DVD Videos

Giulio Cesare, the most popular of Handel’s operas, is named after the great Roman emperor, but its most memorable character is Cleopatra. In this production by Laurent Pelly from Paris’ splendid Palais Garnier, the role of the Egyptian queen is assumed for the first time by Natalie Dessay, described by the Telegraph as “a supreme vocal enchantress”.

Giulio Cesare is the opera that, over the quarter century, has led the vigorous revival of interest in Handel’s works for the stage. Now in the repertoire of theatres around the world, it offers a dazzling array of dramatic situations and moods – with music to match – and the seductive and captivating character of Cleopatra exemplifies its (to quote Shakespeare) “infinite variety”.

Natalie Dessay chose to make her stage debut in the role of the Egyptian queen at Paris’s Palais Garnier, an opera house of legendary splendour and beauty and, seating an audience of less than 2,000, well suited to the intimacy of baroque opera. Dessay had already recorded all the character’s arias for Virgin Classics with conductor Emanuelle Haïm (catalogue number 5099990787225), who was also in charge of the performances at the Palais Garnier in early 2011. “Every note is as clear and lustrous as a freshly polished crystal chandelier,” said the Toronto Star of the soprano’s recorded performance, while the Telegraph (UK) enthused that “Dessay proves a supreme vocal enchantress”.

She proved a svelte physical enchantress, too, in the staging by Laurent Pelly – who, notably, directed Dessay in the sparkling production of Donizetti’s La Fille de régiment that was seen in London, New York and Vienna and released on DVD by Virgin Classics (catalogue No. 5099951900298). His witty and stylised conception of Handel’s opera was described thus by the Wall Street Journal: “The curtain opens on the vast storeroom of an Egyptian museum, stuffed to the rafters with statuary and paintings, crates and frames. As a guard reads his newspaper, a statue of Julius Caesar comes alive – plaster gray from top to toe, including his Roman soldier's garb. Caesar bursts into song, and sculpted heads and busts aligned on storage shelves follow suit, singing along in chorus. We're off into the wacky world of director Laurent Pelly's new production of Handel's 1724 Giulio Cesare at the Paris Opéra ... there is never a dull moment.” The newspaper went on to praise the excellence of the cast: “not just the stellar Ms. Dessay but also counter-tenor Lawrence Zazzo as Caesar, mezzo-soprano Varduhi Abrahamyan as Cornelia and especially mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard as Sesto”.

In The Sunday Times (UK), Hugh Canning, an enthusiast for Handel’s operas, wrote that: “At the end of Act II, Cleopatra has one of Handel's most sublime arias, the great G minor lament ‘Se pietà di me non senti’, and Dessay sang it as well as I have ever heard in the theatre. She is an artist who understands the synergy of notes and text.”

Natalie Dessay made her first European appearances as Violetta in La traviata in a new production by the French director Jean-François Sivadier at the 2011 Aix-en-Provence Festival. This DVD captures her intense performance in the company of American tenor Charles Castronovo as Alfredo and French baritone Ludovic Tézier as his father, Giorgio Germont. “Her theatrical impact is devastating,” wrote the Financial Times.

With this new production of La traviata at the 2011 Aix-en-Provence Festival, Natalie Dessay made her first European appearances as Verdi’s Violetta, a pinnacle of the soprano repertoire. She made her debut in the role in 2009 at the Santa Fe Festival in the US, and subsequently sang Violetta in Japan. Dessay’s 2011-12 season will include La traviata at the Vienna State Opera (in this Aix-en-Provence production by French theatre and opera director Jean-François Sivadier) and the New York Metropolitan.

Violetta makes tremendous demands on a singer, both vocally and dramatically, and signals Dessay’s transition from lighter coloratura roles to the more full-blooded lyric repertoire. “I’m tired of playing weeping girls,” she told the French magazine Télé 7 Jours, “Violetta is a real woman. That makes a nice change!” The change was clearly successfully achieved: describing Dessay’s performance, the Financial Times wrote that “her theatrical impact is devastating”.

Sivadier’s production was staged in the open air, in Aix-en-Provence’s exquisite Théâtre de l'Archevêché with its huge spiral staircases, medieval arches and 18th-century wings. The stage décor was minimal, the simple costumes evoked the 1940s or 1950s, and the prime focus was on intense characterisation.

Subtitles: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian

Arthaus presents an Offenbach Box Set (Orphée aux Enfers & La belle Hélène) featuring Marc Minkowski – the preeminent Offenbach conductor of our day but also a team of wonderful singer-actors (Natalie Dessay & Felicity Lott).

