the best of dvd/bluray – Don Carlo and the Seamstress

Friends of opera! We have three exciting arrivals next week…

October 7th will be a day for Kaufmanniacs.

No "ungrateful hearts" about this one! — No “ungrateful hearts” about this one!

First of all, we have Jonas’ new CD coming out! Dolce Vita (available for pre-order now) is a 67-minute tribute to Italian music, including the 1911 Neapolitan beauty, “Core ‘ngrato” (“Ungrateful heart”) by Salvatore Cardillo. (Of course, most Kaufmanniacs have watched—and rewatched—him sing this piece on YouTube. A friend of mine expressed her ultimate dream: of Jonas singing this to her in person! Right there with you…

Sigh.

Jonas + the French Revolution = perfection!

As if that weren’t enough, we also have the DVD (or BluRay) of the 2015 Royal Opera House production of Giordano’s Andrea Chénier starring our tenor in the title role coming out the same day. Featuring Eva-Maria Westbroek and the wonderful Serbian baritone Željko Lučić and conducted by Antonio Pappano, Chénier is one not to be missed, and one of the first recorded operas I saw with our tenor after first encountering him. (And no, surely that’s not a poster of Jonas as Chénier hanging on my bedroom wall…? Oops, guilty.) The opera was free on YouTube, sans subtitles, when I saw it, but it required having a libretto handy, and hence missing too many Jonas moments! I think I need to remedy this. And yes, the DVD or BluRay is also available for pre-order on Amazon.

Of course, Giordano, and Jonas, had me blubbering like a baby by the end, in true Romantic Revolutionary style. (Now, imagine if it had been an opera of A Tale of Two Cities with our tenor as a certain tragic hero who shall not be named…I might not be alive today to tell the tale. It would simply be too much.)

Then, Saturday October 8th is the start of our new season of the Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD cinema showings, beginning with Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, conducted by Simon Rattle and starring Nina Stemme as Isolde, Stuart Skelton as Tristan, and the always glorious René Pape as King Marke. I am still new to Wagner, so this should be an interesting experience. A long Wagner on a Saturday morning sounds a bit intense, I admit…

Enjoy!

napoleon pass — Bonaparte Crossing the Great St. Bernard Pass, by Jacques-Louis David (Photo credit: http://www.khanacademy.org)

(Alright, so “Jacobin” is going too far…)

What more can one ask for: we are in Rome in 1800 during Napoleon’s Italian campaign. We have a republican-romantic-idealist painter (Mario Cavaradossi, sung by Jonas Kaufmann) deeply in love with another artist—a singer (Tosca, sung by Angela Gheorghiu), caught up in a political crisis when Mario decides to shelter a political prisoner (who shares his republican ideals and the belief that Napoleon will ride in on his white horse, so to speak, and help those ideals to come true).

All this, and their foil is one of the greatest villains in opera: Chief of Police, Baron Scarpia—sung and acted to perfection by the great bass-baritone Bryn Terfel.

If Bryn had a moustache here, he'd be twirling it. — If Bryn had a curly moustache here, he’d be twirling it.

Torture, murder, art, love, lust, politics, suicide, religion, Napoleon, Rome. A recipe for a phenomenal story. When wedded to the music of the incomparable Puccini and conducted by Antonio Pappano, you have pure magic.

This is the magic of Tosca, an 1899 masterpiece in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, first performed in 1900. This particular production is from 2011 at the Royal Opera House, and the DVD can be found on Amazon. I have heard it called “the” Tosca; “the best Tosca ever,” etc. And it really would be hard to argue with that. Though it really deserves to be experienced without much foreknowledge of the story, there is–spoiler alert!—a synopsis on Naxos, here.

(I think I will go hide now...) — The “Te Deum” (I think I will go hide now…)

The set is dramatic, and the staging often inspired (note: particularly the “Te Deum”…chills!); you have an absolute dream team of singers, at least two of whom (Bryn and Jonas) are also among the best actors in opera. It is just about as close to opera-theatre perfection as it gets.

About 6 weeks ago, almost simultaneously to seeing the filmed 2010 Paris Werther, I watched this production of Tosca with my family. Simply stunning.

If one is new to opera, Tosca would be the one I’d recommend starting with—and this particular production. I wouldn’t want to spoil some of the great arias (“E lucevan le stelle”; “Vissi d’arte”) if you haven’t heard them in context yet. But for a glimpse into Act I, I found the closest approximation that I could: our tenor singing the same role, but in a different production from a year earlier (Munich, 2010). Here is “Recondita armonia,” wherein Cavaradossi works on his painting of Mary Magdalene, comparing his model to the woman he loves: