Rossini;Gioacchino La Donna De [Import]

This opera seria by Rossini has, by far, the most beautiful music of any opera I have heard- yes, even more than Mozart and Verdi! I have had a CD of this performance for several years (shipped over from England by my in-laws as it hasn't been vailable in America) and have adored the incredible music that Rossini created. There is one great tune after another, and the orchestration is also superb. Unfortunately, this opera is generally not available in any store (I have scoured many Tower records stores, etc and couldn't find it.) Now I see that Amazon.com is carrying an inexpensive CD set of this opera (different production.) More on that later.

This performance, from La Scala, in Milan in 1992, fully captures the gorgeous music. I emphasize this, because any bel canto opera lover really should hear this music. The singing performances are excellent. June Anderson is terrific as Elena and the rest of the cast is also very strong. And Riccardo Muti does a superb job as conductor. Music-wise this is 5 stars all the way.

But the production- that's a different story.

The first, and probably fundamental problem, is the opera itself. The story is weak (three men love Elena during a war in the Scottish Highlands). The libretto is terrible- there is one extended scene towards the end of Act One that is completely incomprehensible. After several viewings and reading the script, my wife and I till can't figure it out.

And that's probably why this opera is almost never staged. In 5 years of following this closely, I have yet to see a single performance anywhere according to advertisements and listings. This is the only extant production, and it has serious flaws.

Even though the libretto is weak (with virtually no action), the staging in this production was totally static. No one moved or did anything. They just stood and sang (beautifully). The filming was even worse. Just about the entire show was shot at medium or long range- almost no closeups at all. It's like they stuck a couple of cameras at the back of the theater and let them run, with a little closeup here and there. The sound is not 5.1, but is very good, with good stereo separation (especially if you listen in stereo and not Dolby Surround.) When sngers cross from side to side (very rare as they hardly move) the sound moves with them.

So do I reccomend this DVD? I can't even though I love the music. Instead, get the 2 CD set from Amazon (very cheap) and revel in the music. If you really prefer DVD's, then, you will love this musical production, just with the television off.

This is a Rossini serious opera and it is subject to the usual problems of long arias accompanied by little action. This makes it hard to make the production visually interesting during these long arias. The scenery and acting seem okay and sort of in style, but the basic plot is of little interest. What this means is that if the opera production is to succeed, the singing must be superb and arresting. Ellen (June Anderson) sings adequately though with some annoying repetitive mannerisms. Her lover Malcolm (Martine Dupuy), a cross dressing mezzosoprano role, is really quite good. But what has kept me from watching the whole opera is the horrible male singing. These three singers (two tenors and a baritone) epitomize all that can be done to discredit opera. They bellow, wobble out of control and ignore the pitches to be sung (I think) so that there is no sense of a vocal line. I simply can't watch the whole opera and will surely donate this DVD to someone who just wants to know how the plot unfolds.

This DVD would appeal mainly to a selected group of bel canto enthusiasts who lose sleep at night trying get rare recordings of rare operas from the bel canto repertoire. The audio from this performance circulated for a while (on the Philips label) and was difficult to find; this issue is therefore a treasure from that perspective. It represents one of the peaks of the bel canto revival movement of the past 20 years. The vast expansion of the bel canto repertoire and the revival of Rossini's lesser known works enabled the best singers of the new generation to specialize and develop their vocal talents to the point that some of them surpassed their distinguished predecessors - Callas, Sutherland, Caballé, Sills. June Anderson has been a major force in the bel canto revival. She often shared the stage with Blake, Merritt, and other bel canto tenors. This is the only commercially available document of such a performance. These Rossini coloratura roles are extremely taxing. The tenor roles in particular constitute a professional health hazard with their impossibly cruel high tessitura. Rossini's writing for the male voices is such that the whole performance turns into a dangerous athletic enterprise, where the suspense is not only centered around "is he going to make it to the next note?" but also "will his voice survive this evening?". It is a testament to the singers' training and good health that none of them was carried from the stage on a stretcher.

A less visible hero of this performance is the conductor Riccardo Muti. Albert Innaurato wrote in his article titled "INSIDE LA SCALA: TEMPLE OF MUSIC OR TEMPLE OF DOOM?" in Opera News magazine, July 1999: 'Riccardo Muti is the world's most publicly detested conductor. In her book Cinderella and Company, Manuela Hoelterhoff calls him "the famously short maestro of fear".' IMHO he is one of the century's greatest conductors and could have reached Toscanini's fame had he not tied the knot with La Scala's lion's den. It would be a cliché to call him a "Rossini scholar": he conducts this opera with sensitivity, discipline and just the right amount of vigor without distorting Rossini's simple and linear composition style by underlining crescendos or changes in rhythm excessively to achieve a crowd pleasing effect.

Herzog's stage evokes Walter Scott's northern romantic atmosphere to which he adds some Gothic accents. His set designer uses huge fantasia-like sets with immense stalactites coming down from nowhere and the whole scenery changing in concentric circles - best appreciated in fast forward. The fairy-tale element that seems to be Herzog's forte reaches its smashing climax at the finale, in the throne room scene.

So what's the problem? The stage is so dark you can hardly see the details, and that is on top of the usual problems with the La Scala re-issues (because of problems with getting the rights, in large measure because of region coding, the Image releases have rights only to the previous LaserDisc masters with titles, not to the source material without). It was unfortunately in vogue at the time to use dimly lit scenery for "dark" subjects. This trend reverberated in some MET productions including the last "Ring" (despite the wonderful music the darkness beckoned me to sweet sleep at both the Rheingold and Die Walküre earlier this year. This silliness has to stop, you can't sit for hours in semi-darkness past dinnertime without falling asleep to the lullaby coming from the stage). The audio is good (obviously not as good as the new 5.1 Dolby surround DVD's). This DVD is gradually becoming difficult to get.