Opera on DVD

[karlhenning]

There are roughly 60 hits within our search engine for 'Eugene Onegin'; and yet none of them devote more than a line or so to what is one of the masterpieces of Russian opera, of all opera.

I have been watching the 2007 Robert Carsen MET production on DVD. Not often can the cameras catch a night where everything goes this well. Bruce Hodges saw four of this run of performances, including the one that was filmed. On each of the other three occasions there was a problem with one of the cast, or Gergiev was substituted by a less able conductor. But here we have it, captured on the best possible night and anyone interested in great opera performances should secure it.

Tchaikovsky wrote Onegin at a pivotal point in his life. During the conception of it, he contemplated marriage, disastrously embarked upon it and worked on the piece through the fallout of the failure. There is always suggestion that Tchaikovsky was investing himself in his work and exposing his psyche, especially in his later symphonies. But in this piece the claim seems to hold water. Not in the specifics of the story, rather in the direct way he communicates passion and loss and disappointment. Onegin as outsider, observer...ultimately as a failure in his emotional life.

Pushkin made Onegin more arrogant than he appears in the opera, where he is disdainful and spoilt, rather than cruel and cold. Tchaikovsky does not give him a great deal of music. I suspect his singing time in Act 3 exceeds his music in Acts 1 and 2 combined. He gets an arioso, but not, as do Tatiana, Lenski and Gremin, a full blown formal aria. In that respect it is a little how Mozart treats Don Giovanni. As there, everyone else revolves around the main character and we learn as much about him from the way they react to him, as we do from his own words and actions.

The music is glorious, not padded out but economical. At the very end, Onegin is rejected, Tatiana walks away and he is left devastated. He utters a very few words and the curtain falls, no extended aria of feeling or of farewell. The end comes like a guillotine and is all the more brutal for it. Verdi pulls the same masterstroke at the very end of Rigoletto where Guilda's body is discovered....grief, emotional collapse; what more is there to convey? The end.

The production is minimalist in its look. A few chairs, a couple of slim tall treetrunks in scene 1. The duel scene takes place on an entirely empty stage, the rim of the sun comes up silhouetting the duellists, then Lenski's dead body. There is nothing to distract from the crucible of the drama.

It takes talented singing actors to hold the attention on such a bare stage, no opportunity for stage business, the singers stand exposed to the drama and their ability to communicate it. Hvorostrovsky, Fleming and Vargas all riveted and inspired the audience, who roared their appreciation at the end.

This may be Hvorostrovsky's best role. It suits his slightly disengaged stage persona and he has the magnetism to pull your attention to him even when he is doing almost nothing. In this production, he shoots his friend dead. At once the polonaise starting Act 3 begins and Hvorostrovsky, numb, impassive allows himself to be undressed and dressed by servants in preparation for the ball. The body of Lensky is carried past him, the set itself is also dressed around him with a square of chairs and the mood of grief and loss is brought forward those three years into the new Act in a seamless and legitimate way.

Instead of watching dancers try to cope en-messe with that fast polonaise, its exuberance acts as a counterpoint to the self destructive emptiness evident within Onegin. This is such intelligent direction and it stokes up the emotions of the audience, rather than gives them the chance to dissipate and be distracted by what is usually second rate dancing.

As I have indicated, despite such bare sets, this was not at all a non-production. The prelude to act one finds Onegin sitting in a chair at the centre of a darkened stage. He is reading the letter Tatiana will send to him. He leafs through it in a perfunctory way, distracted, irritated. As he turns the pages, pressed autumn leaves fall out onto the ground. Then more leaves start to fall from the sky and he looks up as thousands and thousands descend around him. A potent and disturbing symbol, his future foretold. He looks perturbed.

There are many such touches and the counterpart in the final act is to see Tatiana's contrasting and grief-stricken reception to Onegin's belated letter with his own declaration of love. As in his scene, she sits on a chair in the centre of an otherwise bare stage.

When, earlier, love does finally hit Onegin, the staging and lighting conspire to provide it with the quality of a bolt of lightening.

