This looks like a winner, with an esteemed conductor (Zubin Mehta), top-rank cast (Violeta Urmana, Marcello Giordani, Carlo Guelfi), and a production directed by Nicholas JoÎl that originated at the Opernhaus Z¸rich, a house that takes some chances and scores some successes.
Author: James Sohre
Mozart: Die Entf¸hrung aus dem Serail
The strategies of non-traditional opera directors are becoming as predictable and formulaic as the stuffy, static traditional productions that they work so hard not to emulate.
Rossini: Il Turco in Italia
If the economic downturn has canceled some opera lovers plans to attend any of the appealing European summer festivals, perhaps a trip online will find a DVD of a production from a recent year.
DONIZETTI: Don Gregorio
Like a baseball player with a low batting average but a propensity for home runs, Gaetano Donizetti composed dozens of operas, among which only a very few get frequent performances today.
Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream Charms La Scala
Robert Carsen’s production of Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is not new, as the La Scala playbill suggests.
Claudio Abbado Introduces the Complete Pergolesi
Very little is known about Giovanni Battista Draghi (or Drago, according to certain sources), known as Pergolesi.
Mozart: Idomeneo
“Mozart’s first mature masterpiece,” Sophie Becker calls Idomeneo in the booklet essay of this DVD set of a June 2008 Bayerische Staatsoper staging.
La Scala at the Movies: Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda and Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde
From the La Scala series of filmed productions come two excellent DVDs, one an incisive and contemporary staging by Patrice Chereau of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, and the other a rip-roaring, old-fashioned (in the best sense) performance of Donizetti’s flawed but entertaining Maria Stuarda.
Otto Nicolai: Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor
Otto Nicolai’s Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor belongs to that somewhat purgatorial group of operas best remembered only for their overtures.