The operas of Vincenzo Bellini currently give me more pleasure than anything else in life. If things go badly I slot one into the DVD player and all problems evaporate. Maybe this means I don't have any serious problems, but my gratitude for this sublime music is nonetheless enormous.
Bellini's last opera, I Puritani (The Puritans), marketed in Taiwan by Jingo in a production from Barcelona in 2001, represents pure happiness. It stars Edita Gruberova as Elvira, a victim of politics during the English Civil War. The sets, supposedly representing Plymouth in the UK, are minimal, though the costumes are as gorgeous as Puritanism allows (which isn't very gorgeous). The glory, instead, comes from the singing. Gruberova is one of the greatest exponents of the bel canto style Bellini specialized in, and here you hear her in a performance of demonstration quality.
One of the great benefits of supremacy in any art is that it gives the proponent immense confidence, with the result that he or she sails to even more stratospheric levels of achievement. Here you see Gruberova smiling happily even when her most taxing music is just about to start. It'll be absolutely no problem, her face says, and it isn't. Her role's main requirement is floridity, and she radiates total ease in the high scales and intricate trills. She knows she can do it, and do it, she does.
But the men are in fact even stronger. The best of them is Simon Orfila as Giorgio, Elvira's uncle, but Carlos Alvarez as Riccardo, the man she's supposed to marry, is also wonderful. The tenor Jose Bros as Arturo, the man she really loves but who's unfortunately a Royalist, is ringingly incisive and well up to the demands of the role. All in all, this product is unreservedly recommended.
There are two reasons why the DVD of Puccini's Turandot from the 2002 Salzburg Festival, also from Jingo, is so fine. The first is that David Pountney's innovatory direction is genuinely exciting. The second is that the then-new ending by Luciano Berio is much more appropriate to the inner nature of the opera than what we had before.
As a tale set in ancient China, Turandot usually gets the Chinoiserie treatment - shuffling scholars, temple ghosts and a superstitious, easily subdued populace. Pountney throws all this out and gives us instead a maniacal machine-state complete with rotating cogs, spanner-hands and lurid, modernistic masks. Executions are a routine and inevitable product of this system, Pountney explains in bonus interview footage. It's the state as murderer, and Turandot is the ice princess who presides over it. Even Ping, Pang and Pong become sinister accomplices in a world of sadism and death.
This approach works extremely well, especially in the opening scene. And when it's combined with sharp, abrasive playing from the Vienna Philharmonic (under Valery Gergiev) the effect is overwhelming. The entire score is revealed as having much in common with Stravinsky, and even Schoenberg. Puccini left it unfinished, and the old completion by Alfano was an over-upholstered refurbishment of earlier themes. Berio's ending is far more astringent, and it reflects backwards, bringing out a comparable modernity in Puccini's own music.
The soloists are excellently suited to Pountney's vision. Johan Botha's frock-coated Calaf is stubbornly human amidst the surrounding barbarism, and his voice is well up to the demands of the huge Salzburg Festspielhaus; 'Nessun dorma' doesn't disappoint. Christina Gallardo-Domas plays Liu as a Dickensian waif, and there's an unusually strong Timur from Paata Burchuladze. As for Turandot herself, Gabriele Schnaut presents her as the dark-voiced siren of the whole industrial complex, helping Liu to kill herself but then, as she strips to Liu's virginal slip for the Berio pages, becoming a tearful convert to humanity, and even love.
In this Turandot the world of the terracotta warriors meets the surreal puppets of an MTV video. Golden Buddha heads gape to reveal puny dictators within. Classics are artistic creations that can survive endless re-workings, and Puccini's final masterpiece springs to life once again in this superb DVD.
Two new DVDs from Deutsche Grammophon show that the transfer of old videos to the more flexible format continues apace. In one, Ivo Pogorelich, then aged 29, is seen playing a program of Mozart, Chopin and Haydn in 1987. Even Mozart's Rondo 'alla Turca' can't elicit a smile from his gray eyes - instead, he routinely throws glances to the side, pregnant with who knows what profound meaning. His life was later to encounter great tragedy, but back then he was simply a young Croatian who combined great musical talent with moody good looks.
Sting's narration of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf has long been a popular favorite, and its reappearance on DVD is very welcome. Dating from 1993, it combines superb Spitting Image models, puppets and live actors in an extravaganza that extends the plot to include Prokofiev's Overture on Hebrew Themes and Classical Symphony. The DVD also contains the whole thing done again in Italian with Roberto Benigni (Life Is Beautiful) narrating, as well as giving a hilarious lecture on the whole enterprise.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
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