DVD Videos

“Michael's biggest assets here are visual. She's young, attractive, athletic, a good actress, and a good dancer too. She does her own Dance of the Seven Veils, and does it well...Struckmann is a sonorous, intense Jochanaan...Harding's conducting is responsive, colorful, and detailed, although he misses the sweep that one ideally wants in this score. Even more than usual, this Salome is an orchestral tone poem with voices.” Classical Net, 2009

“As in London, the individuals give the performance clout, if no especial individuality: Michael herself in more comfortable voice, Falk Struckmann's Jochanaan displaying Wotanic tones and more than a touch of animal desire for Salome, Bronder's appreciable Herod refreshingly un-guyed in singing or action, and Vermillion's rather ambisexual Herodias…” Gramophone Magazine, April 2009

“Quite mistakenly… Lev Dodin, the director of this version from Paris, has pulled the action as far back to the original story as he can manage. The price is the loss of most of the suspense, a lack of interesting characterisation, and boringly unchanging sets - it all takes place in a madhouse. Hermann relives the past... while gibbering around the stage throughout. Fortunately Vladimir Galouzine is a superb singer and actor, and makes everything he can of the role... His adversary, the Countess, is portrayed as a robust, not a crumbling figure, and Lisa becomes a cipher with some wonderful music to sing. Listen and you'll be impressed, watch and you'll be confused and irritated.” BBC Music Magazine, December 2007 ***

“This 2006 live production goes straight ot the top of the list because Leo Nucci's unforgettably powerful portrayal of Macbeth is a tower of strength....[Valayre's] voice has a certain amount of intrusive vibrato but her singing is strong and clear, and her acting vivid yet not overly melodramatic.” Penguin Guide, 2010 edition ***

“[On Sonia Ganassi] A wonderful young mezzo-soprano enviably possessed of stage presence and a first-rate vocal technique.” Gramophone Magazine

“The acting is first class, everybody relishing their roles, Alessandro Corbelli’s Pasquale, bumbling, pompous and outraged, Eva Mei’s Norina shrewish and petulant and full of good humour and Roberto de Candia, a knowing, hoodwinking Malatesta. … A visual delight, a sparkling production with fine comic performances.” MusicWeb International

“A lithe and well shot performance, given in the hall where Haydn made his last public appearance. Among the soloists, Berry and Schreier are outstanding.” BBC Music Magazine, July 2007 ****

“Bruckner was the composer who was closest to Wand’s heart and who drew from him his noblest achievements. … The playing is as always fabulous, with the brass section covering itself with glory, above all in the climax of the slow movement… The Scherzo is enormously emphatic, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to see the 87-year-old breaking into a dance on the podium, which he almost does.” International Record Review

“It's a change to see a production of Strauss's and Hofmannsthal's psychotic masterwork that's not weighted with greater German gloom, louring Second World War-derived imagery and cakes of lurid make-up. Martin Kušej directs people well, and since Elektra is largely an opera of dialogues, his work (all closely derived from the text) demands attention.
Eva Johansson's Elektra is a hooded tomboy with definite Asbo leanings; she has to be on full throttle for this role but both Dohnányi's orchestra and TDK's engineers are kind to her.
Melanie Diener, a consummate singing actress, locates the hard, hard role of Chrysothemis somewhere between Victoria Beckham and Brechtian alienation: every entry, every new event is as surprising to her as a goldfish going round its bowl.
Marjana Lipovšek presents their mother as a complex of confused identities, eschewing both in voice and acting any melodramatic harridan tendencies. As their brother, Alfred Muff survives a dreadful first 'disguise' wig to present a revenger of quiet, un-neurotic determination.
Equally original is Rudolf Schasching's lecherous groper of an Aegisthus, convincingly deceived when Elektra plays up to his libido.
The action takes places in a dangerously uneven, hillock-strewn courtyard, reached by many doors. There is much cavorting by the smaller roles: the maids (and one token transvestite) dress up as…maids (French) for Aegisthus' pleasure, while action or tension in the palace (Strauss's 'interludes') is illustrated by door-to-door crosses by a large troupe of actors in various states of ecstasy, undress, axecarrying, etc. They've not been terribly well directed and the effect only really works when the (false) news of Orestes' death sets off Klytemnestra's laugh. At the end, when revenge is done, the girl extras perform a dance in Las Vegas-style frillies – weird, but suitably unnerving.
Dohnányi's old master's approach to the score goes for a long pay-off rather than whipping up the tension from the word go, employing a wide range of tempi and dynamics and stressing the modernity of the score. Both the Vienna staging of Harry Kupfer (with Claudio Abbado) and the studio film of Götz Friedrich (with Karl Böhm and a veteran stellar cast) remain indispensable.
But, for an alternative vision allied to a close, human reading of the text, the new performance, while not quite the sum of its parts, makes for intelligent viewing.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“The release of Jazz Icons™ is like the unearthing of a musical time capsule—an audio-visual treasure trove of the music that changed the world. From an educational standpoint this series is a gift to our culture.” Quincy Jones