More than two centuries after its creation, the emotional pull of this supreme opera remains absolutely intact. Dmitri Therniakov duly revisits the myth and makes the seducer of Seville a “man without qualities,” a cipher whose words have a hypnotic power over women. Louis Langrée leads the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra.

Berg's masterful and thought-provoking opera tells the gripping story of the rise and fall of an alluring, destructive but vulnerable woman, culminating in her death at the hands of Jack the Ripper. Christof Loy's austere, minimalist production allows the complexities of the drama to unfold through the sumptuous, taut beauty of the score. Agneta Eichenholz and Michael Volle lead an all-star cast under Antonio Pappano. Recorded in High Definition and true surround sound.

Lulu : Agneta Eichenholz
Dr Schön/Jack the Ripper: Michael Volle
Alwa: Klaus Florian Vogt
Countess Geschwitz: Jennifer Larmore
Prince/Manservant/Marquis: Philip Langridge
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Conductor: Antonio Pappano
Director: Christof Loy
Recorded live at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, in June 2009

Extra features:
Cast gallery
Interview with Antonio Pappano
Interview with Agneta Eichenholz

“It is immaculately rehearsed and executed – one doesn't often see opera acted with such freedom and honesty and absence of flummery. And its unsparing analytic clarity forces one to confront the bitter truth about Lulu's inner life and the corruption and idiocy of the men who are infatuated by her. … Antonio Pappano's electrifying conducting is razor-sharp in the manner of Pierre Boulez, and the orchestral playing is magnificent. … Singing with an extraordinary grace and insouciance, Eichenholz manages to make this monster chillingly real and hauntingly beautiful.”
The Telegraph

Regions: All Regions
Picture Format: R 16:9 Anamorphic
Sound Type: 2.0 LPCM & 5.1 DTS Digital

Richard Wagner
DIE WALKÜRE

Wotan – John Bröcheler
Siegmund – John Keyes
Hunding – Kurt Rydl
Sieglinde – Nadine Secunde
Brünnhilde – Jeannine Altmeyer
Fricka – Reinhild Runkel
Gerhilde – Irmgard Vilsmaier
Ortlinde – Annegeer Stumphius
Waltraute – Hanna Schaer
Schwertleite – Hebe Dijkstra
Helmwige – Kirsi Tiihonen
Siegrune – Catherine Keen
Grimgerde – Regina Mauel
Rossweise – Elzbieta Ardam

Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra
Hartmut Haenchen, conductor

Pierre Audi, stage director
George Tsypin, set designer
Eiko Ishioka, costume designer
Wolfgang Göbbel, lighting designer

Recorded live from the Het Muziektheater, Amsterdam, 1999

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format; LPCM Stereo / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Japanese
Running time: 260 mins
No. of DVDs: 3

This recording includes an amazing vocal performance of Orlin Anastasov, recorded at the very impressive medieval stronghold of Tsaverets (Bulgaria). As Benjamin Lumley wrote in his memoirs, perhaps no other opera by Verdi was received more enthusiastically or won the composer more laurels than Attila.

RIMSKY-KORSAKOV The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevronya • Vitaly Panfilov ( Prince Vsevolod ); Tatiana Monogarova ( Fevronya ); Mikhail Gubsky ( Grishka Kuterma ); Mikhail Kazakov ( Prince Yury ); Gevorg Hakobyan ( Fyodor Poyarok ); Marika Gulordava ( Page ); Valery Gilmanov ( Bedyay ); Alexander Naumenko ( Burunday ); Alexander Vedernikov, cond; Cagliari Th O & Ch • NAXOS 2.110277/78 (2 DVDs: 187:28) Live: Cagliari 5/2–4/2008


I wanted to see this video because, for many years, I’ve heard exorbitant praise from certain critics regarding Kitezh , yet in listening to the commercial recording conducted by Valery Gergiev I felt let down. The music seemed to me flat and characterless, lacking drama, development, and momentum. Surely, I said to myself, a good stage production would change my mind, as it did with Mussorgsky’s Khovanschina.


Yet opinions on The Invisible City of Kitezh (to abbreviate its title) are divided. Although many critics wax ecstatic over Rimsky-Korsakov’s magnificent orchestration for this work, few outside Russia are very impressed by the opera as a whole. It is an overlong, derivative grand opera in which two old tales of magic were welded together by librettist Vladimir Belsky, and finally presented intact in 1908. Even the first Russian audiences didn’t care much for it, finding it very old-fashioned in concept and musical style as well as overly rambling, though it is still periodically revived, mostly within Russia.


This production gives us a rare glimpse of the opera as performed in Italy. The audience reaction is not enthusiastic; on the contrary, when the applause comes at the ends of acts, it sounds like perhaps 80 to 100 people half-heartedly clapping.


