Black & White Ballets

A very fluid and acrobatic variation of classical ballet
Have you heard of Jiri Kylian. he was taught choreography by the most strict and controlled dance masters
and immediately started a very fluid form of modern and callical choreography
These are his best dances and very well performed. Just a great set of works

Beautiful Dancing
This Nederlands Dans Theater DVD was out of print for ages and the only used copies available cost more than $100.00. I was so happy when it was reissued and for such a reasonable cost. Jiri Kylian's choreography is amazing and, if you like dance, you'll enjoy this dvd.



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Korper

Korper
This DVD was interesting, and enjoyable. However, I would rate it as a grade of C and that is highest grade I give it.

C.L. Heath





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Verdi: Rigoletto [Blu-ray]

Rigoletto--film or staged version ?
For many opera fans the favourite Rigoletto on dvd remains the 1983 film version starring the young Pavarotti as the dashing Duke, his irrepressible singing and high spirits contrasting sharply with the gut wrenching wretchedness of the jester played by Wixell almost to perfection,and of course the inimitable Gruberova as Gilda the jester's daughter.(For me this together with the Domingo/Migenes 'Carmen', and the Domingo/Stratas 'La Traviata' represents the best of opera films). Now comes the 2006 production of Rigoletto, staged by the Zurich Opera House with Chorus and Orchestra wonderfully conducted by Santi, recorded in High-Definition and transfered to an Arthaus Blu Ray disc of breathtaking quality. I'm not exaggerating. Even by today's Hi-Def standards, the picture quality here is simply stunning: inky blackness, realistic night time scenes accurately rendered with proper light and shadow effects, atmospheric blue lighting, and the sets and costumes show up in vivid pop-up...

Among the most perfect performances and recordings of an opera I have seen
This is too brief to be called a review, and I intend to come back with something more substantial. But for the moment.

We are in a period where directors far too often want to modernize the setting; sometimes it works, other times it is terrible misjudgement. Then there are productions geared to display a star performer. And so often producers/directors forget that if the composer wrote a work in the form of an opera, it was intended to be seen, so the acting, both visual and through the singing, is an important part of the production. This has, in the past, not always been given its due.

Well in this production, none of these failings are present. First, let me say, a composer wrote his opera for the stage, and that is where it should be performed. This production boasts a cast of uniform excellence, where the beautiful singing of Verdi's great score rates among the very best. But the performers, soloists and chorus have been directed to fully bring out the...

Perfection
I've only recently been buying opera on blu-ray, and this is by far the best I've seen. Very often, when one sees contemporary opera on DVD, a viewer finds himself sitting through a "Euro-trash" version of the opera, where the director runs riot, ignoring the original intentions of the composer and librettist, and doing nothing except drawing attention to himself. But here is a Rigoletto that I imagine Verdi would have loved. Combined with exemplary audio and sound, it would be hard to give a higher recommendation to this disc.

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Le Grand Macabre [Blu-ray]

A difficult work given an outstanding production
Although it may be one of the most popular works of contemporary opera, you aren't going to see too many productions of György Ligeti's only opera, Le Grand Macabre due to its demanding nature and its limited appeal to a rather specialised opera audience. So when the Liceu in Barcelona (with La Monnaie in Brussels and the ENO in London) decide to put on a rare production of the work and go as far as to make a world premiere video recording of it, you can be thankful that the challenge of finding an appropriate look for the all-important visual representation of this work has been given to La Fura dels Baus, the experimental Catalan production team perhaps most in tune with such an unusual work and capable of relating to its status as an "anti-anti-opera", which is not quite the same thing, as you might imagine, as just an opera.

Le Grand Macabre most certainly isn't "just" an opera, but it is one that fully exploits the full range of dramatic, musical and singing...

Well done - but not for everyone
Gyorgy Ligeti wrote his opera "Le Grand Macabre" in 1977 and revised it in 1996. It is based on the play of the same name by Belgian playwright Michel de Ghelderode. Essentially the title is also the main character - a "grim reaper" whose real name is Nekrotzar ('czar of the dead') figure who enters the town of Breughelland during its apocalyptic last hours - or so his grim announcement goes. As the narrative progresses, we see figures from the town who represent various forms of human debauchery; almost a complete roster of the "Seven Deadly Sins" Various characters illustrate drunkenness, sexual excess, greed, abuse of power and so forth. The catch is we see - in what the playwright considered a satire - that the merchant of death may be deluding and fooling himself while mankind goes on (as is revealed very near the end.) In the opera, and in this performance, the roles that seem the most well sketched - nearly caricature - are a self absorbed but weak king, the town drunk and a...

Not Your Mother's Opera !
Whew! I first heard this bizarre opera on the original 2 CD release. It is a stark and startling apocalyptic romp through an end-of-everything scenario. Now that I have seen this Blu-ray release, I am even more startled. The staging is just mind-boggling, with the main set including a giant naked woman from whose various orifices characters enter and exit. A warning...the language is frank and shocking, with some words I never heard used in an opera before! Jarring and a joy to watch, this is a worthy addition to anyone's modern opera collection. I highly recommend it.

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Sigismondo

Strong production of a rare early Rossini work
Updating an opera and setting it in an asylum isn't a terribly original idea and it does usually have a sense of desperation about it, but there is of course a tradition of mad scenes in bel canto opera, so it's not necessarily inappropriate. All the more so since Rossini's rarely heard 1814 opera Sigismondo actually opens with a mad scene of sorts rather than builds up to one, where Sigismondo, the king of Poland, is still tormented by the loss of his wife Aldimira, who he had executed 15 years ago on account of accusations of infidelity that had been laid against her. Sigismondo belongs in this respect to another traditional opera theme then, that of innocent women unjustly accused of infidelity or having their maidenly honour called into question by a jealous admirer who has had his advances rejected. Starting the way it does however, already wading in the depths of madness, Rossini's Sigismondo would seem to have other ambitions towards a psychological drama more closely...

A Failure but Recycled into New Life
Grove's Dictionary of Opera says of Sigismondo (Venice 1814)that this is arguable Rossini's most unrevivable serious opera and I must agree. If the cast and this production can't bring it to life than nothing will. The production is excellent. It tries by setting this story of a mentally unstable king who believes he has be betrayed by an unfaithful wife and goes off kilter in an insane asylum. This means a lot of extras trotting around doing crazy things (silently) while the main characters are spouting one dizzying bel canto line after another. The king is the well established true bel canto mezzo Daniela Barcellona (a "pants" role). She is devine. I can't help but play her sections over and over again. She is a consumate artist of this style of music.
The true find of this recording is rising star Olga Peretyatko who plays the king's unjustly maligned wife Aldimira. She is a superb singer of strong full voice and great physical as well as vocal beauty. I think it worth the...

Was Rossini a Baroque Composer?
Was Mozart? It might be fun to argue the affirmative in a debate tournament. Consider some evidence:

* The loopy libretti he chose, most of them, would have served equally well for operas by Handel or Hasse. There isn't a speck of compromising plausibility about any of them. Rossini's "humor" is far closer to 18th C opera than to, for example, Offenbach.

* The story-line of a Rossini opera -- Sigismondo is a good example -- is advanced chiefly in the recitativos and ariosos, while the arias are devoted to generic expressions of emotions. That's why Rossini, like Vivaldi and Handel, was able to re-cycle his best arias from opera to opera without any sense of shameful incongruity.

* Rossini's operas generally follow the Baroque structures of alternating recitativos with ABA da capo arias. Rossini got wily with his da capos. He extended the B sections, tacked in extra B sections, rewrote the da capo A sections in musically clever ways, but the...

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