Thread: Opera on DVD

Originally Posted by Keikobad

Well, from my perspective, having BOTH recordings is the way to go, for each are quite brilliant.

How wouldn't be immediately seduced by Jessye's Cassandre, Tatiana's beguiling Didon. or Placido's full-throated Enée?

The Gardiner/Châtelet video, with it's imaginative use of mirrors (and more updated, stream-lined visuals) offers deep pleasures. And who wouldn't be seduced by La Antonacci? The woman is beyond compare.

My question: Why must we choose?

To answer your question - we wouldn't have to choose if we had unlimited funds to purchase these recordings/videos and unlimited time to listen/watch. Neither is true in my case, so, I do what I can.

Probably not the best Peter Grimes out there, and with two significant technical problemas: the sound is only stereo, and there are no subtitles (of course, for English speakers, they aren't really needed since one can perfectly understand the well articulated words as in this opera there is more arioso and recitatif than actual lyric singing).

Still, I found this production beautiful and very well acted.

So...I'm considering putting the DVDs for Netrebko's & Villazon's performances of La Boheme and La Traviata on my Christmas wish list this year based on what everyone is saying....I'm going to check out some clips online later tonight. (also on the wish list: the Black Dog Library editions of Aida and/or Carmen) even though when I started listening to opera just last month, I had just planned on listening to highlights of aria and duets albums.

I think I got bit by the bug!

Originally Posted by Sonata

So...I'm considering putting the DVDs for Netrebko's & Villazon's performances of La Boheme and La Traviata on my Christmas wish list this year based on what everyone is saying....I'm going to check out some clips online later tonight. (also on the wish list: the Black Dog Library editions of Aida and/or Carmen) even though when I started listening to opera just last month, I had just planned on listening to highlights of aria and duets albums.

I think I got bit by the bug!

You'll love all of the above, they're great.

Would I regret getting this DVD:



?

Originally Posted by Aramis

Would I regret getting this DVD:



?

Regret it? This is one of the five best opera DVDs of all times, in my opinion. A spectacular performance in every way you look at it, of one of the greatest operas ever composed. Go for it!

I already got it and have watched through fragmnets. Customes are epic fail, what the hell those coats stand for? Singing and scenography looks good though.

Oh well, there are a few glitches, nothing is perfect. Costumes and machine guns are silly. Everything else is sublime.

Following the fabulous Cosi fan Tutte trail of Miah Persson:






And now the fall MET production with our sweet angel Danielle De Niese, William Christie conductor debut at MET (oh yes Anna Netrebko in Don Pasquale also looks like a winner)

http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/...f#/a95fa72f/44

Originally Posted by Almaviva

I read this and had an idea, I don't know if it will work, but I'll make the suggestion anyway; if you decide to follow it, let me know if it works.
I believe that if instead of connecting your DVD player to your TV by the more modern means - HDMI cable, component cables, etc - you instead connect the AV output jacks (the RCA kind, red, yellow, white) into one of your TV's AV input jacks, you can prevent the delivery of the digital signal to your widescreen TV and get instead an analog signal that is in 4:3 format. Then you switch the input to AV in your TV, and finally you adjust the format in your TV's pic size control to full, and you'll get a regular, natural looking 4:3 old fashioned format without the image being squeezed. This way you can watch this DVD while bypassing the widescreen format if this is important for you.

Funny how true is the saying 'different strokes for different folks,' because I'm the opposite, I hate it when it is 4:3 and much prefer the wide screen. That's why I don't know if my approach will work, because I've never done it.

This is definitely worth a shot. Thanks for the suggestion. I'll try it and let you know how it works out. (The only opera I've been watching on TV recently are the Levine Ring, and the Chereau Ring - both in 4:3, so I'm perfectly content with them!

Originally Posted by mamascarlatti

This is the first Ring I saw. By the end of it I was ready to chew my own toes off if I had to listen to Behrens for a minute longer. Loved Jessie Norman's Sieglinde though.

I know it's awful to say it, but I'm actually relieved to read this, Natalie. I think Behrens is a seriously weak link in that Met production (the DVD set) - very often she seems to be straining unnaturally, and her voice becomes thin, harsh, and unstable as a result, but most of the reviews I've read don't seem to make much of it.

I've been saturating myself in Der Ring after a gap of maybe 25 years - never thought I'd ever sit through a whole cycle again. But I suddenly went overboard, having had the good luck to pick up a cheap Solti set (I only ever had Bohm, till recently): so it was Solti first, on CDs, followed by the Levine/Met and Boulez/Chereau versions on DVD.