One glance at the production tells you why. Although it is not Regietheater —the characters are, thankfully, clad in traditional-looking costumes—Eimuntas Nekro?ius’s idiotic staging has too much symbolism and too little that resembles reality. The first act, set in the “woods,” presents a stage littered with “wooden” structures, bird houses and the like. Get it? Woods. The presentation of Little Kitezh, where the maiden Fevronya is to marry Prince Vsevolod, is cluttered with giant, tinfoil-covered bell-like objects with people popping out of their tops. Get it? Bells. This kind of idiocy continues throughout a production of a work in which the music itself is also static and rarely wedded to the text. In act IV, scene 1, where Fevronya and Grishka are supposed to be wandering in the woods, what you see is a plain blue-tiled floor with two Erector-set structures in the background. Apparently, Nekro?ius ran out of birdhouses, but not to despair! When Grishka runs off into the woods and Fevronya is left alone, two giant, hideous bird creatures sneak out of the woods and behind her as she sleeps. Perhaps Nekro?ius has seen too many of the Alien movies. In the final scene, supposed to represent Kitezh triumphant, the stage is filled with objects that look like rocket silos.


Musically, many passages sound like leavings from Boris Godunov, and not good leavings at that, so even when the singers are excellent the plot crawls along. It is an opera more about characters who stand there and sing than about characters creating a musical drama. Compare, for instance, the first act to the similar situation in Verdi’s Don Carlo. A prince meets a beautiful woman in the woods, and they fall in love. Verdi miraculously manages to wed lovely music, some of it even memorable, to a flexible musical structure in which the orchestra comments on or moves the action. Rimsky-Korsakov creates a static structure wedded to pretty but undistinguished melodies that just toodle along, and do so for half an hour.


Moreover, the plot is remarkably dismal and depressing for a magic or fairy-tale opera. Everyone sings about death even before the Tartars invade Russia, and several characters die except Fevronya and the seedy drunkard Grishka Kuterma, who becomes a traitor, willing to turn Kitezh over to invading Tartars and finger Fevronya as the snitch just to save his own worthless hide. Prince Vsevolod goes off to battle for Kitezh, not to win it but to die in it. (I’m guessing he flunked military school.) He does so, but returns in the second half of act IV as a ghost, and at the end of the opera Fevronya marries the ghost. And you talk about overlong … each of the first two acts runs over a half hour, but each of the last two acts runs more than an hour apiece.


Getting to the performance, Tatiana Monogarova is simply magnificent as Fevronya, not only vocally but histrionically, which is important because this is a rare Russian opera in that the soprano dominates everything. Here is a woman who fully understands how to inhabit a role. You come to believe wholeheartedly in her character within the first five minutes she is onstage, and she holds you in her thrall to the end. As for her voice, it is a remarkably rich lyric soprano, close to spinto in power, exactly the kind of voice Rimsky wanted for this part. Her midrange, in fact, reminds me strongly of Mirella Freni at her best, only with more power. The top range is not as lovely as Freni’s, but it has its own interesting luster and more metal. Monogarova made her American debut as Lisa in Pique Dame in Houston in 2010, and also began singing Cio-Cio-San around the same time in Europe. She is signed with IMG, and I really do wish her well in what I hope will be a major career.


Vitaly Panfilov, as Prince Vsevolod, is neither an interesting actor nor a particularly fine singer. The voice is fluttery, dry, and percussive. He sings on pitch and phrases well, but that is all one can say of him. His stage presence registers somewhere between nil and mediocre. On the other hand, Mikhail Gubsky as the nefarious Grishka Kuterma is a superb stage actor, though his voice is strictly that of a good comprimario. Nevertheless, the world needs good comprimarios, and he is certainly one of them. His pathetic wheedling is completely believable.


A word of praise is also due Marika Gulordava in the somewhat thankless role of the Page. The Page is analogous to Cassandra in Les Troyens or the Simpleton in Boris, someone who warns of danger to come. Though her role is important it is not as long as either of the other two, yet Gulordava is simply stunning in her one big scene. Her voice is not as beautiful as Monogarova’s, but it has a laser-beam focus with a bright, perhaps over-brilliant top. As a musician and singing actress she is first-rate. I also hope for her to have a good career. Mikhail Kazakov, singing the role of Vesvolod’s father, Prince Yury, has a nice voice but an uneven flutter and a constricted low range, a real detriment for a Russian bass.


Alexander Vedernikov is a fine conductor who obviously loves and understands this music. He brings out all of the wonderful orchestral subtleties of the score and moves the opera about as well as can be expected under the circumstances. Indeed, his conducting here is finer for this particular work than Gergiev’s.