Sound Format: PCM Stereo, DD 5.1, DTS 5.1

Picture Format: 16:9

DVD Format: 2 x DVD 9 / NTSC

Subtitle Languages: GB, DE, FR, ES, IT

Running Time: 250 mins + 26 mins (bonus)

FSK: 0

A star-studded benefit concert to celebrate Ioan Holender’s farewell after 19 years as the director of one of the world’s leading and most famous opera houses. The highly acclaimed cast was headed by brilliant singers such as Diana Damrau, Natalie Dessay, Angelika Kirchschlager, Waltraud Meier, Anna Netrebko, Pjotr Beczala, Plácido Domingo, Thomas Hampson, Leo Nucci, Thomas Quasthoff, Ramon Vargas and many others. No fewer than twelve conductors including Marco Armiliato, Bertrand de Billy, Fabio Luisi, Zubin Mehta, Antonio Pappano and Franz Welser-Möst led the way through a program lasting over four hours at the fully-packed Wiener Staastoper.

Subtitles: English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese

Production Elijah Moshinsky

Set and Costume Designer Michael Yeargan

Lighting Designer Gil Wechsler

Recorded in 2003 at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, this sumptuous production of Ariadne auf Naxos presents divas Deborah Voigt and Natalie Dessay in the contrasting roles which embody the opera’s themes.

Two of today’s reigning sopranos – Deborah Voigt and Natalie Dessay – embody the contrasting philosophies at the heart of Ariadne auf Naxos: the deserted princess Ariadne, a ‘one-man woman’ who believes in loyalty unto death, and the flirtatious comedienne Zerbinetta, who takes a more pragmatic attitude to love and to life.

This recording from the Metropolitan Opera dates from 2003. The noble, soaring lines of Ariadne gave Voigt a major breakthrough in 1991, when she sang the role in Boston, and it subsequently became her signature role. Zerbinetta exemplifies the dizzy coloratura characters which first made Dessay’s reputation.

Two reviews from the New York Times evoke the first night of Elijah Moshinsky’s production in 1993, and the performance a decade later that is commemorated on this DVD.

Bellini's romantic opera 'La sonnambula' (1831), hinges on the love and misunderstanding between Elvino and Amina (the ‘sleepwalker’ of the title). Discovered in the bedroom of Rodolfo, Amina is assumed to have been unfaithful, and Elvino cancels their wedding. But in the dramatic final scene, he witnesses Amina sleepwalking, understands her innocence, and all ends happily. Mary Zimmerman's production plays with the dual realities of a rehearsal of the opera and a performance of the opera itself.

In his latest Decca DVD release, bel canto star Juan Diego Flórez assumes the role of Elvino in Bellini’s romantic drama, playing opposite the mercurial French soprano, Natalie Dessay, in the MET’s striking, modern-dress production, screening live worldwide in March 2009.

The MET’s ‘La Sonnambula’ website reads: “Mary Zimmerman, who directed Natalie Dessay in last season’s hit new production of Lucia di Lammermoor, underlines La Sonnambula’s dual elements of sleep and wakefulness in an intriguing staging set in the present. Bellini’s hauntingly lyrical score soars as performed by Dessay and Juan Diego Flórez, back from their sensational run together in La Fille du Régiment in leading opera houses around the world.”

The DVD release will benefit from the addition of the customary MET backstage and interview footage, familiar to devotees of their live worldwide cinema broadcasts.

Following Flórez's latest DVD release (Cenerentola, in October 2009), 2010 will also see a second Flórez DVD – Bellini’s ‘I Puritani’, with Nino Machaidze, from Bologna.

Filmed in High Definition Widescreen.

SUBTITLES:

English, French, German, Spanish, Chinese

PICTURE FORMAT:

16:9 (anamorphic widescreen), Colour, NTSC, Region code 0 (worldwide)

SOUND FORMAT:

LPCM Stereo & DTS 5.1 Surround (DVD)

BONUS FEATURE:

'Backstage at the MET', presented by Deborah Voigt, featuring interviews with Dessay and Flórez

Premiere at Theater an der Wien /Das Neue Operhaus - January 13, 2009.

Filmed by ORF

Soprano Natalie Dessay leaves the dizzy heights of Bellini’s Amina, Donizetti’s Marie and Massenet’s Manon to inhabit the more discreet emotional and vocal world of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande with a cast of fellow francophones.

