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.
Die Walküre
It began with a scandal, became the object of heated discussions, turned into a sensational success and finally blossomed into a legendary, standard setting production: Pierre Boulez’ and Patrice Chéreau’s epoch-making “Ring” cycle in Bayreuth, the “Centennial Ring”. When the production was premiered in 1976, there were brawls in the venerable Festspielhaus, with the audience divided into one mob roaring in favor and one screaming against. The main reason for the protests was Chéreau, who set the work in the time in which it was written and focused on the all-too-human passions that motivate gods and men alike. The grimy industrial era with its robber barons and suffering masses supplied the ideological underpinnings of Chéreau’s concept. Musical conservatives felt betrayed and cheapened by this association. The tide began to turn in 1977. Certain features were altered and the production began to have a more homogeneous feel. Finally, in 1980, its last year, the Ring concluded with a 90-minute ovation and 110 curtain calls. By the time Philips released the complete recording of this production in 1992, its legendary status had already begun to take shape: “Patrice Chéreau and Pierre Boulez not only wrote a major new chapter in Wagner interpretation with their Ring, but also carried out a revolution that affected all of musical theater. Since then, no production of the Ring has been able to come near to the concept put forward by Chéreau and Boulez.” (FonoForum) Unitel’s production, the first complete recording on film of Wagner’s Ring, marked the beginning of Unitel’s exclusive association with the Bayreuth Festival.
Das Land des Lächelns
Franz Lehár (1870-1948) was incontestably one of the foremost masters of the operetta. He abounded in creative ideas, was a supreme craftsman, a temperamental musician whose artistry flowed in his blood, and a dramatist who succeeded in breathing genuine life into the hackneyed figures of the operetta genre. His most popular operettas were premiered between 1925 and 1929. These were the works whose wealth of ideas and emotionally florid, sometimes even sentimental, melodies brought them greater fame than the brilliant early works such as “The Count of Luxembourg” (1909) and “Gypsy Love” (1910) – save for “The Merry Widow” (1905), his most popular operetta of all. The works of this second creative period were also conceived with one particular singer in mind: Richard Tauber. The most typical works of this period are “Paganini” (1925), “The Czarevitch” (1927), “Friederike” (1928) and “Das Land des Lächelns” (1929). Among Lehár’s later operettas, “Das Land des Lächelns” has been particularly successful. It revels in color and rhythmic liveliness and the peculiar harmonies and melodies echo the exoticism of the Chinese setting.
Tannhäuser
This is the first complete television production recorded at the annual Wagner Festival in Bayreuth. Director Götz Friedrich sees the minstrel Tannhäuser as a rugged artistic individualist, much as Wagner was himself, misunderstood by his contemporaries who seek to throttle his inalienable right of expression. He turns his back on a regulated, stifling society and retreats into the world of his own impossible dreams. Whereas other productions of “Tannhäuser” show the minstrel acutally biding time in the court of Venus, in Friedrich’s version Tannhäuser’s harp triggers an imaginary Venusberg, in which the strings become a tangled web of pure sensuality. Tannhäuser discovers that a completely anything-goes society is just as restrictive in the end, and he returns to the real world. But Tannhäuser can’t go home again. Once again he lashes out at his hypocritical associates, who condemn him. His only defender is the saintly Elisabeth, who in this production is played by the same soprano who sings Venus – two sides of the coin in the eternal feminine. She prays for her own death, so that thereby Tannhäuser’s soul leaves this restrictive world for a better one in which his genius is appreciated.
