DVD Videos

“A simple, beautiful staging in glowing stained-glass hues, with Jerusalem and Sotin near-ideal, Kundry and Amfortas slightly less so, but Stein's conducting is soundly theatrical.” BBC Music Magazine, October 2007 *****

“A production and performance that showed the festival at its finest” New York Times

“In the simple stylizing of the sets...[Wolfgang Wagner] follows the example of his brother, Wieland, and effectively so...Leif Roar makes a wonderfully sinister Klingsor, singing powerfully. The rest of the cast is comparably strong...Horst Stein is a totally reliable conductor, rising well to the big climaxes of the choral passages” Penguin Guide, 2010 ***

“With Johanna Meier’s unusually powerful Isolde and René Kollo’s resplendent, expressive Tristan, a better cast is hardly imaginable today” Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung

“For a supposedly 'difficult' opera, there's a fair choice of DVD Tristans… But this 1983 Bayreuth version, reappearing at last here on DVD, remains the finest. Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's staging steers impressively between the Romantically naturalistic and the poetic: a gnarled tree trunk doubles as ship and castle, and Isolde is symbolically isolated by her encircling robes. René Kollo and Johanna Meier don't have huge voices, but sing and act with unusual expression, and even look good. Matti Salminen as King Mark and Hanna Schwarz as Brangäne are heartbreakingly intense...” BBC Music Magazine, December 2007 *****

“This Bayreuth Tristan (first seen in 1981) is an almost perfect marriage of fairy-tale beauty (legendary Arthurian settings, "period" costumes) and interventionist Regie. Meier, of all princess, spell-casting witch and consumed lover, is a risk-taking Isolde, slamming the sword with the missing fragment into the wide swaying ship deck. Kollo's hero has Hotter-like detail, intensity and pain. ...the younger Daniel Barenboim secures thrilling drama-enhancing playing from the Festival Orchestra. But the ultimate triumph is Ponnelle's - he staged the show, designed the set and the costumes, and directed this film of it.” Gramophone Magazine, November 2007

“Barenboim's DVD, with evocatively beautiful sets by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, presents an essentially poetic vision of Tristan...The video production is very well managed, using six cameras imaginatively, often in close-up, bringing out the beauty of the sets. Meier rises superbly to the challenge of the final Liebestod, rounding off an impressive performance” Penguin Guide

“A performance realised to Glyndebourne's highest standards - the chorus and stage brass are Bayreuth-level, the casting immaculate (they can all really sing these parts) and Belohlávek's conducting balanced with a Goodall-like attention to the filigree detail of Wagner's new-wave scoring.” Gramophone Magazine, August 2008

“Stemme's fiery Irish princess is even finer than on the Domingo CD… Gambill's burly Tristan projects a darker, more resigned intensity… Pape's black-voiced Marke rightly dominates the stage… Karneus is a passionate, lusciously sung Brangäne. Lehnhoff's Glyndebourne production doesn't outclass Daniel Barenboim's magnificent video... But those looking for a Tristan with warmth and immediacy will find it certainly shares Barenboim's benchmark recommendation.” BBC Music Magazine, March 2008 *****

“I don’t think that I have ever witnessed a more perfect realisation of a Wagner opera than this superb Tristan und Isolde. …[Jirí Belohlávek] is scrupulous with the score, and takes his time over it: the pauses and silences are immense and there is no factitious attempt to whip up excitement by speeding. …a great and unforgettable occasion” The Telegraph

“The filming of each act begins annoyingly with a Star Wars storyline pan-in on the words 'Tristan und Isolde', 'Act 2' etc, using up the preludes. After that, however, comes a performance realised to Glyndebourne's highest standards – the chorus and stage brass are Bayreuthlevel, the casting immaculate (they can all really sing these parts), and Belohlávek's conducting balanced with a Goodall-like attention to the filigree detail of Wagner's new-wave scoring.
Old-style analyses of the music used to talk about the 'glance' motif. Lehnhoff's staging deploys a series of heartbreaking glances: Stemme's Isolde when Karnéus's Brangäne tells her she's taken the love draught, Stemme again when Tristan arrives in Act 2, Pape's Marke as he sees the lovers together and, at BrokebackMountain-level, Skovhus's Kurwenal as he cradles Gambill's Tristan then breaks away, half in fear of his lord's death, half in fear of his feelings for him. In fact, has a Tristan ever been so deeply loved by his lady and squire as here, or felt so wretched at betraying his king? And is Skovhus actually the greatest Kurwenal yet recorded? Roland Aeschlimann provides a geometrically attractive whorl of a standing set, concentric wooden circles telescoping towards a constantly varied horizon: a ship, a spaceship, everywhere, nowhere – perfect. The lighting (Robin Carter and Aeschlimann) has a genuine physical presence and seems to reinvent the colour blue. At the point of Isolde's almost belated arrival in Act 3, a surreal, Ingmar Bergman-like atmosphere permeates events: she arrives from behind on high as a figure of death and wraps him in a black cloak, while Skovhus's poignant Kurwenal gets a non-realistic, Brechtian centre-stage for his fights and death.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Film director Herzog (Fitzcarraldo) creates an atmospheric staging amid glaciers and stone circles. Schneider conducts effectively; Studer, Schnaut and Wlaschiha impress.” BBC Music Magazine, May 2008 ****

