Unsuk Chin: Alice in Wonderland
by Achim Freyer
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Dietrich Henschel, Guy de Mey, Gwyneth Jones, Kent Nagano, Sally MatthewsDirector: Achim Freyer
Brand: Naxos OF America INC
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Unknown); German (Subtitled); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language)
Format: Classical, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 123 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-04-29
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: EuroArts
Movie Reviews of Unsuk Chin: Alice in Wonderland
Movie Review: Exciting opera, eccentric staging
Summary: 5 Stars
It is quite challenging to take a complex book such as Lewis Carroll's 'Alice' as basis for a new opera. After all, it has nothing to do with the traditional operatic subjects. Just take Carroll's wordplays as an example: how can one render these into operatic action? However, compsoer Unsuk Chin and playwright David Henry Hwang, have succeeded. Hwang is a linguistic virtuoso, and he seems to thrive in transforming 'Alice' into singable texts. The music is rich, beautiful and many-sided, listener-friendly and challenging at the same time. Chin fuses her original musical style, which sounds sometimes non-Western in its extensive use of percussions and its intricate rhythms, with allusions to different musical epochs, which are often displayed in a whimsical way. Many contemporary operas lack a sense of drama, but not this one: it's simply great musical theatre in the spirit of Lewis Carroll.
The musical performance is top-notch. Kent Nagano, an ingenious conductor especially for 20th century and contemporary music, shines with Chin's music and the Bavarian State Opera Orchestra and Choir are fabulous. The singers succeed in masterful performances although the music is very complex.
As regards the staging: one can see that the German stage director Achim Freyer, who was also in charge of design and light, was an acclaimed stage designer before he began directing. The visual aspect is absolutely stunning: Freyer has created unique images which not many (if any) opera directors can match. The Art brut-like masks and puppets, at the same time touching and eerie, are made by Nina Weitzner.
As regards Freyer's interpretation of 'Alice's' content: the director seems to be inspired by Siegmund Freud, and thus he takes the story deadly serious. There is not much room for the playfulness so crucial for Lewis Carroll's writing. Sometimes it is difficult to follow the stage action, as Freyer decided to double all roles with actors. There are a lot of grotesque ideas, which are sometimes interesting, sometimes maddening. It's a very eccentric staging and, according to the critic Alan Rich ([...]) it differs from the libretto - thus standing in the tradition of deconstructivist Central-European 'Regietheater'.
The chaotic video directing doesn't make much sense and thus fails to do justice to the production. However, as this is the only document of a highly interesting and unusual opera, it deserves five stars.
Summary of Unsuk Chin: Alice in Wonderland
When Korean composer Unsuk Chin's opera was first performed by the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, it caused a sensation among music critics worldwide. Based on Lewis Carroll's famous and fascinatingly enigmatic novel Alice in Wonderland, it is a seductive, enchanting, sensuous opera set to a modern, ear-pleasing score - a triumph of creative fantasy. Unsuk Chin was born in Seoul in 1961, studied with György Ligeti in Hamburg and now lives in Berlin. She has an acute ear for instrumentation, orchestral colours and rhythmic imagery. Her compositions are modern in language but lyrical in their communicative power. Kent Nagano, a long-time supporter of Chin's music, expertly conducted the Bavarian State Opera and a team of wonderful singer-actors including international stars like Dietrich Henschel and Gwyneth Jones. The opera about Alice's search for her identity - "her reality in the appearance of the world" - as director Achim Freyer put it, switches from delicacy to cuteness to grotesquery and back again. The rather conventional Alice starts following her dreams, meeting a white rabbit that guides her through a wonderland. Alice views it all with amazement and learns - finally returning to the real world, richer for the experience. The phenomenal fairy-tale settings and production were in the hands of Achim Freyer, who created a firework of colour and form. The marvellous costumes and puppets were created by Nina Weitzner, who was named "Costume Designer of the Year" by the German music magazine Opernwelt for her imaginative designs. And in a survey of the magazine's opera critics, Unsuk Chin's opera, which closed Kent Nagano's first season at the Bavarian State Opera, was hailed as the "World Premičre of the Year". This live recording of the premiere in the Nationaltheater in Munich in June 2007 provides a feast of audiovisual entertainment. This amazing theatrical and musical wonderland can now be experienced on DVD!Similar DVD Movies
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