Handel, Staatsoper Stuttgart - Alcina / Naglestad, Coote, Schneiderman, Romei, Hacker
by Janos Darvas, Jossi Wielar, Sergio Morabito
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Alice Coote, Catherine Naglestad, Catriona Smith, Helene Schneiderman, Rolf RomeiDirector: Janos Darvas, Jossi Wielar, Sergio Morabito
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Unknown); French (Subtitled); English (Subtitled); Italian (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); Japanese (Subtitled); Italian (Original Language)
Format: Classical, Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 159 minutes
Published: 2011-03-31
DVD Release Date: 2002-04-16
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Arthaus Musik
Movie Reviews of Handel, Staatsoper Stuttgart - Alcina / Naglestad, Coote, Schneiderman, Romei, Hacker
Movie Review: Confronting (offensive?) eroticism takes us to the heart of Handel's music
Summary: 5 Stars
I can strongly recommend this ravishing performance (great acting, wonderful cinematography, pretty good singing), which will take you straight to the heart of Handel's marvelous music even if you find the eroticism of the production offensive.
Government subsidies for an opera performance are about 120 euros per seat in Germany. These subsidies have encouraged some in-your-face and silly productions, where the stage directors treat the audience and composer with contempt. What is the artistic point in having singers sitting on a row of toilets in a Rossini opera? This radical 1999 Stuttgart performance of Alcina is an exception to the observation that government subsidies frequently corrupt the arts. (There are so many exceptions, that this "observation" does not deserve to be called a rule.)
I bought this Alcina because it was inexpensive and the only DVD of the opera, but with some misgivings because of the contradictory and confusing reviews on this site. Which of the reviewers are right?
There may be a hidden message in the conflicting reviews. A frequent theme is along the lines of "marvelous music, but I hated all the on-screen porn". What I think these reviewers may be misunderstanding is that the on-screen porn is accentuating their response to the music. They may be misinterpreting their own reactions.
Another of the complaints made is that the performance is not faithful to the anonymously authored libretto that Handel used. Having seen a traditional performance of this opera, I can't get terribly excited about lack of fidelity to the libretto, which has an unusually complicated and silly plot even by the standards of early 18th century operas.
The theme of the opera is that Alcina, a sorceress, uses sex to transform men into beasts. However, Alcina has become dangerously infatuated with her latest lover, Ruggerio, a knight. Bradamante, Ruggerio's old lover, arrives dressed up as a man. At the close of the opera Ruggerio returns to Bradamante, now revealed as a woman, and defeats Alcina's stratagems and is able to rescue her trapped ex-lovers. There are also a number of subplots.
What I think the stage and video directors of this opera have done is ignore the overall silliness of the plot and make each moment in the opera as dramatic as possible and emphasise the theme of the opera, which is itself quite serious, being the power of sex - and also give us an approximation of the thrill an audience in 1735 would have experienced with this seductive and over-the-top music.
In 1735 the opera would have been performed in something that approximated contemporary dress at that time, in a small intimate theatre, where the indrawn breaths of the singers could be heard and one or more of the singers was a castrato. An 18th century audience must have been greatly intrigued by the fact that the singer performing Ruggiero, Alcina's great seducer, was in fact a castrato. The DVD recreates for a modern audience some of the sexual tension and ambiguity that would have been experienced by 18th century audiences.
One reviewer, who had seen this production live made the interesting comment that the DVD was better than the theatrical experience. The great cinematography in this DVD has been largely overlooked by the reviewers here. The frames that are shown at the beginning while the overture plays are immediately seductive, an old overturned chair, a bowl of cherries, some discarded military boots - they are as lyrical as the frames from an Ozu film. Catherine Nagelstad as Alcina is luminously and desperately beautiful, like an updated Louise Brooks from the 1929 silent movie "Pandora's Box" - what a performance! And Alice Coote as Ruggiero is boyish and playful and charming - a wonderful foil for Nagelstad's Alcina. Early in the opera Ruggerio makes explicit sexual advances to all the singers on stage, both male and female, while Alcina, her lover watches with apparent approval. I personally felt uncomfortable, and this was not an episode that is in the libretto - but this underlined at the start of the opera what it is all about - the destructive and creative power of sex.
As an experiment I tried listening to this performance without the visuals. It was not the same.
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