DVD and Blu-ray Highlights,
DVD and Blu-ray Highlights - September 2018
September highlights for home viewing include this year’s birthday concert from the Berliner Philharmoniker in Bayreuth, William Kentridge’s cinematic Wozzeck from the 2017 Salzburg Festival (with Matthias Goerne in the title-role), an open-air evening of Italian favourites from Jonas Kaufmann in Berlin, and Ermonela Jaho’s visceral Madama Buttterfly from Covent Garden.
Recorded in Berlin earlier this summer and relayed to cinemas around the world, this all-Italian programme features music from Kaufmann’s award-winning Verismo album (including arias by Mascagni and Ponchielli) and popular songs from his Dolce Vita disc of 2016, plus a white-hot account of Santuzza and Turiddu’s confrontation from Cavalleria rusticana with the fast-rising Georgian dramatic mezzo Anita Rachvelishvili.
Available Format: DVD Video
Puccini: La Bohème (DVD)
Michael Fabiano (Rodolfo), Nicole Car (Mimì), Mariusz Kwiecien (Marcello), Simona Mihai (Musetta); Royal Opera House, Antonio Pappano, Richard Jones
There’s nothing to frighten the horses in the first new production of Puccini’s tear-jerker in over four decades – Richard Jones’s production looks gorgeous (especially in the Café Momus scene) and keeps the action firmly in nineteenth-century Paris, and his charismatic young cast, particularly the Australian soprano Nicole Car’s multi-faceted Mimì, perform with energy and conviction.
Available Format: DVD Video
Puccini: La Bohème (Blu-ray)
Michael Fabiano (Rodolfo), Nicole Car (Mimì), Mariusz Kwiecien (Marcello), Simona Mihai (Musetta); Royal Opera House, Antonio Pappano, Richard Jones
Audio format: LPCM: 2D
Picture format: 16:9
Available Format: Blu-ray
Puccini: Madama Butterfly (DVD)
Ermonela Jaho (Cio-Cio San), Marcelo Puente (Pinkerton), Scott Hendricks (Sharpless); Royal Opera House, Antonio Pappano
The Albanian soprano Ermonela Jaho is widely recognised as one of today’s greatest Butterflies, and her 2017 performance at Covent Garden prompted The Guardian to declare that ‘[her] combination of vulnerability and torrential emotion just tears you in two’. You can read Katherine’s 2016 interview with her (in which she explores the parallels between Butterfly and Leoncavallo’s Zazà) here.
Available Format: DVD Video
Puccini: Madama Butterfly (Blu-ray)
Ermonela Jaho (Cio-Cio San), Marcelo Puente (Pinkerton), Scott Hendricks (Sharpless); Royal Opera House, Antonio Pappano
Audio format: LPCM: 2D
Picture format: 16:9
Available Format: Blu-ray
Bernstein had a special affinity with Berlioz’s emotionally extravagant ‘episodes in the life of a young artist’; filmed at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in 1976, this larger-than-life performance was directed for video by his friend and biographer Humphrey Burton. Also includes a 1981 concert from the same venue, featuring Saint-Saëns’s Le rouet d’Omphale, the overture to Ambroise Thomas’s Raymond, and Roussel’s Symphony No. 3, which was commissioned by Bernstein’s mentor Serge Koussevitzky.
Available Format: DVD Video
The Mumbai Concerts (DVD)
Pinchas Zukerman (violin), Denis Matsuev (piano), Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Zubin Mehta
Recorded at the National Center for Performing Arts Mumbai in April 2016, these two concerts celebrating the Indian maestro’s 80th birthday include Ravel’s La valse and Suite No. 2 from Daphnis et Chloé, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto (with Mehta’s great friend Pinchas Zukerman as soloist), the Brahms Double Concerto, the Overture to Die Fledermaus, and Dvořák’s Carnaval.
Available Format: 2 DVD Videos
The Mumbai Concerts (Blu-ray)
Pinchas Zukerman (violin), Denis Matsuev (piano), Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Zubin Mehta
Audio format: 5:1
Picture format: 16:9
Available Format: Blu-ray
Shakespeare: Twelfth Night (DVD)
Dinita Gohil (Viola), Kara Tointon (Olivia), Adrian Edmonson (Malvolio), Esh Alladi (Sebastian), Nicholas Bishop (Orsini); Royal Shakespeare Company, Christopher Luscombe
It’s a little outside our usual remit, but the Royal Shakespeare Company's 2017 production of Twelfth Night is definitely worth catching; set in the late nineteenth century (and with atmospheric incidental music by British TV and film composer Nigel Hess), it won praise from The Telegraph for Edmondson’s ‘hypnotic quality of unpredictability’ as the beleaguered Malvolio, and was described in The Times as ‘frothy fun – with bite’.
Available Format: DVD Video
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
