The keystone of any production of Giuseppe Verdi’s ‘La Traviata’ is the choice of the soprano to play the tender-hearted courtesan and doomed heroine Violetta Valéry. At the Sferisterio Opera Festival in the central Italian city of Macerata, the choice fell upon Mariella Devia – and it couldn’t have been more ideal for Massimo Gasparon’s stately production. The press was unanimous in acclaiming the ‘exhilarating’ (L’Opinione), ‘incomparable’ (Liberonews. it) singer, who ‘towers over the cast’ and is a ‘worthy representative of the great school of Italian singing’ (ForumOpera.com). A frequent and much-acclaimed Violetta, Mariella Devia boasts ‘perfect projection and intact vocal freshness’ (Rinascita).
Aida
Luciano Pavarotti heads an exceptional cast in this spectacular live recording from La Scala, Milan, with Ghena Dimitrova, Maria Chiara, Nicolai Ghiaurov and Juan Pons, all in peak form. Luca Ronconi’s magnificent production of Verdi’s much-loved masterpiece was a triumphant success, with Mauro Pagano’s monumental settings capturing perfectly the imposing grandeur of the land of the Pharaohs and the ochre hues of the desert. Lorin Maazel conducts.
Otello
“An amazing range, with fresh young lows and girlish highs, full, glowing middle and high registers, a timbre of silk, champagne and sandpaper, a great lyrical-dramatic soprano,” wrote Berlin’s Tagesspiegel about Marina Poplavskaya. The Moscow native was clearly “the queen of this operatic performance,” as the eminent critic Joachim Kaiser put it in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, and perhaps the most dazzling discovery of this Salzburg Festival production of Verdi’s “Otello.” Poplavskaya’s Desdemona shares the limelight on the stage of Salzburg’s Grosses Festspielhaus with her partner Aleksandrs Antonenko, an up-and-coming Latvian tenor with an impressive stage presence and a light, heady timbre that gives his Otello a youthful note.
Nabucco
‘Nabucco’ has long been at home in the Arena di Verona, and for many, the ‘Va pensiero’ chorus is, along with the triumphal march from ‘Aida,’ the very embodiment of the Verona experience. This video production vividly captures this unique experience and provides the viewer with fascinating details that escape many of the Arena’s spectators. Stage director Denis Krief casts the work in a sparse modern setting, providing a highly effective showcase for the true heroes of the evening, the singers under conductor Daniel Oren.
Also available: Making of Nabucco – Verdi’s Nabucco in Verona
Directors: Henry Secchiaroli / Denis Krief – 18’ – A00501021
Falstaff
After an unparalleled succession of tragic operas, Verdi finished his operatic career with a comedy. It has a thread of intriguing musical cross- references and a great richness of musical resource, as well as subtle delineation of character. It has enchanting love-music, too; but it is the depiction of Falstaff himself and the web of conspiracy round him that gives the opera its chief celebrity. Verdi’s congenial librettist Arrigo Boito created a sparkling adaptation of Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor” and “Henry IV”. “Falstaff” was premiered in Milan in 1893.
Otello
Herbert von Karajan, a master painter of aural and visual panoramas, has created a medley of Mediterranean moods, extending from the violent storm of the Overture to the golden hues of the palace scenes. Jon Vickers, in one of his greatest roles as the brooding Moor Othello, displays the full brilliancy of his legendary voice; Mirella Freni, as Othello’s tormented wife Desdemona, secures our compassion with singing of serene vocal beauty; Peter Glossop is as evil an Iago as one can imagine. Three definitive portrayals of some of Verdi’s most powerful characters. With the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and the Chorus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Herbert von Karajan’s Salzburg Festival production is assured of an electrifying impact.
Hommage à Séville
Rigoletto
Renaissance Italy has never been portrayed more opulently and more realistically than in Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s film of Verdi’s “Rigoletto”, the composer’s first true masterwork for the stage. Towering over the production is Luciano Pavarotti as the cynical, dissolute Duke of Mantua, one of the famed tenor’s greatest vocal and dramatic roles. Rigoletto is magnificently portrayed by the Swedish baritone Ingvar Wixell. His beautiful daughter Gilda is interpreted by Edita Gruberova, one of the leading coloratura sopranos of our time. Director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, “whose stage and television work has brought a new and grandly colorful vitality to opera interpretation” (The New York Times), acclaimed Italian cameraman Pasqualino de Santis (Death in Venice) and architect Gianni Quaranta have created a spellbindingly unique atmosphere. The drama unfolds with a powerful authenticity highlighted by the historic locations in which it was filmed: Parma’s Teatro Farnese of 1628, Mantua’s Palazzo Te, famed for its frescoes by Giulio Romano, and the Palladian-style Teatro Olimpico in Sabbioneta. Riccardo Chailly’s vibrant interpretation of Verdi’s score, with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra responding magnificently to his conducting, is a perfect complement to Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s high-intensity retelling of the drama.
Verdi, Messa da Requiem
Originally performed at La Scala in 1967 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Toscanini’s death, this production with the orchestra and chorus of the Teatro alla Scala was presented in Moscow, Montreal and New York, in addition to Milan. It was recorded on film in 1967, now with the young Luciano Pavarotti replacing Carlo Bergonzi. One of Karajan’s earliest film productions (and his first color film), it reflects his innovativeness especially through his choice of Henri-Georges Clouzot as director. Clouzot was the creator of classic “films noirs” such as “Quai des Orfèvres” and “Wages of Fear”.
La Traviata
Acclaimed film and stage director Franco Zeffirelli spared no costs to reproduce the opulent settings of Violetta Valéry’s happiness and downfall. The unparalleled musical quality of the production is guaranteed by some of the world’s foremost musicians: New York’s Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, conductor James Levine and singers Teresa Stratas and Placido Domingo. As Violetta, Teresa Stratas strikes the right balance between emotional grandeur and physical weakness. And with his meltingly lyrical voice and magnetic stage presence, Placido Domingo embodies Alfredo Germont with a rarely seen passion.