The production is so strong because the relationships and the motivations are so well worked out and are displayed without at all being semaphored. The jealously of Lenski is set up masterfully. Olga is so flighty she cannot concentrate on his loving gift of the poems he has written for her. It is plain she wants a more tangible present. She is all too open to the flirting that Onegin indulges in, so as to torture Lenski. We see a classic relationship between the plain poet and the magnetically glamorous friend, the one who can attract women by merely being, whereas his own grip on the woman he loves is palpably tentative. Lensky's unease and slide into pathological jealousy is all too understandable.

They all sing up a storm. The big moments are a total success. Everyone's acting superb, as much in repose as in action. One instance, the song written for Tatiana's name day by Triquet is provided with genuine beauty and yearning by Gergiev and his singer, far from the comic ditty it is so often presented as. During it, Tatiana sits, and you can watch her restraining the conflicting emotions that pass through her. I do like to see an actor think, hardly moving a muscle yet so much is conveyed.

For a lot of this pinpointing we have Brian Large to thank, his TV direction is exemplary. He allows many full stage shots and homes in on the telling detail without being right down the throats of the singers.

Gergiev fires up the orchestra, it has sweep, but great tenderness is not left out. The playing is wonderful and Tchaikovsky's thumbprint woodwind lines come out clearly.

We had that debate recently about whether DVDs might be better than being there....I don't think so. This set provides a different experience of the production, legitimate and powerful in its own right. But I would so like to have been with Bruce at the House and seen it and sensed the audience around me. But what we have is treasure. It will become a classic, well, it already is one.

Mike

Man, you posted this on St Patrick's Day, and our CIO is an Irishman.  Thanks for the review, for I have been looking for a good DVD of this 'un.

[knight66]

Well then if you enjoy it, so does good come from bad, yet again. It would not have been highlighted today had there not been all that nonsense on another thread.

Mike

[karlhenning]

I have found the rose which grew forth from the merde.

[DavidW]

Yup added to my netflix queue, I suppose I actually could take the same approach with what I asked about concerning modern Mozart operas come to think of it!

[knight66]

Good to see you here David.

Mike

[sospiro]

This was my first ever opera DVD



and I was disappointed mainly because I didn't like Karita Mattila's Amelia. Makes me sound shallow but I didn't like her clothes, makeup or hair! And Lucio Gallo's Paolo wasn't evil at all he was just a pantomime villain.

Then I got this one



I know marvinbrown really liked it but I was disappointed again. In this production, before Boccanegra discovers that Amelia is his daughter he lusts after her which I found unpleasant. I know in the story there's the scene where Paolo is goading Adorno to kill Boccanegra & he hints that the Doge wants Amelia for himself & refers to Boccanegra's infamous pleasures. (presumably referring to his unmarried love affair with Maria 25 years earlier which in 1339, would have branded him a lech, but there's nothing elsewhere to suggest he's a lecherous old man now).

Anyway, undaunted I got this one



and it's wonderful! I love it all but especially all scenes with Boccanegro & Fiesco, when Boccanegra discovers Amelia is his daughter (the look on his face when he asks "In Pisa tu?" and "Dinne... alcun là non vedesti?") and the meeting of Fiesco and Paolo on his way to the scaffold. Te Kanawa, Agache, Opie & Scandiuzzi for me are perfect.

[Lethevich]

Just a heads up - Naxos Direct UK is still on its New Year's sale and has some opera DVDs reduced (and free shipping inside UK - unavailable shipping externally ):

http://www.naxosdirect.co.uk/page/new%20year%20sale (the bottom end of the right column)

Nice to see the von Otter Carmen on offer, it's a very good production.

[sospiro]

Just a heads up - Naxos Direct UK is still on its New Year's sale and has some opera DVDs reduced (and free shipping inside UK - unavailable shipping externally ):

http://www.naxosdirect.co.uk/page/new%20year%20sale (the bottom end of the right column)

Nice to see the von Otter Carmen on offer, it's a very good production.

Thanks Lethe

[MDL]

I've just finished watching Penderecki's The Devils of Loudun again.



I haven't watched this DVD for a few years. I first heard the Philips LP/CD recording  (made around the same time as the film in 1969) back in 1982; I've played the audio-only recording to death and know it back to front and inside out, so even though I was hugely impressed by the DVD, released a few years ago, it ended up in the seen-that-got-the-T-shirt-let's-try-something-new pile.

