Glass, P: The Perfect American

Christopher Purves (Walt Disney), David Pittsinger (Roy), Donald Kaasch (Dantine), Janis Kelly (Hazel George), Marie McLaughlin (Lillian Disney), Sarah Tynan (Sharon), Nazan Fikret (Diane) & Rosie Lomas (Lucy / Josh)

The Improbable Skills Ensemble & Orchestra and chorus of the Teatro...

Purves fully engages with the lead role, injecting energy into a score that (perhaps unusually for a style based on such propulsive repetition) often lacks momentum. — BBC Music Magazine, Christmas Issue 2013, 3 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 2nd Sep 2013
Catalogue No: OABD7129D
Label: Opus Arte

Glass, P: The Perfect American

Recorded live at the Teatro Real, February 2013
Christopher Purves (Walt Disney), David Pittsinger (Roy), Donald Kaasch (Dantine), Janis Kelly (Hazel George), Marie McLaughlin (Lillian Disney), Sarah Tynan (Sharon), Nazan Fikret (Diane) & Rosie Lomas (Lucy / Josh)
The Improbable Skills Ensemble & Orchestra and chorus of the Teatro Real
Dennis Russell Davies (conductor) & Phelim McDermott (director)

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The last days of the American icon Walt Disney form a powerful and poignant subject for Philip Glass's latest opera, which was filmed at its first performances in Madrid in January 2013. Phelim McDermott's spectacular production is worthy of Disney's own visual imagination and its definitive influence on American culture, while in the pit is the conductor Dennis Russell Davies, an experienced and authoritative champion of the composer's hypnotically beautiful music, which gives wings to Rudy Wurlitzer's operatic transformation of Peter Stephan Jungk's novel, using both fact and fiction to peer into Disney's troubled psyche as illness forces him to confront his mortality.

Directed by Phelim McDermott, who created the acclaimed Met/ENO Satyagraha with Julian Crouch.

Co-production between Teatro Real & English National Opera.

Based on Peter Stephan Jungk’s novel, “The Perfect American” is a surreal, meditative, episodic account of the last days of Walt Disney.

Disney is portayed as "arrogant, misogynist, racist, tyrannical, mean, ultraconservative, uncultured, hypochondriac and megalomaniac". (Ruben Amon - El Mundo)

Please note that this is not a “Disney” style production.

Extra features: A cast gallery.

Running time: 120 minutes

Subtitles EN/FR/DE/ES/JP/KR

Sound format: 2.0LPCM + 5.1(5.0) DTS

Artists

The Improbable Skills Ensemble & Orchestra and chorus of the Teatro Real, Dennis Russell Davies (conductor) & Phelim McDermott (director)

Reviews

Christmas Issue 2013

Purves fully engages with the lead role, injecting energy into a score that (perhaps unusually for a style based on such propulsive repetition) often lacks momentum.

January 2014

The dark tone is set from the beginning...Purves impresses conveys the complex and ultimately flawed character of Walt...Opus Arte's production is excellent...and brings The Perfect American - such as it is - very vividly to life.

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Glass, P: The Perfect American

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