Handel - Serse / Rasmussen, Piau, Bayrakdarian, Bardon, Hallenberg, Peirone, Lippi, Rousset, Les Talens Lyriques, Dresden Opera
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Christopher Rousset, Isabel Bayrakdarian, Patricia Bardon, Paula Rasmussen, Sandrine PiauDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); German (Subtitled); Italian (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language)
Format: AC-3, Classical, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 160 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-11-15
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Euroarts
Movie Reviews of Handel - Serse / Rasmussen, Piau, Bayrakdarian, Bardon, Hallenberg, Peirone, Lippi, Rousset, Les Talens Lyriques, Dresden Opera
Movie Review: As Flimsy as a Shakespeare Comedy...
Summary: 5 Stars
... but all the wit goes into the music rather than the word play. Shakespeare and the sundry Italian librettists who wrote for Handel had the same roots in Italian Renaissance farces and commedia dell'arte. With the subtitles on the DVD, you'll suffer only moderate confusion, trying to keep the twists of the story straight, but it doesn't matter. Any sprightly acting or artful stagecraft is way secondary to the flow of glorious music, including some of Handel's finest arias and duets. In fact, the very first arioso by Serse is the famous "ombra mai fu", which you will find sung by everybody and her brother on YouTube, an excursion I heartily recommend.
In this performance, the role of Serse is sung superbly by soprano Paula Rasmussen, and her "ombra mai fu" is the most affectively perfect I've ever heard. Her acting in male drag is nearly as impressive; she's as narcissistic and willful a tyrant as the role requires. Arsamene, the tyrant's brother and rival in love, is a role of comical frustration and impotence, sung and acted ripely by Ann Hallenberg. The woman both brothers love is Romilda, sung richly by Isabel Bayrakdarian, but Imilda has a 'kid' sister, Atalanta, who is set on stealing Arsamene from her sister. Sandrine Piau, as Atalanta, fails to steal a lover but steals the show, acting with coy capricious vivacity and singing at a level few sopranos have ever reached. The smaller role of Amastre, sung by Patricia Bardon, is curious; Amastre is a woman, the rejected fianc?e of Serse, disguised until the final scene as a man. All of these roles were presumably sung, in the opera's opening in London in 1738, by imported 'castrati' from Italy. In terms of audience, Serse was a dud at the time, and for Handel its failure to earn money put an end to his efforts at promoting opera in England. The opera was first revived in Germany in 1924, and it has been staged more often than any other Handel opera except Giulio Cesare. It's the treasure vein of music that has drawn such attention, but the various attempts to produce it have run into a constant problem: the five principal roles MUST be sung in their original high ranges! Transposition to tenor or bass simply doesn't work musically.
Of the leading countertenors singing opera today, only Philippe Jaroussky could plausibly sing the agitated coloratura required in the arias of Serse. Conductor Cristophe Rousset has chosen the only musical solution by casting women in all five roles, a decision made possible today by the development of "historical" vocal technique. Five more 'convincing' and beautiful voices than Rasmussen, Hallenberg, Piau, Bayrakdarian, and Bardon have never shared a stage, I'd wager, not in the 18th or the 20th/21st Centuries! In terms of sheer vocal artistry, this Serse is arguably the best performance of an 18th C opera on DVD. Don't let the quibbles of previous reviewers deter you; this is a MUST hear&see production.
More Handel - Serse / Rasmussen, Piau, Bayrakdarian, Bardon, Hallenberg, Peirone, Lippi, Rousset, Les Talens Lyriques, Dresden Opera reviews:
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