DVD & Blu-Ray Sale
917 products
Bellini: Norma / Gamba [Blu-ray]
Also available on standard DVD
Norma is considered not only Bellini’s masterpiece, but also one of the best 19th century operas tout court. Yet, its premiere at La Scala in 1831, three months from the beginning of its composition, was received with a coldness that surprised even Bellini. However, in the space of a few days Norma dispelled all doubts and started on a triumphant journey. This production was recorded at the Macerata Opera Festival, and features a superb cast. It was a particularly great success for Uruguayan soprano Maria Jose Siri, who performs the title role, and Italian mezzo Sonia Ganassi who is Adalgisa. “A perfect synthesis of cast, direction, sets, lighting, and costumes,” according to Italian critics. The aria “Casta diva” received a standing ovation.
The Art of David Hallberg at the Bolshoi
The Art of David Hallberg at the Bolshoi
Anastasia / Royal Ballet
Royal Opera: The Collection
The Royal Opera Collection brings together eighteen outstanding productions from The Royal Opera, spanning all-time classics and contemporary masterpieces. Featuring some of the world’s finest performers and leading directors, The Collection demonstrates the breadth of The Royal Opera’s work including Le nozze di Figaro, Carmen, Turandot, La traviata, Cavalleria rusticana, Pagliacci, and the Multiple award-winning Written on Skin. A special edition book is also included, containing new articles about The Royal Opera, richly illustrated with stunning photographs.
Talbot: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Prokofiev: Cinderella / Dutch National Ballet
Here in all their whimsy and vivid charm is a pair of fairy-tale masterpieces from choreographer Christopher Wheeldon. His brilliant adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s surreal Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, choreographed for The Royal Ballet where he is Artistic Associate, is described by The Times as ‘spectacular family entertainment brought to life with enormous theatrical verve’. His innovative reimagining of Cinderella for Dutch National Ballet, to Prokofiev’s celebrated and colourful score, gives the characters renewed depth and complexity, creating a truly magical experience. ‘‘...This Alice looks set to become a classic.’’ Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (The Guardian 4 Stars) ‘‘Wheeldon's narrative offers magic in every sphere - design, choreography, and orchestra.’’ Cinderella (BBC Music Magazine 4 Stars)
Shakespeare: Cymbeline
Bach: St. Matthew Passion
Rossini: William Tell (Guillaume Tell)
Verdi: Il Trovatore / Oren, Fondazione Orchestra Regionale delle Marche
Taken live from the stage of the Macerata (Italy) Festival in July and August of 2016, this performance has much to recommend it despite the fact that none of the singers are familiar names. This is the kind of regional performance that the big American companies should be listening to.
Never having heard of the soprano singing Leonora, Anna Pirozzi, I checked Operabase and discovered that she sings all over Europe–plenty at Covent Garden–and that her repertoire is all of the heavy Verdi roles: Abigaille, Lady Macbeth, Aida, Amelia, and Leonora. I wouldn’t bet on her Abigaille or Lady Macbeth, but her performance here is nothing less than spectacular.
The voice is big, with a rock-solid middle register, a steely edge to the high Bs, Cs, and D-flats, and a strong bottom, which avoids chest voice for the most part. But she also can spin long, high pianissimo phrases with a Caballé-like ease. The sound is attractive (though not in the Caballé class), her Convent Scene is a model of soft, legato singing, and her entire fourth act is nothing less than magnificent. And she throws herself into the text.
Marco Caria is a very good Luna with great ease in his upper third, a fine legato, and a nice sneer. But the voice, even on a recording, sounds a bit small for the part, and when he pushes for a bigger sound the microphones catch it and he sounds a bit desperate. But for the most part, he’s a valuable addition, a true Italian voice.
Piero Pretti as Manrico is a big lyric whose schedule includes Riccardo (Ballo), Rodolfo (Bohème), and Gualtiero (Pirata), as well as more Manricos, through September 2018. The sound is appealing and well-centered, the high notes–he takes “Di quella pira” in key–admirable and solid. But he’s a size too small for the part. He’s inaudible in the stretta to the first-act finale as well as in his duets with Azucena. And in the final scene, when he should be overpowering Leonora, he simply isn’t. Try him, you’ll like him, but think of Manricos of the past and he’s a miniature.
Enkelejda Shkosa is a more internationally known singer. Her Azucena is just about perfect despite a too-quick “Stride la vampa”; Azucena’s extreme anxiety is audible throughout. Shkosa’s third act is gloriously sung, and if the conductor and recording engineers had opted for more volume it would have torn down the house. The others are all very good, paying heed to what they’re singing, and Alessandro Spina’s Ferrando is solid.
Daneil Oren’s leadership has to be judged by the fact that this was recorded over a period of a few performances, and accordingly voice/orchestra balances vary from scene to scene. And in the Tower Scene, Manrico sounds like he is standing next to Leonora. Nonetheless, Oren totally understands mid-Verdi and differentiates beautifully between the exclamatory and, for want of a better term, “post bel canto” moments in the score. He gives the singers leeway in the arias but keeps a tight rein otherwise. The sound is clear, but as mentioned, the volume levels keep changing.
In all, though–and this is the point of even reviewing this recording–aside from Netrebko’s recent outing, this is the best Trovatore to be released in quite a while. There is, by the way, a DVD and Blu-ray video of this performance. It is all in reds and blacks, with plenty of fire. The look is gothic.