“There’s more to life than top notes,” Natalie Dessay has said. She has, of course, made her reputation with the florid, stratospheric heroines of Romantic French and Italian opera, but in this new DVD from Vienna she portrays a heroine who presents few opportunities for vocal display, but many for subtle characterisation – Debussy’s Mélisande. Dessay had sung the role just once before, in concert in Edinburgh in 2005. Pelléas et Mélisande is full of ambiguity and its vocal lines closely reflect Maurice Maeterlink’s often enigmatic text. A few unaccompanied, ballad-like phrases are the closest Mélisande gets to an aria.

For this production, premiered in January 2009 at the Theater an der Wien, Dessay’s French and French-Canadian colleagues included stage director Laurent Pelly -- celebrated for riotous comedy (notably La fille de regiment with Dessay, also a Virgin Classics DVD – and his preferred designer, Chantal Thomas; Dessay’s real-life husband, bass-baritone Laurent Naouri as her jealous stage husband, Golaud; the lyric baritone Stéphane Degout as her Pelléas, and the contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux as his and Golaud’s mother, Geneviève. The high-calibre Gallic line-up was completed by conductor Bertrand de Billy.

Opera News reported: “In a pre-production interview, Dessay admitted that Mélisande poses few vocal challenges, noting that the role lies comfortably enough for both sopranos and lightweight mezzos. Indeed, the role is vocally a good fit for her — splendid, in fact … Every stage direction was scrupulously followed …Naouri, Dessay's real-life husband, particularly commanded the evening with his Golaud — gut-wrenching, magnificently sung and unusually young. For once, it seemed that Golaud and Pelléas really could be half-brothers, and Degout was Naouri's match, singing with gorgeous burnished tone and erotic passion. The magnificent Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien, under Bertrand de Billy, dominated the proceedings with a rapturous performance. “

Le Monde wrote that: “The orchestra exuded a subtly poisonous Debussy with a throbbing vein of Wagner, bruised by the Symbolism of Maurice Maeterlinck. Pelly excels in comedy, but here he took Pelléas towards the depths of Edgar Allan Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher [a subject explored by Debussy in an unfinished opera]… in Chantal Thomas’ mangrove-swamp décor, with its tall smooth columns (tree trunks or pillars?), shipwrecked remains, stylised rocks and curtains of lianas … With her flowing blue dress and long blonde hair Dessay was indeed like ‘a bird from somewhere else’ [a quotation from the libretto]… Stephane Degout was brimming with vocal sex appeal … Laurent Naouri provided an exemplary portrayal of Golaud.”

The Wiener Zeitung praised Laurent Pelly for bringing “a psychological dimension to the symbolically charged language. At his disposal was an ensemble of singers capable of the most refined interpretation, above all Natalie Dessay … who portrayed her character with the most delicate nuances and verbal flexibility, encompassing both vocal radiance and broken utterance … Billy’s interpretation embraced detail, concentration and intense expanses of sound. He followed the singers’ every word. On the first night the audience cheered singers, orchestras and conductor unreservedly.”

Subtitles: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian

Set Design by Chantal Thomas & Costume Design by Michel Dussarat & Laurent Pelly

In the role of Eurydice, Natalie Dessay begins at once with a display of vocal and verbal pyrotechnics, which are then taken up by Yann Beuron as Orpheus. Together they give us an idea of the developments to follow. Dancers and singers melt into a unit. The stage setting and an unconventional choreography sparkle with inventiveness. When Pluto, for example, arrives on skis from the underworld onto Mt. Olympus and Offenbach quotes the famous can-can right in the middle of Pluto’s aria, it seems to be a parody of his own work. The production offers a wealth of material for modern interpretations of this operetta full to the brim with ironic sideswipes at morality and immorality. Thus we see a bored Eurydice lying on the sofa in her apartment as she zaps her way through the TV channels, constantly looking for diversion, showing us how timeless an opera buffa can really be. Sometimes she sings upside down, sometimes hopping around – a vocal masterpiece. Laurent Naouri also captivates in the role of Jupiter and, costumed as a fly, demonstrates his vocal and acting talent with Jacques Offenbach’s “Buzz” aria.

Sound Format: PCM STEREO,

DD 5.1, DTS 5.1

DVD Format: DVD 9, NTSC

Picture Format: 16:9

Running Time: 123 mins

FSK: 0

Subtitle Languages: GB, DE, FR, ES, IT

Subtitles: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian