Verdi;Giuseppe Nabucco [Import]

The opera Nabucco by Giuseppe Verdi calls for space and background in line with its biblical character. This 2007 production of the opera at St. Margarethen fulfils these requirements admirably. The amphitheatre provides a suitable setting, the period costumes are interesting and the mass movement is well conducted. The singing ranges from high quality to fair levels. Baritone Morosow in the title role supplants some lack of vocal power and timbre with superb acting but soprano Morigi as Abigaille is outstanding vocally and interpretively. There are few sopranos who may challenge this difficult Verdian role with the self-assurance which Gabriella Morigi shows. I like both bass Yang and tenor Ribeiro's engaging timbres and I am very impressed by the sure and well developed voice of mezzosoprano Kulman as Fenena. The DVD is beautifully filmed in colour, the sound is excellent, the sync perfect and the accompanying booknote informative.

St. Margarethen is a magnificent structure and a grand setting for Nabucco. This venue, along with the gorgeous costumes, spectacular lighting, lasers and pyrotechnics made for one grand, five star production! This is reason enough to see it and it must be an advantage to view it on DVD.--It would probably be harder to digest the whole spectacle if you were actually sitting in the audience, as there is so much to take in.

The whole cast was in great form, both in singing and acting. Simon Yang as Zaccaria and Igor Morosow as Nabucco were excellent. Gabriella Morigi was a convincing Abigail who got better and better. Bruno Ribeiro as Ismaele and Elisabeth Kulman as Fenena were great, too.

This is a great Nabucco and I recommend it.

For the last few years I have been very satisfied with the Metropolitan Opera House's version of Nabucco starring Maria Guleghina, Samuel Ramey, Juan Pons and others. It has excellent performances with great audio and video but, unfortunately, was recorded too early to be in high definition or wide-screen format. Looking around for a replacement I saw this one from the Opernfestspiele St. Margareten, which had a couple of good reviews and seemed to meet my criteria. Certainly the still photographs of the stage-set in the quarry that I saw on the Internet met my demands for a spectacular account of this grand scale work. Unfortunately, once again the rest of the disk did not live up to my expectations. The faults lie in a number of areas but one that I found particularly disturbing was the video director constantly zooming in and out to show the entire width of the stage set with the audience seated in front, as though he was trying to prove this was a large scale production and that we needed to be reminded of it every ten minutes or so. It more or less made it impossible to get involved with the action on the stage.

Secondly, although the lighting was admirable in illuminating such a huge area with a variety of different light sources, some concealed and others in full view, the fact that the set remained unchanged (except for lighting) throughout the entire performance, got to be somewhat boring. As this was a serious historical opera, and not a pop show, I felt that the inclusion of a laser light show was totally incongruous and absolutely unnecessary. The choreography of the huge forces involved, also left much to be desired. They trouped on stage from all directions whenever the chorus was needed, certainly no subtlety here. Although others seem to be pleased with the performance of Gabriella Morigi as Abigaille, I thought her voice was very harsh and coarse and, as a great deal of the opera is centered on her, very disappointing.

Considering this was an outside venue the sound quality was not too bad, but obviously quite inferior to that in an opera house. I would suggest that the main purpose of the DVD is as a souvenir for those people who were actually present for the live performance.