Beethoven, Symphony No.9 in D minor, op.125 “Choral”
The fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 unleashed a wave of democratization in Central and Eastern Europe that radically transformed the world order. “I am experiencing a historical moment, incomparable with others in my long, long life,” commented Leonard Bernstein about the breakthrough of freedom in the Communist world. In a typically grandiose yet eloquent gesture, Bernstein spontaneously accepted an invitation to conduct two performances of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony to celebrate this freedom. Two concerts, held in each sction of the city that had been divided for 28 years: one in West Berlin’s Philharmonie on 23 December, the other in East Berlin on 25 December 1989. It was only fitting that East Germany’s new-found freedom should be celebrated with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The monumental work, perhaps the world’s most famous symphony, was inspired by Schiller’s poem “Ode to Joy,” a passionate paean to freedom. For his two concerts, Bernstein substituted the word “freedom” (Freiheit) for “joy” (Freude) to reflect his personal message. “I’m sure that Beethoven would have given us his blessing,” added Mr. Bernstein. Our recording was taped live in East Berlin on Christmas Day 1989. Adding to the symbolism of the event, Bernstein conducted an orchestra and chorus formed of musicians from the United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union – the four victorious World War II allies who were still responsible for governing Berlin at the time. Joining the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus were musicians from the London Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Orchestra of Leningrad’s Kirov Theater, as well as chorus members from the East-Berlin Radio Chorus and the Children’s Chorus of the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra. Equally international were the illustrious vocalists in the final movement’s “Ode to Joy,” June Anderson, Sarah Walker, Klaus König and Jan-Hendrik Rootering.
Lohengrin
“Lohengrin” was premiered in Weimar in 1850 under the direction of Franz Liszt. The performance was a triumph for the composer, who, however, was unable to attend: he had been exiled for taking part in the 1848 uprisings in Dresden. The Bayreuth Festival production has many of the same haunted, obsessive qualities that mark such Werner Herzog films as “Aguirre, The Wrath of God” and “Fitzcarraldo”. The internationally acclaimed filmmaker’s heroes (often played by the late Klaus Kinski) are generally lonely, enigmatic men; in Lohengrin, Herzog found a truly congenial subject. With its probing images and lavish settings by Henning von Gierke, the production is not only intelligent, fascinating and coherent, but also simply gorgeous. The press unanimously hailed Paul Frey’s “limpid and tender voice” and Cheryl Studer’s “marvelous musicality and transparent timbre”.
La Bohème
One of the world’s most beloved operas, “La Bohème” is, along with Puccini’s “Tosca” and “Madama Butterfly”, one of the pillars of the Italian repertory. Premiered in Turin on 1 February 1896, it was dismissed as “a momentary error”. It wasn’t until its first performance in Palermo that year that the opera scored a definitive success. Film director Luigi Comencini (“La Storia”) transposed the story to the early 20th century and made a few minor changes in the storyline as well. Mimi, for instance, dies in her own room. Although the sound track features the voice of José Carreras as Rodolfo, his illness prevented him from playing the role in the film; he was substituted by Luca Canonici. As Mimi, Barbara Hendricks gives a splendid performance, which was unanimously praised in all reviews.
Giselle
The American Ballet Theater is one of the most renowned classical dance companies in the world. The company’s long history is strongly linked with Antony Tudor, George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, three of the most distinguished choreographers of our century. With its strong contrast between the realistic peasants of the first act and the disembodied spirits of the second, “Giselle” can be considered as romantic ballet at its peak. Following the premiere of David Blair’s choreography of “Giselle” for the American Ballet Theater in 1969, the New York press acclaimed Carla Fracci and Erik Bruhn as one of the most convincingly harmonious partnerships at work on the ballet stage.
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.
Elektra
In this production, history, psychoanalysis and modern-day apocalyptic visions are presented with compelling urgency through Friedrich’s staging and Böhm’s artistic mastery. “Elektra” becomes a contemporary myth of desperate, unrelenting humanity. “Seldom before, surely, have the often erotic ideas of Hofmannsthal’s libretto been so explicitly delineated or its tragic grandeur so movingly realised. […] Leonie Rysanek, in her first and possibly only Elektra, surmounted the score’s superhuman demands with an interpretive achievement that crowns her career of more than 30 years. […] As a whole, the film showed that opera on television can be a great experience…” (Daily Telegraph)