The Met production is very patchy to these ears and eyes. The Rheingold is almost terminally static, visually, and the Siegfried seems to drag on a lot, and then by way of a change, Behrens completely wrecks the last Act. By contrast Walkure got off to a cracking start thanks mainly to a brilliant performance by Jessye Norman's Sieglinde, and I found I could cope a bit better with Behrens in Gotterdammerung, so it wasn't a write-off. I'd managed to buy this set at half-price, and I'm very glad I didn't pay more.

Moving from there to Chereau/Boulez was like shifting up several gears. I'd heard this performance in 1980, but had never seen it till now. The sexy Rhinemaidens were electrifying, I thought, and Rheingold seemed to be over before I knew it, so entertaining was it. There's real acting going on here, and McIntyre's Wotan knocks spots off Morris's waxwork version. In the light of later Rings, this one seems quite unexceptionable - surprising when I recall the furore it caused back in the 70s. Walkure is magnificent, and as for Gwyneth Jones, oh my goodness she simply is Brunnhilde. I remember being astounded by her singing in 1980 when I heard this Ring on the radio over 4 nights, and this certainly lives up to the recollection. (And makes Behrens look and sound abysmally poor by comparison.) I haven't watched Siegfried or Gotterdammerung yet, in this set.

I was wondering about trying the Copenhagen Ring - wondered if I'd be able to cope with the extreme 'interpretation' going on, and thought I might. But then I saw a clip on YouTube of Alberich stealing the Rhinegold: that is, stabbing a golden youth swimming in a bath of water, with blood everywhere. No, no, a thousand times no, and thank goodness I didn't actually spend money on such a thing. When I buy an opera I expect to get an opera and not a graphic blood-fest. Really upsetting. Bargepole job.

Just wached this Les Troyens DVD discussed on previous page.

One of greatest opera DVDs of all-time? Yes, singers are great (at least most of them), everything sounds splendid, but what makes this DVD so good, what would this recording lost if it would be only CD? Only thing that pushed me to watching it was lack of libretto to learn by heart, so I needed subtitles. But that doesn't make DVD great, even worst ones have subtitles.

And everything visual, from acting to customes was either decent (only decent) or very bad.

Originally Posted by Elgarian

I was wondering about trying the Copenhagen Ring - wondered if I'd be able to cope with the extreme 'interpretation' going on, and thought I might. But then I saw a clip on YouTube of Alberich stealing the Rhinegold: that is, stabbing a golden youth swimming in a bath of water, with blood everywhere. No, no, a thousand times no, and thank goodness I didn't actually spend money on such a thing. When I buy an opera I expect to get an opera and not a graphic blood-fest. Really upsetting. Bargepole job.

Alan, I think you'd find other aspects of the Copenhagen production upsetting too - Wotan actually hacks off Alberich's whole arm when getting the Ring; Sieglinde, not Siegmund, draws the sword out of the tree; the Norns in Götterdämmerung are rowdy members of the audience; Brünnhilde doesn't immolate herself at the end but rather is left (literally) holding the baby.

Of course I loved it.

Originally Posted by mamascarlatti

Alan, I think you'd find other aspects of the Copenhagen production upsetting too - Wotan actually hacks off Alberich's whole arm when getting the Ring; Sieglinde, not Siegmund, draws the sword out of the tree; the Norns in Götterdämmerung are rowdy members of the audience; Brünnhilde doesn't immolate herself at the end but rather is left (literally) holding the baby.

It all makes Chereau look so tame, doesn't it? Incidentally, I'd seen the Brunnhilde-with-the-baby bit, and the good-time-party-girl Valkyries too, and they were things I thought I could live with. But I do have a very low tolerance for graphically portrayed violence, and already I can see that I'm going to have to work hard to erase the image of the killing in the bath when I listen to Rheingold in the future.

This leaves the Barenboim/Kupfer/Bayreuth Ring as a remaining DVD option. I've seen some of this on You tube - it seems oppressively ill-lit, but as far as I can see the 'interpretation' angle doesn't seem impossibly obtrusive, and it's been reissued at a lower price. I'd welcome thoughts on that, if you have them.

Originally Posted by Elgarian

This leaves the Barenboim/Kupfer/Bayreuth Ring as a remaining DVD option. I've seen some of this on You tube - it seems oppressively ill-lit, but as far as I can see the 'interpretation' angle doesn't seem impossibly obtrusive, and it's been reissued at a lower price. I'd welcome thoughts on that, if you have them.

Well, so far I have three Ring cycles on DVD - the Copenhagen, Chereau and Mehta/Valencia one (no violence but visually very busy with all the back-projections). I've heard good things about the Barenboim one musically and as you say the production is inoffensive. Go on, buy it and then you can tell us what you think.

As for the violence - well like you in the ordinary course of things I avoid watching graphic violence. But in this case I feel that it is making the point in no uncertain terms that in stealing the gold Alberich is committing a deadly crime against love and nature. And when Wotan cuts off Alberich's arm he is parallelling this - the other side of the coin.