With Linda di Chamounix Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848) has created wonderful, inspired music. Donizetti’s unfailing attention to the last detail becomes apparent in his numerous revisions of the work, the cuts and the new arrangement of the overture, which he had initially composed as a short prelude but had then developed further, to suit the taste of the Viennese.
For the performance at the Zurich opera, the producer Daniel Schmid changed the sentimental story into an ironical post-card idyll and thus achieved a modern note. The story is now set in a snow-white mountainous region where passions develop slowly. Removed from their familiar environment, the characters lose their connection with reality and become aggressive or insane. Apart from Edita Gruberova there is hardly anyone who could express this insanity better – at the premiere in 1842 it was the soprano Eugenia Tadolini. Everything around her turns into decoration. The roles of the jealous lover Carlo Deon Van der Walt, the Marchese Jacob Will and the Prefect László Polgár are superbly cast. Under the baton of Adam Fischer, the orchestra of the Zürich opera plays in strict rhythm and with melodic delicateness.
Sound Format: PCM Stereo, DD 5.1, DTS 5.1
Picture Format: 4:3
DVD Format: DVD 5 + DVD 9, NTSC
Subtitle Languages: IT (Original Language), GB, DE, FR, ES
Running Time: 164 mins
FSK: 0
August 2012
***
“A interesting pastoral melodrama, given a committed performance by everyone involved”
August 2012
“Gruberova has an appealing lightness and vocal flexibility allied to good legato, variety of tone and good expression. She has the ability to sound young and girlish without being tweety...Van der Walt’s singing throughout is tasteful and expressive with just the right amount of edge to give the required dramatic impetus or ardent inflection.”
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