Nicholas Hytner’s enchanting production, sung in the original Czech, is conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras, a master of the best Janácek style. Through myriad shifts of scene, the episodic story is presented in brightly-coloured sets and costumes of blissful innocence and simplicity, designed by Bob Crowley. Jean-Claude Gallotta’s choreography for the insects and animals, and Jean Kalman’s lighting add to the nostalgically poetic effect of the whole. With Sir Thomas Allen as the Forester, the cast includes Eva Jenis, Hanna Minutillo, Richard Novak and Ivan Kusnjer.
Great Arias
This on-going series of ten-minute programmes introduces some of opera’s finest
moments, performed and presented by some of the greatest singers of our day, Dame Joan
Sutherland, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Eva Marton, Marilyn Home, Anne Sofie von Otter, Roberto Alagna,
Philip Langridge, René Kollo and Yuri Marusin among them. Their performances are drawn from
recent live recordings of acclaimed productions of key works in the operatic repertoire and
include such high-spots as Vissi d’arte from Puccini’s Tosca, the Mad Scene from Donizetti’s
Lucia di Lammermoor, Elektra’s murderous confrontation with her mother in Strauss’s Elektra, and
Leonora’s D’amor sull’ali rosee from the final act of Puccini’s Tosca.
Xerxes
From the English National Opera 1988 Nicholas Hytner’s innovative production has been
much acclaimed and this live recording from the English National Opera features outstanding
performances from a fine English cast, including Dame Ann Murray, Christopher Robson, Jean Rigby,
Lesley Garrett, Rodney Macann and Valerie Masterson. Designer David Fielding adds curious,
surreal touches to his eighteenth-century settings in the London pleasure gardens at Vauxhall,
which heighten the absurdity of the love intrigues in Handel’s comic opera. (Sung in
English)
Julius Caesar
Dame Janet Baker, in one of her greatest roles, leads a cast of some of Britain’s finest interpeters of baroque opera and their performance under the baton of Sir Charles Mackerras is one of the highest musical excellence. John Copley’s acclaimed English National Opera production was restaged in studio, skilfully using all the technical advantages offered, to create this top quality recording.
The opera was first performed in 1724 at the Haymarket Theatre in London using castrati singers in the heroes’ roles. This production follows modern practice in using women in these parts. Dame Janet’s virtuoso role as Julius Caesar has been heralded as a masterful recreation of the music which Handel wrote for the finest singers of his time. Sung in English.
God Rot Tunbridge Wells!
Tony Palmer’s feature on Handel’s life, scripted by John Osborne, is both extremely amusing and profoundly moving. It centres on the last week of his life, when, outraged by a poor performance of his Messiah in Tunbridge Wells, the decrepit composer took to his bed. Shot on location in Germany, England, Ireland and Italy, the film stars Trevor Howard and features Handel’s music as an integral part of the drama, performed by The English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras.
A Village: Romeo and Juliet (Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe)
Based on the novella “The People of Seldwyla” by Gottfried Keller, this opera was written in 1901 and first performed in German at Berlin’s Komische Oper on 21 February 1907. Its first English-language production was given in London on 22 February 1910. Frederick Delius (1862-1934) obtained his first successes in Germany. He numbers among the late-Romantic composers in the line of Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler. The dramatic weightiness and heroic sweep of these composers is, however, missing in Delius’s music, which is more dream-like and limpid, as in the well-known “Walk to Paradise Garden”, an intermezzo from the opera “A Village Romeo and Juliet”. Delius’s most important opera, it radiates a fairy-tale atmosphere similar to that found in Pfitzner and Humperdinck.