I saw the show in February, and very much enjoyed the whole experience -- a clever staging in particular. A big question is how much of it they were able to properly capture on DVD, but in any case this is a DVD to have in your collection!
Two DVD's to complete the Claus Guth's Da Ponte Cycle will be released at the same time. NB this cycle will be rerun at the Festival in Salzburg 2011. Le Nozze di Figaro is known since 2007, and the new ones are:
(1) Cosi fan Tutte [end of August in Germany and the UK, and end of September in the US, Canada, France] - which I saw last year in Salzburg and liked a lot (but many didn't [like it]!)
(2) Don Giovanni [end of August in Germany and the UK, and end of September in the US, Canada, France] - I saw the show 5 days ago in Salzburg, everyone seems to have liked it, and I believe this should be a DVD you can offer both to newbies and to aficionados.
The Don Giovanni looks great...until I see the conductor and I shudder. Goddamn it could they not wait 4 more weeks and pump one out with Nezet-Seguin?
ReplyDeleteI agree, but on DVD you have Matthew Polenzani at his best as Don Ottavio.
ReplyDeleteAs you know, I didn't like the Don Giovanni at all (if you compare with Hanecke or Tcherniakov...); for the Così, I wasn't the only one: Guth himself said in an interview for an Austrian paper that he found out the production wasn't good, and he will try to make it better next year (good luck!).
ReplyDeleteNézet-Séguin is maybe very good in Roméo (worthless work, of course), but his DG is a big failure.
Of course I disagree :)
ReplyDeleteI think the comparison with Kusej or Tcherniakov is not good because the whole approach is different. What Guth did with Don Giovanni is a very good classical staging of this opera, only transposed to our times, and it communicates directly to the generations of all ages between 20 and 50. Every gesture is cleverly inserted and all works very well. The episode with Zerlina might have been done better but I believe that's more a problem of Da Ponte than Guth.
As for Cosi, I know many didn't like it, but then again as a classical way to stage this opera and transpose it to our time it was excellent. Plus they are all so credible and Leonard and Persson are such hotties...
Guth's Da Ponte cycle is the best classical staging I've seen so far.