My copy of the DVD may have been defective, but all through the first two acts the video is out of synch with the audio, as if one were watching something in which the video was on a two-second tape delay. On the second DVD, most of it is in synch, yet there are still strange moments when the picture freezes for a couple of seconds, only to jump ahead and eventually catch up with the audio.


Thus there are good and bad points to be taken into consideration in approaching both the work and the performance, but if you are fond of Kitezh I would recommend this for the excellent acting of a handful of participants and the excellent singing of the two sopranos.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley


-------

THE LEGEND OF THE INVISIBLE CITY OF KITEZH AND THE MAIDEN FEVRONYA

Opera in 4 Acts. Sung in Russian
Libretto by Vladimir I. Belsky

Prince Yuri Vsevolodovich – Mikhail Kazakov
Hereditary prince Vsevolod Yuryevich – Vitaly Panfilov
Fevronya – Tatiana Monogarova
Grishka Kuterma – Mikhail Gubsky
Fyodor Poyarok – Gevorg Hakobyan
Page – Marika Gulordava
Two notables – Gianluca Floris, Marek Kalbus
Bedyay – Valery Gilmanov
Burunday – Alexander Naumenko

Orchestra e Coro del Teatro Lirico di Cagliari
(chorus master: Fulvio Fogliazza)
Alexander Vedernikov, conductor

Eimuntas Nekrošius, stage director
Marius Nekrošius, set designer
Nadezhda Gultiayeva, costume designer
Audrius Jankauskas, lighting designer

Recorded live from the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, Sardinia, 2 and 4 May 2008

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: PCM Stereo / Dolby Digital 5.0 / DTS 5.0
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: English
Running time: 187 mins
No. of DVDs: 2 (DVD 5 + DVD 9)

Also available on Blu-ray

PUCCINI Turandot • Giuliano Carella, cond; Maria Guleghina ( Turandot ); Salvatore Licitra ( Calaf ); Tamar Iveri ( Liù ); Luiz-Ottavio Faria ( Timur ); Carlo Bosi ( Emperor ); Leonardo Lòpez Linares ( Ping ); Saverio Fiore ( Pang) ; Gianluca Bocchino ( Pong ); Arena di Verona O & Ch • BELAIR BAC 066 (DVD: 128:00); BAC 466 (Blu-ray: 128: 00) Live: Verona 2010

Turandot was Giacomo Puccini’s last opera and one he did not live to finish. He “laid down his pen,” as the expression goes, for the last time after he had finished the music for the death of Liù and the solemn procession during her ritual removal from the stage. Unfortunately for the composer who eventually finished the work, Franco Alfano, Puccini left more than the unfinished manuscript; he left an untenable dramatic situation as well. With the death of Liù there remains a clueless tenor who has apparently been fatuously pursuing the wrong girl all along, and a cruel, unlikeable dramatic soprano, Turandot. These two are finally to come together as a couple and the audience must feel that a celebratory resolution of the opera’s emotional impetus is occurring with this union. Sorry, it just doesn’t happen. Alfano wrote approximately 14 more minutes of pretty good music, certainly nothing that would embarrass Puccini, much of it based on the older composer’s extensive notes, but he could not dispel the anticlimactic pall of this final bit. One or two other composers have rewritten the completion in the decades since, but have fared no better, I’m not at all sure Puccini could have saved the bacon either had he lived longer. So we are left with a congenitally weak conclusion for the opera, but it is a work that contains much superior material elsewhere as well. The aria “Nessun dorma” alone is a small Puccini miracle and rivals or surpasses anything else he wrote for the tenor voice.

This production from the Arena di Verona is a quite traditional one and uses the standard Alfano ending. As I have said in previous reviews, this particular outdoor venue demands spectacular sets and special effects to make up for the less than ideal acoustics and the distance from audience to stage. It gets plenty of glitz and glitter here with a new celebratory production from that master showman, the Cecil B. DeMille of his day, Franco Zeffirelli. The Arena, Turandot, and Zeffirelli are a near-perfect match, and the Italian stage director vindicates the confidence shown in him with this splendid new production. The new sets are ornate, sumptuously colorful, detailed, and properly large. The production employs a large chorus and many extras, all meticulously dressed, to attend and pay homage at Turandot’s father’s impressive Imperial Palace. We get many close-ups, and the crowd in general is doing more natural things than in some other Zeffirelli efforts. I must admit to a guilty secret: I am a closet Zeffirelli fan. His work is always a visual feast even when it may be drawing attention away from the drama and the singing. I’ll take my chances.

