DVD Videos

“A film version of Tippett's second opera, brilliantly directed by Nicholas Hytner with a fine Kent Opera cast. The opera is gritty, fierce, and the total effect is grimly powerful.” BBC Music Magazine, February 2008 ****

“Many listeners – even or especially those who had been beguiled by The Midsummer Marriage – could once take refuge in the harsh assessment of Tippett's biographer, Ian Kemp, that KingPriam was 'the most didactic and theoretical of his works'. This Kent Opera production proved them wrong. The Royal Opera premiere in Coventry had been overshadowed by the acclaim for Britten's War Requiem, first heard the following night, and the big voices and grand, clangorous manner of the fine Decca recording (based on a later Covent Garden production) are fully operatic in scale and projection.
By contrast, Roger Norrington and the young Nicholas Hytner push right into the claustrophobic citadel of the drama to find out, in the composer's words, 'what happens when the psychological balance symbolised by marriage is knocked awry by responsibilities, war and fate'.
Acoustic, camera and microphones are close, oppressively and rightly so. We are but a few feet from Rodney Macann's piercing blue eyes as his Priam rebels against the choices that Tippett so relentlessly adumbrates: to smother Paris or love him, to sacrifice Helen or Troy, to confront Achilles or retain his royal dignity – how different from the hopeless determinism of Britten and Owen, where men are 'the foolish toys of time', to quote Eric Crozier for St Nicolas.
Robin Lough's direction for TV uses the tricks of the medium sparingly, and to most telling effect in the blood-lust of the Trojans' vengeance trio at the end of Act 2, answered by Achilles' war-cry with Verdian immediacy. All the principals have the measure of their roles. If Sarah Walker's Andromache, Neil Jenkins's Achilles and Macann's Priam do most to stop us in our tracks, perhaps it is their painfully human heroism that Tippett was most interested in himself. In the brief but demanding role of the boy Paris, Nani Antwi-Nyanin also deserves a special mention: Tippett was not in the habit of writing down for younger performers.
Kent Opera sank in 1989, no longer kept afloat by government subsidy. There could be no more imposing memorial to the power of its work, and to the determination of its artistic director, Norman Platt, who died in 2004.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Roger Norrington and the young Nicholas Hytner push right into the claustrophobic citadel of the drama… Robin Lough's direction for TV uses the tricks of the medium sparingly, and to most telling effect in the bloody-lust of the Trojans' vengeance trio at the end of Act 2, answered by Achilles' war-cry with Verdian immediacy. All of the principals have the measure of their roles.” Gramophone Magazine, March 2008

“...a superlative production of what increasingly proves itself to be Tippett’s greatest opera.” New Statesman

“Lucrezia Borgia is a lyrical masterly example of Donizetti's art that delights the ear endlessly… Sutherland made the low key arias breathtaking vehicles for the most ravishing singing one is likely to hear on any opera stage in the world” The Financial Review

“In Pier Luidi Pizzi's production for Madrid's Teatro Real, Marie-Ange Todorovich and Marco Vinco and admirable in every respect… Alberto Zedda keeps both plot and music bubbling along deliciously.” BBC Music Magazine, January 2008 ****

“An elegant comedy, brimming with intelligence and expressive beauty, which had a colossal success at its opening in Pesaro… It is a heavenly blessing to listen to this Rossini … This production has two particular strengths which bring it to the level of exceptionality: the first one is the musical direction by Alberto Zedda, the great Rossinian maestro of our time … He is just extraordinary … The second is the stage and set direction by Pier Luigi Pizzi. The Milan maestro is the Prince of theatre architecture … The singers believe the story and their performance is superb, both theatrically and musically” El País

“[Michele Pertusi] has a good solid bass voice, evenly produced, useful in sonority and range…” Gramophone Magazine

“John La Bouchardière who has taken these generalised, non-narrative musical expressions of love and tried to match them to a plot of his own devising. The whole thing is set mostly in a restaurant with various couples arguing, having affairs, and making up. The glorious music is sung with conviction, though I Fagiolini do have one or two tuning problems.” BBC Music Magazine, February 2008 ****

“The first thing to say about this brilliant film is that it is extremely well sung. The second thing is that you need to be in pretty good emotional shape in order to enjoy, or perhaps I should say survive, the experience of watching it. What John Le Bouchardière has done is to use Monteverdi's Fourth Book of Madrigals as the vehicle for tracing the break-up in the relationships of six couples.” Gramophone Magazine, April 2008

“Music-theatre hit of the decade … bleak but brilliant” The Times

“Severely cut and rearranged, Zeffirelli's famous film suffocates under its own opulence; but Parisian and Provencal locations, Levine's rich conducting, Domingo and Stratas remain rewarding.” BBC Music Magazine, May 2008 ****

“From the start Stratas's face reflects all the shades by which hope and fear, the public image and the inner self may be expressed. Both meet the notoriously disparate vocal demands of the role, though Stratas's voice sounds worn on the high notes. In the last act Stratas's relative slightness of vocal and physical build works to her advantage. Both are fine in the developing emotions of the great duet with Germont père...Levine's flair is most evident in vigorous rhythmic passages such as the dances and the card game” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“… the start Strata's face reflects all the shades by which hope and fear, the public image and the inner self may be expressed.” Gramophone Magazine, April 2008

“Dazzling…a triumph…not to be missed.” New York Times

“It is Zeffirelli who dominates the filmed Met. production...But that does not detract from the passion or the tragedy...[Stratas] totally identifies with Violetta and movingly carries us with her...Domingo is Domingo, and he sings with the fullest, boldest ardour.” Penguin Guide, 2010 edition ***