204:00 + 11:00) Live: Modena 2012
Perhaps it is because this comes from Modena, site of the opera’s third incarnation in 1886, but this production seems a level in quality above many of the others produced for the Tutto Verdi project. The so-called Modena version of Don Carlo is the revised four-act version in Italian, first seen in 1884, with the Fontainebleau Scene restored, and that is the version performed here, making it almost as long as the French five-act original version. Perhaps taking it out of Parma, site of many of the other and mostly dreary productions in the Tutto Verdi series, has helped the quality as well. Sets are not lavish, but shrewdly functional: platforms stage left and right with ramps that frame often striking painted backdrops. Several large props are used as well: the tomb of Charles V, a statue of the Virgin in Philip’s alcove sanctuary, and a large wooden platform seen in the forest of Fontainebleau. Costumes are strictly in period and lavishly handsome, the lighting used intelligently to create additional atmosphere. Modena’s chorus is typically arrayed along the sides or back. The sound is a bit more recessed than on most of the other Tutto Verdi videos, as are the principal singers’ voices in comparison to the orchestra. I found this effect somewhat mitigated when listening in the surround format.
The singers themselves are variable in quality, but also a stronger cast than usual in this series. A cut above the other singers (or two or three cuts above) is the Elisabetta of Cellia Costea. You can tell right away she is a good one: her solid intonation, secure top, and fine ability to emotively color the text give her away. Costea also seems an excellent actress, but even she can’t rescue the poor Carlos of tenor Mario Malagnini. Malagnini looks too old and sings too poorly to be the title singer in a major production such as this, and he hasn’t got the first clue about acting or interacting with others. His most intense gesture with bosom buddy Rodrigo or beloved Elisabetta is to grasp them on the forearm, and he never looks anywhere but at the audience (or the prompter?). The King Philip of Giacomo Prestia begins with a pronounced wobble, but the voice smoothes out by the time of his big scenes in the Fourth Act, and his fine acting makes the rather unlikeable character of the king come alive as few have done in the past. Simone Piazzola sings pretty competently as Rodrigo, as does mezzo Alla Pozniak in the role of Princess Eboli, although she finds a few flat notes Verdi is not responsible for. Luciano Montanaro seems to strain to find volume as the blind Grand Inquisitor and forces his high notes, robbing the role of any real menace or authority.
Even with a mailed-in performance by the tenor, this Don Carlo makes an impression. As one of the first appearances of this opera on Blu-ray, its sharp clarity and vivid colors impress, and much of the gripping drama is evoked quite effectively. Finding any little nuggets of entertaining opera among the general dross of the Tutto Verdi series has proved difficult, yet they are out there and, as this one, probably deserve some success. Hopefully, soprano Costea will be given better opportunities in the near future; Elisabetta is a near lyric role, but any new Verdian soprano on the block is a major find these days. There are, of course, several other quite good video productions of Don Carlo available, but with versions in French and Italian, four-act and five-act, with and without ballet, there are hardly any two alike. This set from Modena deserves to be seen, and is recommended.
Based on Schiller's play of the same name, Don Carlos was written for the Paris Opera between 1865 and 1867 in the tradition of a French grand opera. Reportedly revised and performed in Italian as Don Carlo, the opera seen here in the version that Verdi prepared for Modena in 1886. This is Verdi's most ambitious and most forward-looking work.
As part of the ambitious Tutto Verdi project, the rarely performed La battaglia di Legnano is available for the first time on DVD and Blu-ray. The patriotic war story of La battaglia gives a taste of the real-life revolutionary ideals of the composer, as he delivers a thinly veiled exhortation to throw off the bonds of foreign rule for love of country.
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![Alfano: Cyrano De Bergerac / Fournillier, Domingo, Radvanovsky [blu-ray]](http://arkivmusic.com/cdn/shop/files/1844787.jpg?v=1788498116&width=800)
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![Verdi: Stiffelio / Aronica, Guanqun, Frontali, Mangione, Battistoni [blu-ray]](http://arkivmusic.com/cdn/shop/files/91jKjeQctuL.jpg?v=1788481037&width=800)
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