This production was to prove somewhat of a swan song for tenor Salvatore Licitra, at least on video. Licitra was to die almost exactly a year later in a motor scooter accident in Sicily, apparently brought on by a cerebral hemorrhage. It is an unfortunate loss to the artistic community when any artist dies prematurely, but particularly so in the already thin ranks of premier operatic tenors. Licitra sings quite well here as Calaf; he even encores “Nessun dorma,” once a big no-no in Italian opera houses. In my estimation Licitra is the pick of the cast, but fails to bring the last ounce of thrilling vocalism that would rank him alongside a Corelli or a Pavarotti in the role. Dramatic soprano Maria Guleghina has begun competing with herself in recordings of Turandot, much like Eva Marton did back in the ’80s and ’90 s (and stage designer/director Zeffirelli is doing as well). This is Guleghina’s third video performance in the role, and there are quite a few audio recordings of her Turandot as well. Here she is in quite good voice and sings cleanly, if a little passionlessly. Her big voice at times has a steely edge, much like Birgit Nilsson in the role, but then much of Turandot’s music is not meant to charm. The Liù of Tamar Iveri is a bit more problematic. She has a heavy vibrato that distracts from the vocal line, and her tone turns edgy when she pushes in her top range. Beginning back with Anna Moffo and even earlier, the singing of Liù has been of a generally high standard in the recorded history of the opera, so to come up a bit short here is unexpected. Luiz-Ottavio Faria as Timur sings solidly, as do the Ping, Pang, and Pong, especially the baritone Ping of Leonardo Lòpez Linares, who acquits himself with distinction. The sound on video from the Arena orchestra is really much better than it has any right to be, as I have noted before. And the chorus sounds very good as well, thanks to the miracles of modern sound reproduction. Thomas Edison would be amazed.

There has been a plethora of videos of Turandot (though not so many as for some other Puccini operas), but not one has really separated itself from the pack as a clear first choice. The Levine set with Eva Marton and Plácido Domingo has been highly praised over the years and also features a Zeffirelli production, but suffers from 25-year-old video and audio technology. The Gergiev set on TDK offers the novelty of the Luciano Berio ending in place of the Alfano, but the cast is quite pedestrian. An earlier set from the Arena features Ghena Dimitrova and Nicola Martinucci. This one is better, in fact as good a choice as any, and has quite the best cast of singers of the three Guleghina sets.

The booklet contains a synopsis in Italian, English, German, and French. Audio formats are PCM stereo and Dolby 5.1 surround. Subtitles are in all major European languages, no Korean, but Japanese. There are no extras with the opera but it is available in both DVD and Blu-Ray formats. I would recommend the latter if you have the equipment; this production is a visual tour de force and the high-resolution picture is like watching it in a theater. Recommended.

FANFARE: Bill White

*** This Blu-ray Disc is only playable on Blu-ray Disc players and not compatible with standard DVD or HD DVD players. ***



MORENO TORROBA Luisa Fernanda & • Jesús López-Cobos, cond; Nancy Herrera ( Luisa Fernanda ); Mariola Cantarero ( Duchess Carolina ); José Bros ( Javier Moreno ); Plácido Domingo ( Vidal Hernando ); Raquel Pierotti ( Mariana ); Teatro Real O & Ch • BBC/OPUS ARTE 969 (Blu-ray: 132:00) Live: Madrid 7/14,16/2006


& Interviews with Domingo, Sagi, and López-Cobos; illustrated synopsis; cast gallery


Alan Swanson covered the earlier DVD release of this production in Fanfare 31:2; hie thee to our online archive for details. This is a highly engaging work from 1932 about a love triangle during an anti-royalist uprising in 19th-century Spain; the musical style is Spanish Puccini with even catchier tunes (by which I mean the melodies are built from short, memorable phrases rather than long operatic lines). You need only see and hear Nancy Herrera for a few seconds to think, “What a perfect Carmen she’d be.” Indeed, she has sung that role many times. Here, she’s not a dangerous Gypsy vamp but an ordinary middle-class woman torn between two lovers: a brash, womanizing, ambitious royalist and military man (sung ringingly by José Bros) and an earnest and stable country gentleman who falls in with the rebels (the superb Plácido Domingo, venturing into high baritone territory). In every respect—composition, singing, orchestral management by Jesús López-Cobos, stage direction, and set design by Emilio Sagi, everything—the production is a delight.


The high-definition video format is perfect for keeping the deep blacks and bright whites in balance, never allowing the light colors to flare or bloom or the dark patches to turn the overall picture murky. As usual with Opus Arte, the audio options are limited to stereo and 5.0 PCM. Extras include a narrated synopsis, and good interviews with Domingo and the stage director and conductor. This is an endearing work, lovingly presented.


