Die Zauberflöte

1984, Philips

(Peter Schreier, Margaret Price, Mikael Melbye, Luciana Serra, Kurt Moll, Robert Tear; Rundfunkchor Leipzig; Staatskapelle Dresden, cond. Colin Davis)

This was the first Flute recording I ever heard and one of the first complete opera recordings I ever owned. Part of my attachment to it may be nostalgic, but still I think I can safely call it one of the best Flutes available. Sir Colin Davis offers an excellent, quintessentially modern reading of the score: slower and heavier than a period instrument performance, yet lighter and livelier than  Read the rest of this entry »

Turandot

1959, RCA Victor

(Birgit Nilsson, Jussi Björling, Renata Tebaldi, Giorgio Tozzi; Coro del Teatro dell’Opera di Roma; Orchestra del Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, cond. Erich Leinsdorf)

This beloved recording has been credited with raising Turandot from the curiosity file to the standard repertoire, and to this day, many opera lovers label it the definitive Turandot. While it isn’t my personal favorite, it definitely deserves the praise it gets. Erich Leisndorf’s conducting may not always be perfectly elegant (some of the Read the rest of this entry »

Dawn of Anguish

TSOD being what it is, onstage we’re expected to believe that all of Act II until “Drink With Me” takes place within an hour or two, at sunset, while “Drink With Me” and “Bring Him Home” cover the length of the entire night. Of course on film that would seem ridiculous, so at this point Read the rest of this entry »

FILM: Do You Hear the People Sing?

Act II of the stage version opens with an orchestral reprise of “Do You Hear the People Sing” – which probably inspired the filmmakers to move the song itself to this point. In doing so, they give it a much more dramatic context: General Lamarque’s funeral. No ragtag tablecloth waving Read the rest of this entry »

Castle on a Cloud

Both stage and film now take us to Montfermeil, where we find little Cosette slaving away at the Thénardiers’ inn. But the film includes a detail from the novel not found onstage – the fact that this sequence takes place on Christmas Eve. Poor Cosette is shown gazing enviously out at the street where Read the rest of this entry »

Ever since I first read the essay “What’s the Difference?” on the now defunct website wssonstage.com, comparing an contrasting the stage and film versions of West Side Story, I knew I wanted to write a similar comparison of the stage and film versions of Les Misérables. Now that the Les Mis film has finally been released, I Read the rest of this entry »

Rigoletto

1982, English National Opera

(John Rawnsley, Arthur Davies, Marie McLaughlin, John Tomlinson, Jean Rigby, Sean Rea; English National Opera Chorus; English National Opera Orchestra, cond. Mark Elder)

(dir. Jonathan Miller; video dir. John Michael Phillips)

Jonathan Miller’s famous ENO Rigoletto, while hardly radical by today’s standards, is still a bit of a “love it or hate it” production. Sung in James Fenton’s blunt, unflowery English translation, it transfers the action to 1950s New York City, where Rigoletto is a bartender in a swanky hotel and “the Duke” and his “courtiers” are Mafiosi. Gilda’s seduction takes place in Read the rest of this entry »