Patrick Summers
Anthony Minghella’s stunning production of Puccini’s opera opened the Met’s 2006–07 season and was seen by thousands of people around the world as part of the company’s Live in HD series. Patricia Racette is Cio-Cio-San, the trusting and innocent young geisha of the title, who disastrously falls in love with American Navy lieutenant B. F. Pinkerton (Marcello Giordani), only to be abandoned by him. Maria Zifchak is her loyal servant Suzuki and Dwayne Croft is Sharpless, the sympathetic American consul who does all he can but is unable to avert tragedy. Performance Date Mar 7, 2009
This is an excellent version of one of the greatest of all comic operas, featuring superb singing and orchestral playing. And it's not just the two headliners; listen, for example, to the entrance of the stepsisters at the beginning of Act One. Nevertheless, some viewers may find the staging problematic, with singers in clown-like costumes and sets featuring human-sized rodents. Those seeking a more conventional production might want to consider the Houston Grand Opera DVD, also on Decca, with Cecilia Bartoli and Raul Jimenez. Both sets are wonderful, but, for me, Joyce Didonato and Juan Diego Florez are slightly to be preferred. Highly recommended.
It is no wonder that Met audiences have gone wild over Karita Mattila’s sizzling Salome. Indisputably one of the greatest Salomes of our time, Mattila utterly incarnates Oscar Wilde’s petulant, willful, and lust-driven heroine. With Strauss’s groundbreaking music magnifying the degenerate atmosphere and building the erotic tension, this is one opera that is as shocking today as it was at its premiere in 1905.
Live from The Metropolitan Opera, international sensation Anna Netrebko sings Elvira Walton (and her famous mad scene) in I PURITANI, a spectacular production revived especially for Ms. Netrebko. The stellar cast includes tenor Eric Cutler as Arturo, Franco Vassallo as Riccardo, and John Relyea as Giorgio. The Music Director of the Houston Grand Opera, Patrick Summers, conducts the magnificent Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus. Included is a bonus DVD containing revealing conversations between Anna Netrebko and Renée Fleming, as well as the late Beverly Sills. The stunning performance on this DVD has been adored by millions of people already through its live transmission in high-definition to movie theatres in the US, Canada and Europe, and broadcasted live on Metropolitan Opera Radio and on Sirius Satellite radio channel 85.
It's hard to imagine a video opera collection without this superbly sung MET production of Bellini's I Puritani. Not that it's perfect by any means, but its excellences--most especially Anna Netrebko's electrifying singing and acting of Elvira--banish carping about other aspects of this memorable night at the opera. Netrebko is fragile from the start, her facial expressions and hand movements immediately conveying the girl's vulnerability. She has a mad scene in each act; the first when she realizes her fiancé has disappeared with another woman, the third, in the final act, a brief relapse when her returned fiancé is taken by the army to be executed. But it's in the second act that the real fireworks occur, with a Mad Scene that rivals Donizetti's Lucia for bel canto primacy. Here, Elvira is first heard off-stage, after the chorus has informed us that she's deranged. She enters wearing her wedding gown and begins Qui la voce in a voice as frail as her psyche.
