Best Classical Choices; Favorite Performances Available On Dvd and Cd
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Summary
Winners from Paris's Chatelet Theatre start with Berlioz's sprawling Les Troyens in a handsome production by Yannis Kokkos, with John Eliot Gardiner conducting a period band. Susan Graham and Gregory Kunde are the lovers, but Anna Caterina Antonacci's Cassandre steals the show (BBC Opus Arte DVD; 3 discs; 5 hr. 12 min.). Rimsky Korsakov's opulent Le Coq d'Or, in a drop-dead gorgeous production directed by Ennosuke Ichikawa, conducted by Kent Nagano, is the opera SFO was cheated of by the fiscal crisis. Watch it and weep (TDK DVD; 108 min.).
Riccardo Muti's style is more slashing than latter day [Herbert von Karajan], but his Don Carlo is strictly for Pavarotti fans; this ornate Zeffirelli production from La Scala, 1992, was too late for the troubled Italian tenor; the rest of the cast is only adequate (EMI Classics DVD; 2 discs; 182 min.). Much better are two thrilling Scala productions from the late 1980s, starring the beautifully matched trio of tenor Chris Merritt, soprano Cheryl Studer and baritone Giorgio Zancanaro: Rossini's Guglielmo Tell (Opus Arte DVD; 2 discs; 240 min.) and Verdi's I Vespri Siciliani (Opus Arte DVD; 211 min.). Since the performances are first-rate, my only complaint is that the so-called "purist" Muti allowed both French-language operas to be performed in Italian translation.Valery Gergiev is currently the king of DVD with nearly a dozen performances of Kirov Opera repertory; the productions are opulently old-fashioned. Tchaikovsky's Mazeppa is a weird story of a doomed May-December affair, irrational violence and torture; it's hard to know why it appealed to the composer. The cast, except for Nikolai Putilin's Mazeppa, is middle-rank Kirov (Philips DVD; 174 min.). Much more glamorously cast is Borodin's Prince Igor, in a 1998 production starring the best of the Kirov-Putilin, Gorchakova and Borodina. Fokine's original choreography is employed in the Polovtsian dances (Philips DVD; 2 discs; 194 min.).See the full content of this document
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Best Classical Choices; Favorite Performances Available On Dvd and Cd
Last year, as I started to recommend the usual compact disc sets for holiday giving, word came that from now on most classical music would be issued on DVD. Well, it didn't happen. Non-operatic classical music is still readily available on CDs, and the new DVD catalog is almost entirely made up of opera performances, both l...
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