Handel - Rinaldo / Bicket, Daniels, York, Prinzregententheater Munich
by Brian Large
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Axel Köhler, David Daniels, David Walker, Deborah York, Egils SininsDirector: Brian Large
Brand: Kultur
Cinematographer: Peter Czegley
Writer: Aaron Hill
Writer: Giacomo Rossi
Writer: Torquato Tasso
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Classical, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 163 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-11-18
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Kultur Video
Movie Reviews of Handel - Rinaldo / Bicket, Daniels, York, Prinzregententheater Munich
Movie Review: Two Events for the Price of One
Summary: 5 Stars
Let's be very clear to start: the singing in this production is so splendid, so historically informed and technically polished, that NOTHING in the staging would render less than 5 stars appropriate. If you've never been "convinced" by counter-tenors, David Daniels as Rinaldo might well open your ears. Now let's acknowledge that the staging exists on another plane, closer to Dada than Baroque. The music and the drama often seem no more than incidental to each other; you need to multi-task to enjoy them simultaneously. In itself, nonetheless, the staging is quite witty and fresh, and coherent!If you can't relish a little "cognitive dissonance", then play the video with the subtitles on but the volume at zero. Next play the soundtrack with the screen darkened or shrouded. Voila! Two evenings of pleasure!
* Years later, 2010 in fact: Watching and hearing this production again, I feel that I should have reviewed it more amply and earnestly. I haven't changed my mind about the musical splendor; in fact, with a few thousand dollars' worth of better speakers, I'm dazzled by how good the singing is, from the whole cast. The three countertenors who make up the Christian army -- David Walker, David Daniels, and Axel Kühler -- all deserve the thunderous applause and roars of approbation that you'll hear from the live audience after their arias. Eglis Silins, the basso who sings the Mahometan King of Jerusalem, has the muscular timbre only Baltic air seems to produce, but also the vocal agility one expects from a Neapolitan balladeer. The rival 'models of womanhood' -- Deborah York as Almirena and Noemi Nadelmann -- prove beyond a doubt (notice my wry grin here) that women do have a place on the baroque opera stage. And all five principals sing in the same musical vocabulary! Their styles fit together coherently. In this production, "ensemble" really is a synonym for "teamwork". I declare that so insistently because such unity of vocal technique isn't always to be beassumed in productions of baroque opera.
Now the staging: Frankly, it seems fresher and cleverer now than it did when I first saw it. It's totally "disrespectful" and I like that in an opera about the Crusades. "Rinaldo" is based on the mock epic poem by the 16th C Italian Torquato Tasso. I use the word "mock" deliberately; it was the late Renaissance fad for grotesque, escapist-fantasy tales of chivalry than Cervantes satirized in Don Quixote. The works of Tasso and especially of 'that other Italian' Ariosto remained popular throughout the 17th and 18th Centuries. Witness the enormous number of operas based on the adventures of Orlando. You could argue that Rinaldo and Orlando were effectively the same guy, and they were both prototypes of Harry Potter, moony, moody heroes with inexplicable powers in reserve. Yes, Ariosto's and Tasso's tales of wizardry were the Harry Potter phenomenon of Early Modern Europe. One has to appreciate that the 'taste' for operas based on their absurd adventures was essentially the same taste that draws audiences to Harry Potter films today. Of course the plots were ''childish" and frivolous! Do you suppose the audiences that attended Handel's theaters in London didn't recognize, and relish, the tomfoolery of Rinaldo, or that they didn't get a bit of a lurid thrill from the gender-ambiguity of the virtuosic castrati? I've changed my mind about the incongruity of this staging; it seems to me now that it captures the 'Gestalt' of the opera almost perfectly. Crusaders and sorceresses were a 'send up' for audiences in the Age of Enlightenment, a spoof of anitiquated values. "Rinaldo" was opera seria in drag.
It happens also that "Rinaldo" is one of Handel's most flamboyant accomplishments, overflowing with musical inventiveness and a showcase for virtuosic singing. To lambaste this production for not offering a stuffy costume-parade spectacle is to demonstrate total insensitivity to the most important element of it, the splendiferous music!
Summary of Handel - Rinaldo / Bicket, Daniels, York, Prinzregententheater Munich
From the Prinzregententheater, Munich. Special Bonus Feature: HANDEL, THE ENTERTAINER, A film by Reiner E. Moritz This exploration of Handel?s operas focuses on this production of Rinaldo, setting the work in the context of the composer?s overall operatic output and achievement.Similar DVD Movies
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