FANFARE: James Reel
Vidal Hernando – Plácido Domingo
Luisa Fernanda – Nancy Herrera
Javier Moreno – José Bros
Duchess Carolina – Mariola Cantarero
Mariana – Raquel Pierotti
Aníbal – Javier Ferrer
Rosita – Sabina Puértolas
Don Florito Fernández – José Antonio Ferrer
Don Luís Nogales – Federico Gallar
Bizco Porras – David Rubiera
Emilio Sagi, Stage Director
Recorded live at the Teatro Real, Madrid in July 2006
Bonus:
- Interviews with Plácido Domingo, Emilio Sagi and Jesús López Cobos
- Illustrated Synopsis / Cast Gallery

Region code: 0 (All Regions)
Picture: 16:9; 1080i
Sound: PCM 2.0 and 5.1
Subtitles: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian

MOZART Le nozze di Figaro & • Sylvain Cambreling, cond; Peter Mattei (Count Almaviva); Lorenzo Regazzo (Figaro); Heidi Grant Murphy (Susanna); Christine Schäfer (Cherubino); Roland Bracht (Dr. Bartolo); Burkhard Ulrich (Don Basilio); Helene Schneiderman (Marcellina); Eberhard Francesco Lorenz (Don Curzio); Cassandra Berthon (Barbarina); Jürg Kienberger (Recitativist); Op National de Paris O & Ch • OPUS ARTE 6004 (2 DVDs: 250:00 + 59:43) Live: Paris 2006

& Bonus: A Day of Real Madness, documentary by Reiner E. Moritz

This splendid performance of Le nozze di Figaro was originally issued on DVD in 2006, and is here making its reappearance in Opus Arte’s “Essential Opera Collection.” As in the case of the Rigoletto from 2001, reviewed elsewhere, this designation is well deserved. Since this disc was fully reviewed by Christopher Williams in these pages when it was first released, I won’t retread the excellent detail of his review but only make some observations of my own.

First, the production by Christoph Marthaler is whimsical and truly funny. Back in the 1980s, I complained bitterly of Peter Sellars’s ridiculous updating and setting of this opera in a New York penthouse (like the Trump Tower) because so much of what was in the libretto—not only the stage directions, which for better or worse are very explicit because this was based on a play that had equally specific instructions, but also in the words of the recitatives and arias—was either ignored or completely contradicted by his almost consistently asinine setting. Marthaler has set nearly the entire opera in front of a marriage bureau, which has a certain relationship to the subtext of the opera (it is, after all, about marriage, fidelity, and whether or not one should ever marry for convenience or just for love), but even here there are moments, such as the riotous conclusion of act II or the final scene which is supposed to take place in the garden outside the Count’s abode, that just don’t work. Marthaler, in collaboration with conductor Cambreling, has come up with an amusing alternative to playing the secco recitatives on a harpsichord. They have invented a character called the “Recitativist,” a comedian-musician (Jürg Kienberger) who whimsically plays the recitative accompaniment on any number of instruments, including (at one point) a balloon with air escaping from it and, at another, by tooting on beer bottles that he drinks from to continually lower their pitch, sometimes humming along with them. This creates a very funny diversion to these otherwise dull moments, which is fortunate since Cambreling insisted on keeping all of them because they realized that this is where the real drama takes place, that the arias are just moments of reflection that stop the action.

As an overall production I much preferred David McVicar's contemporary staging given at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden. Here, the opera was updated to 1830s post-Revolution France where “the inexorable unraveling of an old order has produced acute feelings of loss.” More to the point, the costumes are closer to the era of Beaumarchais’s play and the stage settings equally funny due to McVicar's sharp wit. The differences lie in the quality of the casts and of the recorded sound. In the Royal Opera video (Opus Arte 990), we are given strong vocal and acting performances by Erwin Schrott (Figaro), Miah Persson (Susanna), the Count (Gerald Finley), and Don Basilio (Philip Langridge). Dorothea Röschmann’s Countess is extremely well acted, but she doesn’t have the steadiest or most beautiful voice for the role, and the singing of our Cherubino (Rinat Shaham), Dr. Bartolo (Jonathan Veira), and Marcellina (Graciela Araya) is substandard. The recorded sound, however, is terrific, the microphone picking up orchestra and soloists with crisp, lifelike fidelity. In this Paris production, every single role from top to bottom is sung splendidly. Williams had a niggling complaint about the fact that Christine Schäfer, the Cherubino, is a soprano, and thus does not add variety to the ensembles but sounds a bit too much like the Susanna and Countess. This is true, but except for the very low notes in “Voi che sapete,” Schäfer sings and acts brilliantly, really looking like an adolescent, sex-drawn boy. My complaints about the cast here are small, mostly of baritone Regazzo as an almost consistently scowling, over-macho Figaro with a gorgeous voice but almost no inflection in his use of it, and of soprano Heidi Grant Murphy as Susanna, who sings beautifully but looks rather dowdy, something like Angela Lansbury in Murder, She Wrote.

