Excellent Opera!
The singing was good. The costumes and set were fabulous. I like the story of Turandot. Nice production. See more at vyctorynotes dot blogspot dot com.
Mostly wonderful.
Marton is wonderful. Carreras is very good. Ricciarelli is ok. The chorus and orchestra are very good. The costumes are fine. But the minimalist sets are dreadful. I dislike minimalist sets in any opera, but in Turandot, they are completely out of place. It should be the ancient city of Peking in all of it's splendor. Instead it is a bare staircase from a boiler factory. I recommend the Metropolitan Opera dvd, with Marton, Domingo, and Leona Mitchell. It has great singing and playing, great costumes, and wonderful, sumptuous sets.
An excellent staged version of Turandot
This strikingly-staged production of Puccini's final opera, "Turandot" was filmed with the Vienna State Opera under the direction of Loren Maazal in 1983. Set on a spare stage with a single ascending staircase rising up to Turandot's chambers, and with sumptuous, impressionistic costuming, the production allows the audience to focus not on the sets or lighting, but the performances, which are uniformly excellent, and lend the production a stark, other-worldly feeling. Carreras is near his prime here, commanding and sure on his arias, while Katia Ricciarelli is radiant as Liu. Eva Marton is pure and powerful as the title princess, giving a weighty sense of grief to her character's fate. This DVD is worth watching just for their performances alone (and you can find a low-quality VHS transfer of this production on YouTube for preview). As the previous reviewer noted, there are no subtitles for the production, but this is typical of older productions - it's simplicity itself to print...
Click to Editorial Reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment