Konzertvereinigung Wiener Staatsopernchor & Tölzer Knabenchor & Wiener Philharmoniker, Valery Gergiev (conductor) & David Pountney (director)
DVD Video
$32.75
Usually despatched in 2 - 3 working days.
Set Design by Johan Engels
Costume Design by Marie-Jeanne Lecca
Puccini’s last opera “Turandot” stands out from the rest of his works. In the fairytale based upon Gozzi’s motif, the composer blends exoticism with psychology in a way that can not be imitated when telling the story of the men-hating Chinese princess who eventually finds love. In his music, Puccini also succeeds in merging foreign fl air with Italian melodramma while still staying tuned to his own unique musical language. In his production for the Salzburger Festspiele, David Pountney tries to give an account of the dominant feeling in
Puccini’s time: the fear of being alienated by mechanisation and totalitarianism. Both Turandot’s salvation and the happiness in the closing scene are also refl ected in the release of the other characters from the system in which they had to live. This gives rise to a new hope of a humane society. The opera is staged using Luciano Berio’s completion of Act III. The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra is masterly conducted by Valery Gergiev.
Sound Format: PCM STEREO, DD 5.0, DTS 5.0
DVD Format: DVD 9, NTSC
Picture Format: 16:9
Running Time: 125 mins & 16 mins (Bonus)
FSK: 12
Subtitle Languages: GB, DE, FR, ES, IT, CN
April 2011
**
“At last, a concept that is more than a clever idea...[Pountney's] Turandot here at the Salzburg [sic] abandons its customary Chinoiserie taking its visual cue from Fritz Lang's movie Metropolis, with a touch of Tim Burton and Edward Scissorhands...In this reading of the work it helps immeasurably that Pountney and Gergiev have jettisoned both Franco Alfano's long and short endings”
April 2011
****
“Pountney employs imagery of huge grinding cogs (drawn from, inter alia, Fritz Lang's film Metropolis) to show a brutal mechanized society being thawed by love. Gabriele Schnaut displays unflagging power as Turandot and Johan Botha (though hampered somewhat by his size) is equally thrilling.”
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