– ClassicsToday (Robert Levine)
Ballet du Capitole - Trois ballets de Kader Belarbi
Ballet du Capitole - Trois ballets de Kader Belarbi
Verdi: Il trovatore
Pugni: The Pharaoh's Daughter / Sotnikov, Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra
Bel Air Classiques presents Petipa's extravaganza ''The Pharaoh's Daughter'', in a stunning production by Pierre Lacotte. Recreating the spectacular sumptuousness of the original, the ballet tells the tale of a young Englishman who dreams he elopes with a Pharaoh's daugher. Despite a desert storm, a lion hunt and an attempted suicide, the couple finally wins the Pharaoh's blessing to their marriage. From its creation in 1862, Petipa's grandiose ballet was a sensational success; its stupendous costumes and striking scenery, its exotica, romanticism and drama appealing to audiences as much as the virtuoso choreography. The Bolshoi Ballet and the two soloists Svetlana Zakharova and Serguei Filin are at their best in spite of the difficulty of Pierre Lacotte's choreography.
LE REGARD PHILOSOPHIQUE
Patchwork
Verdi: Don Carlo / Oren, Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini [Blu-ray]
First performed in French at the Paris Opera in 1867, Don Carlo is in many ways an amazingly innovative work. The opera seems to underline Verdi's shift from the Manichean division between good and evil, which had been a clear, structural element of his dramaturgy up to that point in his career. In this opera, Verdi assembles all his mainstay music theatre themes: power, with its honors and burdens; the contrasts of impossible love; the conflict between father and son; and an oppressed people demanding freedom. Verdi radically revised the score in 1883, using an Italian libretto and reducing the opera from five acts to four. The popularity of Don Carlo has grown unremittingly ever since, with today's critics almost unanimously recognizing it as one of Verdi's greatest masterpieces, an opera that continues to reveal new gems. Daniel Oren is fully in control on the podium, ensuring unanimity between orchestra and singers. The Maestro softens teh dark tones of the score, which are well reflected in the visuals, choosing instead to emphasize the various changes of mood.
Beethoven: Triple Concerto & Symphony No. 5 / Blomstedt, Gewandhausorchester [Blu-ray]
More than 200 years after its premiere at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, Isabelle Faust, Jean-Guihen Queyras and Martin Helmchen have congenially mastered the artistic challenge of Beethoven’s gemstone. Under Herbert Blomstedt's sensitive direction, the soloists unite chamber musical intimacy together with virtuoso sophistication – and prove once again that the Triple Concerto is an unduly underestimated, much too rarely programmed masterpiece. With the composer's 5th Symphony, Blomstedt succeeds in achieving an entirely new perspective of this work. In the culmination of his three-year, intensive reenactment of Beethoven’s cosmos, the impressive sound that characterizes the Swedish grand seigneur's conducting is heralded by transparency rather than showmanship, relevance instead of pathos, and tenderness in place of sentimentality.
Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 6 & 7 / Blomstedt, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig
In his Sixth Symphony, the "Pastoral", Ludwig van Beethoven conveys his musical message in such a way that lets the listener literally "see" images of beautiful nature, tempestuous storms, and shepherds singing in the fields, whereas in his Seventh Symphony, Beethoven lets the music speak for itself. The performances of these works by the Gewandhausorchester under its conductor laureate Herbert Bomstedt give the uplifting feeling that the intentions of both composer and performers are united in serving the musical message. In the lively, subtly differentiated interpretation of the works, sincere happiness, deep respect, piety, joyful, serenity and an affinity to nature as well as passion, vitality and spirit can all be felt. This is what the "authenticity" of making music is all about. The humanist and musician Herbert Blomstedt embodies this truth in a unique way, creating an atmosphere where the wonders of music all become true.
Beethoven: Symphony Nos. 6 & 7
Beethoven: Triple Concerto - Symphony No. 5
New York City Ballet in Paris
Ballet for Children [Blu-ray]
Verdi: Otello / Thielemann, Cura, Staatskapelle Dresden [Blu-ray]
A superb new Otello from the Salzburg Easter Festival: “Cura is a commanding Otello with his richly coloured tenor and both fragile delicacy and fiery ardour” (Südwestpresse). “Röschmann as Desdemona guarantees effortless perfection” (Neue Musikzeitung). “Álvarez as Iago would be hard to surpass” (Abendzeitung). This Salzburg production – featuring “a cast worthy of any festival” (Südwestpresse) – is conducted by Christian Thielemann, who displays a command of Verdian tragedy to match his celebrated sovereignty in Wagner. He and his great Dresden Staatskapelle, a consummate opera ensemble, “achieve wonders” (Die Presse), “generating Italian ‘Musikdrama’ with their incandescence and precise nuances” (Abendzeitung). In his fascinating staging, director Vincent Broussard integrates video with set and lighting design to create an idealized visual context for what he calls Otello’s “conflict of ancient and modern, of 2D and 3D”.
Donizetti: Olivo e Pasquale / Sardelli, Orchestra dell'Accademia Teatro alla Scala
This sparkling opera buffa is a premiere from the 2016 Donizetti Festival of Bergamo, with the part of Pasquale in Neapolitan dialect. It is the story of two rich merchant brothers from Lisbon, who are used to weighing everything against their barganing power. Also the marriage of Pasquale's niece Isabella is a "bargain" to them: she must marry another merchant, so as not to break with family tradition. The gags among the various characters are hilarious - especially those between the two brothers, who have competely different characters - creating an almost surreal atmosphere. Olivo, interpreted by Bruno Taddia, is teh real protagonist: as Isabella's father, he portrays a gruff, inflexible man, and does so with self-assurance and ease but never over the top. No less convincing is Filippo Morace as his brother Pasquale: istrionic and exhilarating as a na ctor, musically precise, and excellent in his Neapolitan dialect performance. Laurea Giordano, also thanks to her physique du role, is perfect as Isabella, the heartbroken girl torn between love for the young Camillo and obedience towards her grouchy father.
