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A showcase for – and a love letter to – a century of amazing music” is how the creator of The Enchanted Island, Jeremy Sams, described this spectacular operatic pasticcio of music by Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau, Purcell and others. Premiered at the Metropolitan in New York on New Year’s Eve 2011, it stars Joyce DiDonato, David Daniels, Danielle de Niese and Plácido Domingo, and is conducted by William Christie.

New Year’s Eve 2011 brought the world premiere at New York’s Metropolitan Opera of a spectacular and star-studded opera, The Enchanted Island. With a story based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, it was not the work of contemporary composer, but instead drew on works by figures of the Baroque era – Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau, Purcell, Campra, Ferrandini, Leclair and and Rebel. Devised by the British writer, librettist and translator Jeremy Sams, the piece revived the 18th century tradition of the pasticcio, taking arias from a variety of different sources and setting them to a new libretto.

If the work itself was an exotic hybrid, the cast comprised thoroughbreds. The leading roles were assigned to Joyce DiDonato as the sorceress Sycorax, David Daniels as the magician Prospero, Luca Pisaroni as Sycorax’s son Caliban and Danielle de Niese as Prospero’s spirit aide Ariel, while, making a special appearance as King Neptune and rising from the watery depths of the ocean to the bubbling strains of Handel’s Zadok the Priest, was the indefatigable Plácido Domingo. Meanwhile, a cornucopia of rising talent filled the roles of the opera’s six young lovers – Lisette Oropesa, Layla Claire, Elizabeth DeShong, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Paul Appleby and Elliot Madore – while the conductor was that established master of baroque opera, and an essential figure in the Virgin Classics catalogue, William Christie.

The sumptuous production, designed by Julian Crouch and blending 18th-century theatrical techniques with advanced video projections, was by Phelim McDermott.

Handel is the dominant figure among the composers enlisted by Jeremy Sams, and The Enchanted Island repurposes numbers from his operas (including Alcina, Ariodante, Partenope, Semele, Tamerlano and Teseo), his oratorios (Hercules and Judas Maccabaeus) and his cantatas.

The New York Times described the opera as an ”inventive concoction” and a “fanciful, clever and touching pastiche”, while the Associated Press found it “irresistibly entertaining. It's a light-hearted romp with enough fizz to send a dozen champagne corks popping.” Among the praise for the singers, the New York Times spoke of David Daniels’ “transfixing blend of melting sound and forceful delivery and the Financial Times described how “Joyce DiDonato cackled, curled and soared with virtuosic flair in the bitchy-witchy spasms of Sycorax”; the Wall Street Journal felt that “the best moments came from Ms DiDonato, a tragic heroine adrift in a sea of comedy.”

Jeremy Sams, writing about The Enchanted Island in The Guardian in January 2012, a couple of weeks after its premiere, said: “On New Year's Eve, we opened at the Met. The production, by Phelim McDermott, is sumptuous, and the cast quite simply the finest in the world. As for the piece, well, many New Yorkers have taken it to their hearts. Purists have been suitably and predictably outraged. My only hope is that it should be seen for what it is: a showcase for – and a love letter to – a century of amazing music.”

DVD + CD

Director: Marshall Pynkoski

Set Design by CHANTAL THOMAS

The creative team that triumphed with the Théâtre du Châtelet production of Offenbach’s La Belle Hélène, turned their talents to Platée in this Opéra de Paris staging, premièred in 1999 to great acclaim and reprised in 2002, when this recording was made at the magnificent Palais Garnier. Their handling of Rameau’s burlesque on the vicissitudes of love, a piece in which the composer also cocked a snook at the sacrosanct rules of eighteenth-century French opera, is a “pure joy from start to splashing finish” (Wall Street Journal Europe).

“Laurent Pelly’s staging of Platée is an exhilarating display of gags and West Side Story dance routines mixed in with satirical rap...Marc Minkowski conducting the excellent Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble was the instigator of a sparkling orchestral fête” (Opera Now). In the realm of the ancient gods, Mercury and Cithaeron persuade

Jupiter that he can cure his wife Juno’s obsessive jealousy by setting up a mock marriage between himself and Plataea, an astonishingly ugly but supremely self-confident marsh nymph who rules a realm of frogs. When Juno sees how ridiculous the situation is, they argue, her jealousy will vanish. Rameau used Jupiter’s feigned courtship of Plataea – during which he appears as a donkey, an owl, a cloud and a shower of fireworks – to gleefully parody every eighteenth-century musical convention in the book, as the music gurgles, hiccups, croaks and brays.

Sound Format: PCM Stereo, DD 5.0, DTS 5.0

Picture Format: 16:9

DVD Format: 1 x DVD 5, 1 x DVD 9, NTSC

Subtitle Languages: FR (Original Language) GB, DE, ES, IT

Running Time: 150 mins

FSK: 0

This 1993 recording must be hailed as a document of supreme historical importance as it is the first audio-visual live recording of a concert given by Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic. Six years later the orchestra voted by a large majority to appoint Rattle its new principal conductor and artistic director in succession to Claudio Abbado. Even at this early date Rattle was already attracting attention not only with masterly conducting but also with extremely interesting programming. In the present programme, for example, he combines the final work by Jean-Philippe Rameau, a composer who raised the music of the French Baroque to a level never to be surpassed, with the famous Symphonie fantastique by Hector Berlioz, who, only 26 at the time of the work’s composition, was soon to be acclaimed as one of the “musicians of the future”.

NTSC 4:3, PCM Stereo, DD 5.1, DTS 5.1

Region code: 0, Audience: all

Booklet notes: English, German, French

Running time: 87 mins

Castor et Pollux is arguably Rameau’s finest creation in the tragédie lyrique style. Its libretto, based in mythology, focuses on an unusual theme: the self-sacrificing love between Castor, who is mortal, and his immortal brother, Pollux. When Castor is killed while defending his beloved Télaire from an attempted abduction, Pollux resolves to give up his immortality and take Castor’s place in the Underworld. After passionate debate over who will live and who will die, the brothers are eternally united, transformed into the constellation Gemini. The strikingly luminous sets, depicting a stylized version of the constellation, give this fabulous production, staged by Pierre Audi and conducted by Christophe Rousset, a glorious 21st-century baroque look.

‘To turn almost three hours of obscure French baroque opera into a popular hit is the kind of stunt at which the Netherlands Opera excels. … All the singers are beautiful and polished…Veronique Gens as Phebe manages to rise beyond form and truly breathe life into her character's phrases. Gens's performance is radiant and burnished, full of subtlety and character.' Bloomberg.com

'The music is spectacular. It will be very surprising for an audience of today. I think they expect something more static, and it's never static. It's always in change, and it surprises you.’ Christophe Rousset (Musical Director)

Specials:

•Swinging Rameau – A 50-minute documentary analysis featuring interviews with William Christie, Nicolas Rivenq, Blanca Li, Andrei Serban, Paul Agnew, Patricia Petibon

•On-screen biographies - William Christie & Les Arts Florissants

•Illustrated Synopsis & Cast Gallery

PICTURE FORMAT: 16:9

LENGTH: 244 MINS

SOUND: DTS SURROUND / LPCM STEREO

SUBTITLES: EN/FR/DE/ES/IT