Opera on DVD

[Wendell_E]

Did Wagner ever use castanets in the orchestra for any other work?  They're here at the beginning of the Overture. 

The only use that springs immediately to mind is in the ballet music in Tannhäuser, but only in the Paris/Vienna version.

[ritter]

WAGNER (Richard!)  Das Liebesverbot    based on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure
Teatro Real, Madrid production
an early work (1835)  more like Gilbert & Sullivan than a Parsifal-like look at "forbidden love"
Did Wagner ever use castanets in the orchestra for any other work?  They're here at the beginning of the Overture.  And a surprise visit from "Angela Merkel" at the finale of this production.

I saw that production live here in Madrid. The opera isn't anything memorable, but it was a rare and welcome chance to see early Wagner fully staged, a was ultimately a fun evening in the theatre.

[listener]

The only use that springs immediately to mind is in the ballet music in Tannhäuser, but only in the Paris/Vienna version.

Quite right, I see them in the Dover score

The staging is inventive, a single but complex set that slides back and forth with a few small sub-pieces and very well lit. 
With some advice about editing and plot clarification Wagner could have become the German Hérold.  It was interesting to discover this unexpected side of the composer.

[Wendell_E]

A Feb. 2013 Bayerische Staatsoper (Munich) production.

Mussorgsky : Boris Godunov
Opera in four parts and seven scenes
First version (1868/1869)
Music and libretto : Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881)
After Alexander Pushkin and Nikolai Karamsins

Boris Godunov: Alexander Tsymbalyuk
Fyodor Yulia: Sokolik
Xenia: Eri Nakamura
Xenia's nurse: Heike Grötzinger
Schuisky: Gerhard Siegel
Andrey Chelkalov: Markus Eiche
Pimen: Anatoli Kotscherga
Grigory Otropyev: Sergey Skorokhodov
Varlaam: Vladimir Matorin
Missail: Ulrich Reß
Hostess: Okka von der Damerau
Simpleton: Kevin Conners
Nikititch: Goran Jurić
Boyard [sic]: Dean Power
Mityucha: Tareq Nazmi
Captain: Christian Rieger

Chor der Bayerischen Staatsoper & Bayerisches Staatsorchester
Conductor: Kent Nagano
Stage direction: Calixto Bieito
Sets: Rebecca Ringst
Costumes: Ingo Krügler
Lighting design: Michael Bauer
Dramaturgy: Andrea Schönhofer
Chorus master: Sören Eckhoff

Is this the first Bieito production I've ever seen? I think it may be. Searching my records, that does seem to be the case. From part of an interview with the director in the booklet: "Boris... depicts, in what I might almost call a visionary way, a society that is very similar to today's, where the social, economic and cultural distinctions between a minority and a majority are steadily growing. Where the broad mass of people doesn't know why, where, or by whom the decisions that affect their daily lives are made. A nation that lives in an almost shocking state of ignorance." Thank goodness we've fixed all that since he gave that interview! 🙄

So, a modern setting, with lots of added violence and killing: Mitiyucha and another guy are brutally beaten in the opening scene, and there are six murders not called for in the libretto. Grigory's escape from the two police in the Inn Scene is made a lot easier by Grigory stabbing one of them, and the Hostess shooting the other. Shiusky gets one of the kids that tormented the Simpleton to shoot him in the head at the end of the scene. They at least use a silencer. Finally, during Boris's Farewell, Grigory sneaks into a room to the side and kills Xenia's nurse, and Xenia, then he goes and gets Fyodor, takes him to the side room, and kills him as well.

Or should that read "kills her as well"? An adult soprano sometimes portrays Fyodor as a trouser role. That's how the Met cast it in their most recent revival, one of their first post-COVID performances. But in this production, no trousers. He/she is dressed as a schoolgirl, with a braided pigtail, plaid skirt, and knee-high white socks. Neither the Bieito interview nor any review I found online explained this.  Boris still refers to him with "male words": "Fyodor", "Tsarevicich", "son". My theory is that Fyodor's a trans girl, but Daddy doesn't accept that, so they've come up with a compromise solution: She dresses to conform to her gender identity, but he just ignores it and deadnames her.