Month: November 2005

On 24 October 1998, the Vienna State Opera presented the opening night of its staging of Gioachino Rosssiniís Guillaume Tell. It was the first Staatsoper production in 91 years of Rossiniís final opera and masterpiece, as well as the Vienna premiere of the 1829 operaís original French-language version.

The compositions of John Tavener, Arvo P‰rt, and Henryk GÛrecki have accustomed us to the degree that religious spirituality has found serious musical voice in the late twentieth century. In their works, a profound language of musical mysticism is wed to various liturgical evocations, creating compositions that seem both authentic in their expression and unusually personal in their genesis.

Watching this DVD, your reviewer suddenly recalled a brief exchange from the film Reversal of Fortune, when the Ron Silver/Alan Dershowitz character says to the Jeremy Irons/Claus von Bulow one, ìYou are a very strange man, ì and Irons, in the moment that may have won him the Academy Award, replies with eerie blandness, ìYou have no idea.î