“Karajan's attempt to film his Salzburg Ring in a studio in Munich with a new soundtrack… stalled after one episode - and there's a reason. All Karajan's opera films are stilted attempts by a musician who should have stayed at his conducting desk instead of working in an area of representation about which he seemed to understand a little. This Rheingold is by some way the worst of these films.” Gramophone Magazine, May 2009

“Karajan as stage director supervises an evocatively traditional production...Karajan as ever is masterly in his control of his forces, making this an exceptionally enjoyable version of the Vorabend of the Ring cycle.” Penguin Guide, 2010 edition ****

“Václav Kašlík goes whole-heartedly for the Romantic jugular - very creditably, too, with lost of dark water, two huge ships, and lashings of spooky effects. …the finest 'traditional' version available.” BBC Music Magazine, Proms 2008 *****

“The adaptaion by the Czech director Václav Kaslik...succeeds in gripping the viewer visually as successfully as does Wolfgang Sawallisch musically. Indeed Sawallisch is the reason to investigate this set for he gets gloriously eloquent playing from his wonderful Bavarian forces. No complaints about the soloists either.” Penguin Guide, 2010 **/*

“Bulgarian tenor Spas Wenkoff is a great singing actor in the title role, while Gwyneth Jones manages her Venus-Elisabeth assignment with glorious tone and stunning stage presence” New York Daily

“Conducted by Sir Colin Davis, the score is interpreted splendidly” New York Times

“At last on DVD, a legendary staging which really did revitalise its subject. The staging's intensity, on a single stark rostrum, is supercharged by the committed, first-rate ensemble 1970s Bayreuth could still produce. The chorus is simply stunning, Wenkoff surpasses himself as a credible hero, sung with ardour and beauty. Jones is also in fine shape, singing with tragic fervour... This isn't a beautiful staging like the Met's, but musically superior and more dramatic.” BBC Music Magazine, September 2008 *****

“…the performance is electrifying, managing the difficult feat of doing justice to Wagner's inspiration without seeking to gainsay its gloriously hybrid nature. Jürgen Rose's setting is austere, and one of the work's greatest moments, the astonishingly abrupt transition in Act I from the Venusberg to the idyllic countryside near the Wartburg, goes visually for too little. But the combination of Friedrich's tightly focused production and Sir Colin Davis's supremely flexible and energised conducting more than compensates. In 1978 Dame Gwyneth Jones was at her peak, taking time out from her definitive Bayreuth Brünnhilde to show how the roles of Venus and Elisabeth can be equally affecting, given maximum vocal and dramatic conviction. She weeps real tears in the mime that accompanies the Prelude to Act 3, as well she might, realising perhaps that she would never be better than this.” Gramophone Magazine, May 2009

“The sets are not opulent but are faithful to the composer's intentions and Sir Colin Davis's conducting is full of inspiration and vitality. The star performance is Gwyneth Jones's gloriously sung Elisabeth and Venus, but Spas Wenkoff is strong in the title-role and Bernd Weikl is a superb Wolfram.” Penguin Guide, 2010 ***

“Musically this is quite the finest Parsifal on DVD, to be heard even if you find the production tiresome. Hans Hollmann may have bizarre ideas about the staging, but he can get singers to act, and the production never impedes the overwhelming intensity of the relationships between the central characters.” BBC Music Magazine, October 2008 *****

