At the request of a member of the cher public, La Cieca has updated the Little Shop of Arias store here at parterre. Available for preorder from amazon.com are such goodies as a new DVD
Sometime in the late 1950s, the management at Glyndebourne had the good idea to make archival recordings of the performances there, and these recordings, duly remastered and transferred to digital form, are gradually coming before the public through Glyndebourne’s house label. Thus it is that we find ourselves with this early release, a recording of Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, performed in 1962 by Mirella Freni, Luigi Alva, Enzo Sordello and Sesto Bruscantini under the baton of Carlo Felice Cillario.
It took the Metropolitan Opera decades to catch up with the rest of the world and finally stage La Cenerentola. Gioachino Rossini’s opera buffa, one of his most beloved and accomplished works, received its belated Met debut in 1997, amidst legitimate suspicions that the new production was less a genuine desire to add a belcanto masterpiece to the company’s repertoire than a concession to Cecilia Bartoli’s demands. Since then the production has been revived several times with galaxy of international mezzo-sopranos such as Jennifer Larmore, Sonia Ganassi, Olga Borodina and, just this past season, superstar Elina Garanca.
A new CD set of Der Ring des Nibelungen, recorded live at the Bayreuth Festival in 2008, is slim on superstar casting, but basks in the reflected glory of conductor Christian Thielemann, a controversial artist with a passionate following. So how does the music measure up?
They want it. The career. They want it really bad. So we learn from Susan Froemke’s Metropolitan Opera-commissioned documentary about the participants in the final round of the 2007 MetNational Council Auditions, which is out on DVD this month. Our own doyenne reviewed the film when it was screened as an HD theatrical event, and by now many of us know the winners and their work. Since you are all wondering whether to rush out with $20 in your hands, perhaps a few remarks on the DVD release are in order.
Cher Public