The Jesi foundation continues its tireless quest of making Pergolesi operas available on video.

I’ve long been a fan of Kenneth Branagh, even though this fandom feels a bit like being a camel in the desert.

It may have taken most of Verdi’s canon to do it, but the “Tutto Verdi” collection finally manages to do justice to Verdi in his last two operas.

I’m happy to report that Rigoletto from the 30 DVD Tutto Verdi set from the Teatro Regio di Parma is a blockbuster.

Of all of Verdi’s operas. Aida is the one I find least interesting dramatically.

The Tutto Verdi series from the Teatro Regio Parma may be said to relate to the great Giuseppe Verdi’s oeuvre as the burning of the library at Alexandria did to classical literature.

Name a Verdi opera, based on a play by Voltaire, described in the immortal words of the composer as “Questo e proprio brutto.”

When I acquire DVDs of opera performances, I look for performances which truly merit a video recording; performances in which the totality of the musical and dramatic elements are worth preserving for repeated viewing.

In an ever-changing world it’s comforting to know that the Parmigiani of the Teatro Regio continue their campaign through the Verdi canon not unlike the Allied Forces’  rout of the Germans at the beginning of 1945.

De Nederlandse Opera’s remarkable 2011 feat of premiering productions of Gluck’s Iphigénie en Aulide and Iphigénie en Tauride on the same day and virtually the same set has been issued on a 2-DVD set by Opus Arte.

On first hearing, Paul Dukas’ 1907 opera Ariane et Barbe-bleue (Ariane and Bluebeard) sounds like the love child of a three-way between Wagner, Strauss, and Debussy.

Those Romans! How decadent, how corrupt, how much fun!

Say this about Oedipus: The character’s got staying power.

La Salustia was Giovanni Batista Pergolesi’s first opera, composed at the tender age of 21. In structure and storyline it’s a conventional baroque opera seria.

C-Major continues their full frontal attack on the Verdi catalogue with this release of I Masnadieri which, I’m thrilled to report, does not hail from the Teatro di Regio in Parma like the previous aspirants. We’ve travelled south to Naples and the Teatro di San Carlo and we’re all the better for it as the…

Somewhere around the early 80’s, stage directors realized that the odious theatre practice of “audience involvement” was over.

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s best known opera is La Serva Padrona, but the Neapolitan composer also composed several other works, which are now lovingly presented on video by the Fondazione Pergolesi Spontini at Jesi.

There’s that old joke; What’s the difference between opera and sex? Punchline; you can have good sex.