But I'd forgotten what a terrifying, traumatising piece of work the film is. OK, the singers are miming to a soundtrack, and they sometimes forget to open their mouths when they're meant to be singing, but that's understandable given the complexity of the score, the action and the staging.  But most of the cast really throw themselves into their roles, and the clammy, claustrophobic staging (with probing, nervy camerawork that spares the viewer nothing) is suitably gruelling.

It's not nice, but in this era of resurgent religious fundamentalism, it's a timely warning.

[abidoful]

The first opear Szymanowski composed (besides some juvenalia).

[Wendell_E]

About damn time!

Alban Berg: Lulu

1980 Live from the Met telecast

Lulu: Julia Migenes
Geschwitz: Evelyn Lear
Alwa: Kenneth Riegel
Painter/Negro: Frank Little
Dr. Schön/Jack: Franz Mazura


Conducted by James Levine
Directed by John Dexter

It's on the Met's own label, and I guess only available from their website (http://www.metoperashop.org/product/detail/1000004733.aspx), and for what they charge for delivery, Levine should bring it to your doorstep himself, but I'd buy it at twice the price.  I've been waiting for this one forever (OK, 30 years).

[jhar26]

This is maybe my favorite opera buffa from the classical period from a composer other than Mozart. Just like Mozart Cimarosa is equally skilled at writing ensembles as well as arias and just like Wolfie he knows how to use the orchestra to maximum advantage, at least going on the evidence of this opera. I've never heard any of Cimarosa's other operas, but if they are anything near as good as this one I'm definitely interested in checking them out.

The performance on this DVD is delightful. It's well acted and for the most part very well sung. Warmly recommended to those who love Cosi Fan Tutte and Le Nozze di Figaro. Not that it reaches quite THAT level of genius, but it probably comes closer than any other work of the era by a composer who's name ain't Mozart..

[bhodges]

About damn time!

About damn time, indeed!  Thanks for posting this--had no idea it was available, and am doubly, even triply glad that Dexter's production has been immortalized on video (not to mention that cast, and Levine's reading of the score). 

Just listened to the live broadcast with the latest Lulu crew yesterday--marvelous--and am going to see it live on Wednesday.

--Bruce

[knight66]

This deserves a prize for something, but I am not quite sure what.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoXTLWwy8SI

Mike

[mamascarlatti]

This deserves a prize for something, but I am not quite sure what.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoXTLWwy8SI

Mike

Holy mackerel that is hilarious. Dima's outfit/airbrushing reminds me of the front cover of this opera DVD:

[knight66]

How does a singer manage in a get-up like that? I don't mean the dress.

Mike

[mamascarlatti]

How does a singer manage in a get-up like that? I don't mean the dress.

Mike

It must be all computer post-production graphics. You're not going to tell me that at 50 he still has abs like that...

[knight66]

There was a production of the Ring a few years ago where the Rheinmaidens all wore fat suits and sang 'nude'. Apart from looking grotesque, it must have got so hot. The suit being worn on that cover looks very ackward in terms of restricting movement.

Mike

[mamascarlatti]

There was a production of the Ring a few years ago where the Rheinmaidens all wore fat suits and sang 'nude'. Apart from looking grotesque, it must have got so hot. The suit being worn on that cover looks very ackward in terms of restricting movement.

Mike

Oh, I see, you mean Ercole. (I was still reeling from S&M Dima.) Certainly seems very ungainly. I've been reading about the singers in the LA Ring complaining about the ridiculous outfits and headdresses they had to wear and how impossible it was to sing in them while wobbling around on an angled stage.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-ring-problems-20100514,0,6390533,full.story 

On the whole however singers nowadays seem to put up with no end of indignities.

[knight66]

Yes, I have read about that production. The director seems to deal out contempt to the singers.

I especially enjoyed the following remarks:

'L.A. Opera defended Freyer. "The psychological dimension is outsourced to other forms of expression, like the lighting."'

'Koelsch also said that the safety of the stage is a "huge priority" and that injuries are dealt with on a case-by-case basis.'

'The bulky costumes co-designed by Freyer and his daughter make even walking awkward, and the masks required for some performers partially impede their vision and hearing.'

Mike