Mozart - Le Nozze di Figaro
|
List Price: Our Price: $22.46 You Save: $17.52 (44%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $18.00 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of Mozart - Le Nozze di Figaro
Movie Review: bring in the young people
Summary: 4 Stars
I second a previous reviewer's concern about the lack of interest in this art-form by our young people. We need to get them into the operahouses and musical theaters and this production is just another way to accomplish that; most of them wont listen to any musical theater and equate Broadway musicals with opera.Movie Review: Different, but interesting.
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a modern version of the Marriage of Figaro.
It is quite different, but very interesting if you put aside what you've known about this opera and watch it as an opera you watch for the first time!?
All the singers have wonderful voice.
Movie Review: Different, but...
Summary: 3 Stars
Musically glorious if you can accept the slow pace. After this no one should accuse von Karajan of slow tempi. Visually takes some getting used to. Not the usual sumptuous period costumes, rather stark but interesting. The "addition" of the cherub character was distracting and was in whole a negative for this production. Doesn't compare well with the Glyndebourne Opera production with Te Kanawa, von Stade etc. for total effect but musically it holds its own pretty well.Movie Review: Mozart at his most depressing
Summary: 2 Stars
As soon as the Wiener Philharmoniker play the first bars of the Overture, we know that we are going to be in for a looooong evening. Nikolaus Harnoncourt's tempi are extremely slow and will remain so for the next three hours and sixteen minutes (excluding credits and curtain calls). This is a good ten minutes more than his previous efforts in Zurich (on DVD) and in Amsterdam (on CD). It is about 15 minutes more than the average performance, 25 minutes more than Gardiner or Mackerras.
This in itself, would be nothing special if Harnoncourt was able to inhabit his tempi, to draw meanings to them. Unfortunately, he doesn't. The reason for this lies in the fact that the music does not really lend itself to "contemplative" visions. "Le Nozze" is first and foremost a comedy, the pace is supposed to be reasonably brisk on stage: Nozze is not Parsifal and the big risk of a slower, more dramatic approach means that the piece is deprived of its meaning: your turn a slice of life into a meaningless, inanimate musical object, beautiful at times but completely devoid of life. The big finales at the end of each Act (pick any: I, II, III or IV) will be the saddest example of this static musical direction. The music does not move, the musical material remains motionless, and ultimately one loses interest in front of such a stubborn view of "Le Nozze di Figaro".
By conducting "Le Nozze" this way, Harnoncourt lends a sympathetic hand to the production of Claus Guth. An extremely good, profound stage director, Guth is much more at ease with tragedy than comedy (Fliegende in Bayreuth, Zaide/Adama in this M22 collection). He therefore turns Nozze upside down and offers us a grim, petit bourgeois world that is unilaterally grey and evolving around a big staircase - Claus Guth LOVES staircases. In this Ibsenian, Bergmanian world, the Count is a pathetic middle-aged bourgeois cheating on his wife, the countess a cheated wife with no nobility whatsoever, and these three hours are just an isolated, one even feels almost a common routine in the uninteresting lives of these extremely unsympathetic characters.
One feels that the cast has been chosen with this musical/staging project in mind. It evolves around the dark-toned Susanna of Anna Netrebko, great sounding but Susanna is not Violetta: however, she fits perfectly Harnoncourts's and Guth's designs. Dorothea Roeschmann has a big voice, but there is no nobility in her Countess: listen to Te Kanawa or Fleming, and you'll know what I mean. Again, in light of her position in the "concept", it makes sense. The Count of Bo Skovhus is very tired. A pronounced vibrato has invaded the voice and his is simply not nice to hear, but this is again in line with the concept. Schaeffer was very successful even if she is not my cup of tea: I prefer a mezzo-soprano Cherubino. Selig barks, McLaughlin is a fun Marcellina. The only one who refuses to play Harnoncourt's game is Ildebrando d'Arcangelo. He is very often ahead of the orchestra but he has a beautiful voice and he tries to impose his conception of the character at all costs, despite the conductor and despite the staging.
Brian Large directs the video: the numerous close-ups on Miss Netrebko - even when she is not singing are extremely annoying after a while.
Let's face it: there are not a lot of good reasons to own this Figaro. I'll stick to Haitink/Fleming in Glyndebourne (NVC Arts). Deutsche Grammophon has two very good performances in its catalogue: a film by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle (Prey/Freni/ Boehm) and a very good performance by Gardiner and Terfel. Harnoncourt should always be commanded for his sense of experiment and his permanent willingness to take risks, but here the experiment blows in his (and our) face. Avoid.
Movie Review: Too slow, too serious
Summary: 2 Stars
This is one of several recently released DVD's from the 2006 Salzburg Festival at which all of Mozart's operas were performed. They've been dubbed the Salzburg M22's. Regrettably, I've yet to see one that I can recommend.
This production has so many fine performers in it. Unfortunately, you have to buy a bunch of other DVD's to hear those performers at their best: Anna Netrebko as Violetta in "La Traviata" and as Adina in "L'Elisir D'Amore"; Ildebrando D'Arcangelo as Leporello in two different productions of "Don Giovanni"; Dorothea Roschmann as Fiordiligi in "Cosi Fan Tutte" and as Pamina in "The Magic Flute"; Christine Schafer as Gilda in "Rigoletto." I've gone to the trouble to list these other operas because these four performers deserve the recognition. They are as good in those productions as they are disappointing in this one.
Much of the fault lies with the tempo set by Nikolaus Harnoncourt. The extremely slow pace he insists on results in the comedic feel being sucked right out of the opera. Many of the scenes that make me laugh-out-loud in "Marriage of Figaro" drag on interminably here. The slow tempo affects all of the comic performances.
For example, I know that Anna Netrebko can be playful onstage and even use her dark-toned voice to comic effect because I've see it in her portrayal of Adina in "L'Elisir D'Amore." But here, as Susanna, she's grim most of the time; there's no sparkle to her performance. Ildebrando D'Arcangelo is a rich and expressive baritone (he's my favorite Leporello), but here, he's too heavy-handed as Figaro.
Christine Schafer seems miscast as Cherubino. The role sounds better when performed by a mezzo-soprano because otherwise there's no contrast in sound with the other two sopranos. Dorothea Roschmann, one of my favorite sopranos, is also disappointing as Rosina. She brings no decorum or nobility to the role (this may reflect the director's instructions to her). She's so "common" in demeanor that it's hard to believe she's a Countess. As a result, the opera's satire based on the different social classes of the Count/Countess and Figaro/Susanna is sorely lacking, even though it's an essential theme of Da Ponte's libretto.
Mozart's music is brilliant even when poorly executed (thus, two stars) but I like to watch "Marriage of Figaro" when my spirits need lifting or I just feel like having fun; next time, it won't be this production I reach for. For a great time at the opera with "Marriage of Figaro," try these DVD's: Theatre du Chatelet 1993 (Gardiner conducting); Glyndebourne 1994 (Haitink conducting); Opera National de Lyon 1994 (Olmi conducting).