More to the point, the sound recording and mix by Radio France is not consistently clear. The microphones seem to be a little high or a bit away from both soloists and orchestra, with the result that everyone sounds a little reverberant most of the time. Once in a while, the principals walk right under the microphone—it seems to have been set up a little to stage left of center—and then sound marvelous, but at moments the sonics are a little off. This is a shame, as Cambreling conducts here a shade better than Antonio Pappano on the Royal Opera DVD, the differences being in the Countess’s two arias. Having played these pieces for a soprano friend of mine many years ago, I can assure you that they are written in cut time, 2/2, and so are not to be performed as slowly as they so often are. Pappano, then, conducts them in the conventional way which is wrong; Cambreling at a brisker pace which is right. Christiane Oelze cannot match Röschmann as an actress, thus her overall presentation (visual as well as aural) is not as strong, but strictly from a singing perspective Oelse’s voice is radiant and exquisite (I have previously described her as having a voice of pure crystal) whereas Röschmann’s is plain-sounding and a bit fluttery.

What makes Marthaler’s conception work is his zany, Marx Brothers-style sense of humor, which (thankfully) is tasteful and never overdone. In brief, this is a great singing and conducting performance set to a clever but not always convincing stage production. An opera like Rossini’s La pietra del paragone benefits from this kind of surreal zaniness because it isn’t really a stage plot that one takes the least bit seriously, but Beaumarchais’s comedy of manners, though requiring some good slapstick moments, needs a bit more structure in order to make sense of it. Therefore I recommend this DVD for its many good points while still preferring the Royal Opera version as a visual representation of the work.

FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

Also available on Blu-ray

Giuseppe Verdi
LA TRAVIATA

Violetta Valéry – Svetla Vassileva
Flora Bervoix – Daniela Pini
Annina – Antonella Trevisan
Alfredo Germont – Massimo Giordano
Giorgio Germont – Vladimir Stoyanov
Gastone – Gianluca Floris
Barone Douphol – Armando Gabba
Marchese d’Obigny – Filippo Polinelli
Dottore Grenvil – Roberto Tagliavini
Giuseppe – Iorio Zennaro
Un domestico di Flora – Roberto Scandura
Un commissionario – Matteo Mazzoli

Parma Teatro Regio Chorus and Orchestra
(chorus master: Martino Faggiani)
Yuri Temirkanov, conductor

Karl-Ernst Herrmann and Ursel Hermann, stage directors
Karl-Ernst Herrmann, set, costume, and lighting designer

Recorded live at the Teatro Regio di Parma, 9, 13, 15 October 2007

Bonus:
- Introduction to La Traviata

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: 133 mins (opera) + 11 mins (bonus)
No. of DVDs: 1

Also available on Blu-ray

Giuseppe Verdi ALZIRA

Alvaro – Francesco Facini
Gusmano – Thomas Gazheli
Ovando – Joshua Lindsay
Zamoro – Ferdinand von Bothmer
Ataliba – Yasushi Hirano
Alzira – Junko Saito
Zuma – Anna Lucia Nardi
Otumbo – Joe Tsuchizaki

Orchestra Haydn di Bolzano e Trento
(chorus master: Marco Medved)
Istituto Corale ed Orchestrale di Dobbiaco
Gustav Kuhn, conductor

Andreas Leisner, scenic concept

Recorded live at the Grand Hotel Centro Culturale, Dobbiaco, 13 and 15 September 2012, in a concert performance from the Alto Adige Festival

Bonus:
- Introduction to Alzira

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: PCM Stereo / Dolby Digital 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: Italian, English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese
Running time: 107 mins (opera) + 10 mins (bonus)
No. of DVDs: 1

This Blu-ray Disc is only playable on Blu-ray Disc players and not compatible with standard DVD players.

Also available on standard DVD

The last days of the American icon Walt Disney form a powerful and poignant subject for Philip Glass's latest opera, which was filmed at its first performances in Madrid in January 2013. Phelim McDermott's spectacular production is worthy of Disney's own visual imagination and its definitive influence on American culture, while in the pit is the conductor Dennis Russell Davies, an experienced and authoritative champion of the composer's hypnotically beautiful music, which gives wings to Rudy Wurlitzer's operatic transformation of Peter Stephan Jungk's novel, using both fact and fiction to peer into Disney's troubled psyche as illness forces him to confront his mortality.

