DVD Videos

“Leontina Vaduva is a touching Juliette… There's real passion in her Tomb aria… Roméo is the role that catapulted tenor Roberto Alagna into a celebrity. Best of all is Charles Mackerras conducting in the pit.” BBC Music Magazine, October 2008 ****

“They are a Romeo and Juliet who look as if they were born to play their roles” Financial Times

“Alagna is the fascinating, never failing, special, real tenor thing - the heir apparent to the two. He delivers the goods.” The Guardian

“…there's much to admire in Vick's carefully planned production, especially in a lively Act II dance-hall scene and in the sophisticated badinage of ACT I, set in Magda's salon. Musically, Carlo Rizzi is in his element…” BBC Music Magazine, January 2009 ***

“The production in Venice is very colourful, especially the spectacular scene at Bulliers...Rizzi secures very polished orchestral playing and finds all the wistful delicacy in Puccini's lovely score.” Penguin Guide, 2010 edition ***

“Not until an extended and highly colourful can-can sequence in Act 3 did things really to life for me - as well as, judging by the dutiful applause up to that point, for the audience in the Semperoper. An updated Widow will appeal to some. However, I wouldn't dream of urging this version on anyone ahead of the Zürich version with Dagmar Schellenberger and Rodney Gilfry (ArtHaus) or the San Francisco Opera version in English (Opus Arte, 9/03)...” Gramophone Magazine, Awards Issue 2008

“The heart throbs...in scenes featuring Jessica Rivera as Oppenheimer’s wife, the opera’s symbol of warmth, sensuousness, and hope. But these are moments: the overall tone stays cool, intellectual. We watch as observers, not participants. Sellars directed this TV version himself. There are virtues here, and vices. Cinema aficionados dismayed by static shots may revel in the nervous visuals, the quick editing and close-ups (you grow very familiar with Rivera’s tongue). But by fidgeting so much, Sellars the film director often works against the interests of Sellars the stage director. Body movements are truncated; the patterns of Lucinda Childs’s choreography get lost. All too rarely do we grasp the big picture and enjoy the full impact of Adrianne Lobel’s stark sets, with desert hills silhouetted and the bomb, cradled with wires, looming overhead like a malevolent planet. Finley, Rivera, Eric Owens and the rest of the cast are always as eloquent as the opera allows, and Lawrence Renes’s conducting is on the ball. Extras are disappointing: too much of Sellars holding forth, not enough on the production” The Times, 1st August 2008 ***

“Doctor Atomic centres on the hours before the first detonation of the atomic bomb… Peter Sellars's film of the opera is expressionistic, claustrophobic, sometimes deliberately out of focus. The sound quality is exceptionally good, as is the singing and playing under conductor Lawrence Renes.” BBC Music Magazine, October 2008 *****

“Gerald Finley carries the problems of the world on his shoulders as Oppenheimer and the Netherlands Philharmonic and Lawrence Renes play like it’s the best score since Fidelio.” Gramophone Magazine, December 2008

“is the most dramatic subject matter of any John Adams opera and musically the most inconsistent. Indeed, as subject matter goes, Doctor Atomic could hardly be more apocalyptic.
The work's principal character is J Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist who developed the atomic bomb during the Second World War from its earliest prototype through to the test bomb that was detonated in 1945 at a secret site in New Mexico. The opera's First Act takes place a month before the test; the Second Act is set on the day itself, with a finale that strategically plays with our perception of time as the bomb is about to be detonated.
Adams's first opera, Nixon in China, rattled along with a note-specific clarity that flickered like newsreel; he paints Doctor Atomic in broader brushstrokes, using post-Bernard Herrmann suspense tactics and angsty chromatic swells to portray charged emotions. But an underlying weakness is the stubbornly unmemorable and melodically colourless vocal writing, leading to one-dimensional characterisations. Adams's and librettist Peter Sellars's decision to incorporate poetry by John Donne and Muriel Rukeyser into the opera only highlights the functional flavour of Sellars's own words as the balance is flipped towards contrived artifice. No complaints about the performance though. Gerald Finley carries the problems of the world on his shoulders as Oppenheimer and the Netherlands Philharmonic and Lawrence Renes play like it's the best score since Fidelio.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“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 ****

“If the warmth of an evening in the Burgenland doesn't fully come across, the DVD sill does a tremendous job of conveying the charm of this particular operetta, and the atmosphere of a central European operetta festival.” Gramophone Magazine, July 2006

“After 15 years Vick's high camp production looks dated - Baroque exaggeration decked out with Japanese Kabuki and Chinese Opera. But Ann Murray and Luba Orgonasova are on tip-top form.” BBC Music Magazine, March 2009 ***

“This is, unequivocally, a red-letter night at Covent Garden.” Sunday Times

“Aix-en-Provence is generally a guarantor of musical excellence and this performance is no exception. Maxim Mironov may not be as well known as Flórez but he is rightly the tenore digrazia of choice for leading Rossini houses much as Nicolai Gedda and Luigi Alva were a generation or so ago. In those days, no bass was capable of singing Mustafà properly, without cuts and with all the notes in place. Marco Vinco, one of a new breed of Rossini basses, is exemplary.
Christianne Stotijn is not the most fetching or dynamic of Isabellas but she will 'do'.
Conductor Riccardo Frizza makes the most of his eight minutes on camera in the overture, play-acting like a fantasy conductor in front of his gramophone before bringing the orchestra to its feet for time-consuming bows and solo plaudits. What follows, however, is taut and well drilled. Space is given for the comedy to flower, though Frizza's tempo is too quick in the wonderful duet between Isabella and Taddeo 'Ai capricci' (the marking is Allegro not Allegromolto) where he appears oblivious to the fact that Rossini's use of musical form is a key contributor to the comedy (Isabella flattening Taddeo with a rejoinder which also happens to be a sonataform recapitulation). The duet barely raises a smile from the audience.
A single set does service throughout: an empty stage dominated by a three-story ziggurat that can be transformed into the prow of a threedeck ocean liner at the drop of a painted cloth.
For much of the evening there is movement in and around the ziggurat but no production to speak of – unless you count Haly being sent into the audience to sing his chirpy sorbet aria 'Le femmine d'Italia'. It is in effect a colourfully costumed concert. That said, director Toni Servillo's minimalist approach works well in the pivotal Act 2 quintet and climactic Act 2 trio. As stage comedy L'italiana must seem pretty thin stuff to modern audiences, yet the various elements in the Rossini cuisine come together most agreeably in the closing scenes of this Aix production.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010