“The first of several wonders in this new set… is the intuitive performing skill of a genuine house ensemble. …Copenhagen has achieved a class Ring with just one guest, James Johnson's Walküre/Siegfried Wotans. Moreover, if Stockholm is the Venice of the north, the Royal Danish Orchestra must be the Vienna Philharmonic of the north with its forward, rich woodwind timbres (a Nielsen sound, wholly suitable for Nibelung music) and cool-sweet string tone, the whole integrated, balanced and paced with a Kempe-like swiftness and attention to rhythmic detail by their chief Michael Schønwandt. ...the visual editing is busy, justifying allusions to the hand-held operation rediscovered by Danish art cinema directors. It gives the films a breathless close-up quality, the absolute inverse of the accustomed best-seat-in-the-stalls approach. Kasper Bech Holten's production... is... costumed and situated between (approximately) 1920 and the 1990s, and - through ever-ingenious lateral thinking - finds latter-day equivalents for Wagner's geography, properties and dramatic violence. In addition to the sheer zip of performance and filming, the sound picture is warm, resonant and true, the English subtitles... give an unsually revealing and detailed insight into Wagner's text, and, winningly, the "extra" item consists of a discussion between the stage director and his country's opera-loving head of state.” Gramophone Magazine, April 2009

“superbly acted, more than decently sung and executed with a technical bravura that puts recent London stagings to shame” Sunday Times

“Vocally, the main players are formidable, with Iréne Theorin’s accurate and tireless Brünnhilde an even match for Stig Andersen’s genuine Heldentenor contributions...Klaveness does not supply an ideal bass gravitas for Hagen but he’s quite the nastiest exponent of the role one could encounter. This is a wonderful Ring to watch as well as to listen to, a must-have for Wagnerians anywhere.” Opera

“This is a fine an intensely moving account of a supreme masterpiece of musical theatre. Müller's conception of the work is austere… and on the whole he has managed a difficult assignment with flair and conviction. …Meier's contained, richly nuanced approach to both acting and singing is ideally suited to this production. Her Tristan Siegfried Jerusalem, is not less impressive, with a poised demeanour avoiding the woodenness that afflicts so many Wagner tenors. Add a marvellously sonorous Marke in Matthias Hölle, no weaknesses in the other roles, and in the virtues stack up to something special.” Gramophone Magazine, November 2008

“As for the long awaited debuts of Meier and Jerusalem, the audience was ecstatic, so much so that Jerusalem excitedly hugged and kissed his partner several times during the curtain calls” Herald Tribune

“Daniel Barenboim's earliest performances of Tristan at Bayreuth are documented in a DVD of the 1981 production by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle (filmed in 1983) with René Kollo and Johanna Meier in the title-roles (available from DG). In 1993, when he was vastly more experienced and assured in his handling of this formidable score, Barenboim returned to the work in conjunction with playwright and theatre director Heiner Müller. This recording was made two years later, over seven days during the festival's rehearsal period. One imagines that the acts were filmed (without audiences) on separate days, to great advantage where the singers' stamina is concerned: but one particularly evident edit, at the point of Isolde's long-awaited entrance in Act 3, indicates that this is in some respects a hybrid product, halfway between a live performance and a studio version of a particular staging.
This is a fine and intensely moving account of a supreme masterpiece of musical theatre. It is not perfect, with the setting for Act 2 particularly unappealing, but it is serious in its dramatic, theatrical intent, and (that Act 2 setting apart) accomplished in its realisation. Müller's conception of the work is austere, not expecting setting or acting to get in the way of things which are best left to the music, and on the whole he has managed a difficult assignment with flair and conviction. Nowhere is this clearer than at the end, where Waltraud Meier sings the Liebestod from the front of the stage, with no semaphoring gestures and only facial expression and beautifully graded vocal projection to convey the essence of the drama.
Singers with more opulent voices have undertaken the role, yet Meier's contained, richly nuanced approach to both acting and singing is ideally suited to this production. Her Tristan, Siegfried Jerusalem, is no less impressive, with a poised demeanour avoiding the woodenness that afflicts so many Wagner tenors. Add a marvellously sonorous Marke in Matthias Hölle, no weaknesses in the other roles, and the virtues stack up to something special.
Does Barenboim's very explicit musical moulding actually fit with such a restrained stage production? Or is the whole point in the contrast between the visible and the audible? Such basic questions make one think yet again about the nature and significance of Wagner's most provocative and inexhaustible work for the stage.
Something special, indeed.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“...a splendid partnership of Siegfried Jerusalem at his finest and the rich-voiced Waltraud Meier, also at her freshest...Barenboim is in his element” Penguin Guide, 2010 ****