What the press said: ''...one of the crowning events of the past year's globe-trotting celebration of Mr. Glass's 75th birthday.'' The New York Times

Philip Glass
THE PERFECT AMERICAN
(Blu-ray Disc Version)

Walt Disney – Christopher Purves
Roy – David Pittsinger
Dantine – Donald Kaasch
Hazel George – Janis Kelly
Lillian Disney – Marie McLaughlin
Sharon – Sarah Tynan
Diane – Nazan Fikret
Lucy / Josh – Rosie Lomas

The Improbable Skills Ensemble
Madrid Teatro Real Chorus and Orchestra
Dennis Russell Davies, conductor

Phelim McDermott, stage director

Recorded live from the Teatro Real, Madrid, February 2013

Bonus:
- Cast gallery

Picture format: 1080i High Definition
Sound format: LPCM 2.0 / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: English, French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Korean
Running time: 120 mins
No. of Discs: 1 (Blu-ray)

"Simply the most compelling account of L'Orfeo yet produced...John Mark Ainsley is simply superb as Orfeo..." -- BBC Music Magazine

Claudio Monteverdi
L’ORFEO

Orfeo – John Mark Ainsley
Euridice – Juanita Lascarro
La Messagiera – Brigitte Balleys
Apollo / Pastore II – Russell Smythe
La Musica – David Cordier
La Speranza – Michael Chance
Caronte – Mario Luperi
Proserpina – Bernarda Fink
Plutone / Pastore IV – Dean Robinson
Pastore I / Eco – Jean-Paul Fouchécourt
Pastore III – Douglas Nasrawi
Ninfa – Suzie LeBlanc

Tragicomedia
Concerto Palatino
Stephen Stubbs, conductor

Pierre Audi, stage director
Michael Simon, set designer
Jorge Jara, costume designer
Jean Kalman, lighting designer

Recorded live at Het Muziektheater Amsterdam, July 1997

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: LPCM Stereo / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch
Running time: 140 mins
No. of DVDs: 2

VERDI Luisa Miller • Donato Renzetti, cond; Fiorenza Cedolins (Luisa); Marcelo Alvarez (Rodolfo); Leo Nucci (Miller); Giorgio Surian (Count Walter); Rafal Siwek (Wurm); Francesca Franci (Federica); Katerina Nikolic (Laura); Teatro Regio Parma O & Ch • C MAJOR 722904 (Blu-ray: 147: 00 + 10:00 bonus) Live: Parma 2007

& Introduction to Luisa Miller

Some commentators say Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Luisa Miller represents a transition in his work from the use of traditional musical forms seen early in his career to the more innovative style of his great middle period works beginning with Rigoletto and continuing with Il Trovatore and La traviata. That very well may be true, but another trend I can attest to is that with this opera Verdi’s music is getting noticeably better. Perhaps it is not consistently better throughout the opera, but certainly notable in the ensemble pieces, the finales of acts I and II and the extended duet which ends the last act. The arias for both tenor and soprano are also well conceived, if not as catchy as “Caro nome” or “La donna è mobile.” Verdi’s Luisa overture is one of the best from his pen until La traviata comes along. All of this fine music unfortunately is a bit wasted on another of Frederich Schiller’s rather dreary romantic tragedies, but the opera has proved popular enough to remain in the repertoire of houses both big and small, particularly on the continent of Europe,

The story is of the love between peasant Luisa and Rodolfo, son of the local count (although Luisa doesn’t know that at first). Their match is opposed by both fathers, who know it means trouble, and by the Count’s principal retainer, Wurm, who wants the girl for himself. Miller père challenges the Count after he insults Luisa, and Miller is thrown in jail. Wurm tells Luisa that in order to free her father she must write a letter denying her love of Rodolfo and saying she is in love with Wurm himself. She does so under duress and the father is freed, but Rodolfo takes the letter seriously amiss. He shows up at the Miller house to confront Luisa, who is honor bound not to explain her actions. Rodolfo, in despair, gives them both poison, so they can expire slowly together while singing a love duet. Rodolfo still has enough strength left to get the Wurm before he dies himself. Oh, and there’s a stray Countess around somewhere that Rodolfo is supposed to marry who gets to sing in a set piece or two.

The Parma production seen here from 2007 is a pretty good one. It is one of the sets in the Tutto Verdi project, and one of the better I have seen in that series. Tutto Verdi aims to record all of Verdi’s operas and his Requiem on high definition Blu-ray disc for release this year to honor the composer’s 200th birthday. Stage Director Denis Krief has done a clever job of providing stylized yet evocative sets of time and place which can be changed quite quickly and easily, sometimes in full view of the audience. The Millers’ humble village domicile, with wooden walls contrasts with a backdrop of geometric shapes meant to represent the Count’s much grander quarters. Video projections of swaying trees mark one or two of the outdoor scenes. Krief also uses the costumes to emphasize the difference between peasants and aristocrats so crucial to the story line. All the denizens of the Count’s estates seem to be wearing plush finery while the peasants are dressed as . . . well, peasants. Stage action is blocked quite naturally and the video direction provides a good account of it. Although a bit stylized, the whole production has a traditional feel which I enjoy.

