Cav and Pag in Madrid

[uffeviking]

My head is up too, especially because very good productions have come out of Zürich. Wonder if Welser-Möst is the conductor.

Madrid does have a huge stage, but don't you think their directors are very good at filling it? Barcelona is an outstanding opera also, if only they would let Bieito do his thing someplace else. Don't they have an opera house on the North Pole? 

[T-C]

My head is up too, especially because very good productions have come out of Zürich. Wonder if Welser-Möst is the conductor.

He is.

Next month there will be two other productions from the Zurich opera on DVD with Welser-Möst as conductor. You can preorder it at Amazon for only $16.99 each:

Britten – PETER GRIMES

Mozart – DON GIOVANNI (with Simon Keenlyside...)

Schubert - FIERRABRAS

[yashin]

A French website has reviewed the new Peter Grimes from Zurich.  Here is the translation (thanks to google).  Chris Ventris is Grimes, Emily Magee is Ellen.   The translation as always is a bit odd.
   
Musically honorable, vocally a little light, the production directed by Franz Welser-Möst gets away with it by the humidity worrying that arises on the scene, in a staging disorder and suffocating ... 
 
If the pit expresses everything that does not appear on the scene (without substance, blind), the disorder elements, the sea winds, oxygenation and dramatic ocean currents (the action takes place in a fishing village, in océam board), the protagonists unfortunately lack this depth as ambiguous intensity, especially ambivalence that both the evidence and the explosion of "big productions." Grimes (Christopher Ventris) et Emily (Ellen Orford). The theme of suspicion, uncertainty, and thus the difficulty of loneliness, so essential in the work of Britten opera, so few are approached, particularly by the two main actors: Grimes (Christopher Ventris) and Emily ( Ellen Orford).  Rejecting the outset, everything that could feed their share of mystery (Grimes is murderer or victim? And the teacher in love, which is really aware Grimes?) , Interpreters observed a fairly illustrative figurative speech. Too bad, because the gap between expressive and visual haze killing of the scene and expressionism of the orchestra could give the best. The production, however, is far from seductive. But the assumption that they are at Briten the subtlety and suggestion are de rigueur, we would have liked vocally, more nuances.

[yashin]

 The site is classiquenews  -type it into google.  It has loads of really new DVD reviews- Tosca with Terfel and Malfitano, Don Carlos with Vargas, Don Giovanni with keenlyside and the above Grimes review.

If you can put up with the translation its well worth looking at even to get an idea as to whether or not to buy.

[BachQ]

Wow, T-C, that gets my vote for "opera photo of the month"! 

Agreed

I will no doubt be getting this, too, since Wozzeck is a favorite. 

Agreed

[Siedler]

i was lucky enough to see the Wozzeck from Covent Garden with Goerne and it was sensational.  I believe that it was not taped -which seems outragous for such a great production which seemed to get wide acclaim.

I really like the crop of DVDs coming from the Spanish opera houses.  However, am i not the only one who finds the Madrid opera house stage a little too large?  Productions seem to get swallowed up in there.

Too large? What about Salzburg?!