Unlike some other Verdi operas, this one requires six solid principal singers to be performed really successfully. Here we get five, which is above average for the Tutto Verdi series, at least in the early operas. Only the bass of Giorgio Surian as the Count really disappoints. His heavy vibrato has developed a beat which he doesn’t control, and it disfigures any attempts at lyrical singing, even noticeable in the ensembles. It is refreshing to hear a really first class tenor like Marcelo Alvarez singing here. I have always liked Argentinean Alverez’s voice, he adds a touch of vocal class to any role, and here his dramatic involvement nearly matches his fine singing. Almost the same can be said of Fiorenza Cedolins in the lead soprano role of Luisa. Her voice is just a bit heavy for the lyric agility Verdi asks for in Luisa, but Cedolins still outsings a bevy of other sopranos cast in these early Tutto Verdi productions and her high range is very enjoyable. She can also act, and if she and Alvarez are a bit more than callow youths, they still provide a properly satisfying couple in their duets together. Then we come to 65-year-old Leo Nucci, who has been a staple in several of these C Major sets. Nucci performs quite well here as Miller, and for once he is not asked to sing more than his aging stamina allows. Mezzo Francesca Franci sings the Countess and bass-baritone Rafal Siwek the role of Wurm to round out the principal singers. Both perform well, although Siwek’s vocal tone sounds too similar to the other lower voices in some of the duets and ensembles. Donato Renzetti leads the Parma orchestra members in one of their better outings, and we video viewers actually get to watch them playing during the Overture for a change.

There are several sets of Luisa Miller available on DVD; I have only seen the one from Venice, recorded in 2006. That set features another strong soprano performance by Darina Takova; she rivals Cedolins on this set but only the Count of Alexander Vinogradov tops the group of male leads seen and heard here. The Venice production is also quite traditional, but I like the Parma sets and costumes better. In an earlier review Fanfare colleague Bob Rose recommends the 1979 Met production with Scotto, Domingo, Milnes, and Morris, which I have not seen, but despite the strong cast, that video technology is nearly 35 years old, and this C Major set is in breathtaking Blu-ray video and high definition sound. It is better than satisfactory, it is quite good, and I recommend it.

FANFARE: Bill White    

Verdi (1813 - 1901) AIDA

Norma Fantini, Marco Berti, Ildiko Komlosi, Mark Doss, Orlin Anastassov, Guido Jentjens
Symphony Orchestra and Choir of La Monnaie - De Munt
Kazushi Ono

Stage director Robert Wilson

Picture Format : 16:9 Anamorphic (widescreen)
Sound Formats: DTS Surround / LPCM Stereo
Region Code: All regions
Menu languages: English Subtitles: English/French/German/Spanish/Italian
Running Time: 159 mins

Cult director Robert Wilson's highly stylised and intensely dramatic staging brings a Zen-like tranquillity to Verdi's great opera concerning the conflict between individual aspiration, tradition and duty. His visually calm, yet emotionally taut, direction is emphasised by outstanding performances from the cast and the Symphony Orchestra and Choir of la Monnaie - De Munt under the commanding and inspired musical direction of Kazushi Ono. Recorded live at the Royal Opera House (La Monnaie/De Munt) in Brussels, this riveting and painstakingly beautiful production, reminiscent at times of Japanese Noh theatre, offers a new and thought-provoking experience of a masterpiece. Recorded in High Definition and true surround sound.

R E V I E W S

"Wilson’s production of Aida is one of his truly great creations - highly disciplined and utterly convincing. ...The Monnaie’s performance was superb... The outstanding cast had no weak links vocally." -- Phil Ward, Opera

"...the Hungarian mezzo Ildiko Komlosi is a sensational Amneris, a singer of the highest calibre and a born tragédienne. The rest of the cast is equally outstanding... Verdi’s score acquired a chamber-music quality and the subtle instrumental details were lovingly underlined. A stunning production, not to be missed." -- The Bulletin

"...Monnaie orchestra was in tip-top rip-roaring form, brass firm focussed and cutting edge, woodwind, specially the flutes, longbreathed and luminous, strings reaching to top and bottom of their ranges with exemplary certainty and clarity." -- John McCann, Opera

"Amneris is sung by the rivetingly powerful Hungarian mezzo Ildiko Komlosi... Norma Fantini’s vibrant, emotionally confused Aida is sheathed in white... Mr Wilson ... creates a sense of visual calm and continuum that has you looking at the stage as you might contemplate a painting. ... Under his subtle, emotionally taut direction, the singers, chorus and orchestra sounded magnificent." -- The Wall Street Journal Europe