Claude Debussy - Pelléas et Mélisande
Wiener Staatsoper, Vienna - 2017
Alain Altinoglu, Marco Arturo Marelli, Adrian Eröd, Olga Bezsmertna, Simon Keenlyside, Franz-Josef Selig, Bernarda Fink, Maria Nazarova, Marcus Pelz
Wiener Staatsoper Live - 30 June 2017
Debussy's only completed opera Pelléas et Mélisande remains a one-of-a-kind opera that doesn't conform to the traditional format, and as such a production can't really be judged on the more familiar critical basis of interpretation and performance. Fidelity to the dramatic events is determined by the fact that Maurice Maeterlinck's play is incorporated wholly within the opera, but it's the mood determined by Claude Debussy's musical setting of it that is perhaps the most important consideration for a production to meet. Somehow, none of these unique requirements ever makes Pelléas et Mélisande any less intriguing a work, since even within the very specific requirements of the setting of the work, there is room for perhaps one or two little adjustments of emphasis and interpretation.
Within this work, a few minor adjustments can go a long way, and that's certainly the case with Marco Arturo Marelli's new production of Pelléas et Mélisande for the Vienna State Opera. Even more so than most productions of the work, the mood here is dominated almost entirely by the stage sets which emphasise the forbidding presence of the castle in Allemonde. We never seem to leave it, we never get a glimpse of anything natural outside the castle, not a hint of daylight, not even a garden with a fountain or an exterior Blind Man's Well. All of these, including Pelléas and Golaud's excursion to the caverns, all seem to take place within the walls of the castle in this production.
Bathed in monochrome shades of purple light, the emphasis on the location heightens the dark mood of the piece. The castle itself is a sinister Max Ernst-like rough-hewn tall grey block structure, decaying and slightly tilted, ready to tip into the stagnant waters that lie in its vaults. The atmosphere accordingly is dark and oppressive; the inhabitants all old, sick and dying or else subject to strange forces and accidents. We know this because Golaud and Arkel describe it as such, acknowledging how out of place Mélisande presence is there, but you really get an enhanced sense of it here.
In another adjustment of emphasis in this regard, the first scene of Marelli's production, just before he hears the sobs of a young woman, shows Golaud unable to go on not just because he is lost in the forest, but he about to shoot himself in the head with the gun placed under his jaw. Just to jump ahead of the chronology, since there is a kind of consistent rhythm (of music and language) and even a kind of circular symmetry to the opera, this is not just a throw-away image, but one which is returned to in the closing notes of the opera as Mélisande slips away and Golaud is left with his own demons once again and his gun.
Debussy certainly wasn't composing an opera for singers to demonstrate their prowess, but the casting of roles can evidently also adjust the emphasis and mood of Pelléas et Mélisande. If you put a singer, actor and performer like Simon Keenlyside into a role like Golaud, that character is going to feature strongly, and Golaud can often be the dominant figure in the work. Whether you take the castle as an outward expression of Golaud's moods, authority and dominance, or whether it's the castle that exerts its dark influence over his moods, the two are inextricably linked. Golaud wants to control and understand but is obdurate in his mindset, and it's his actions and the force of them that are the main cause of Mélisande's deep unhappiness which leads to the tragedy of what occurs between her and Pelléas.
Although they are more reserved in their expression, Pelléas and Mélisande are also subject to their own powerful forces and drives which are a reaction to their circumstances, and the Romantic desire to escape from them. Marelli extends that beyond the castle/Golaud darkness for both figures in a way that doesn't rely so much on the more traditional symbolism of the piece, although Pelléas's obsession with Mélisande's hair is still important here. We also see however the dying father of Pelléas in a silent role (who I've never really been aware of before), seemingly called Arzt. His role is never entirely clear or explored but it adds another element or layer of mystery on top of the drama. For Mélisande, her condition is associated with a boat.
You can't play around too much with the symbolism of Pelléas et Mélisande (and you don't really want to be explicitly interpreting it either), but the boat does manage to successfully become the dominant theme of the production. The upturned boat on a bench for repairs (decaying like everything else) is the tower from which Mélisande drapes her hair to Pelléas below. The boat is used as a ladder for Yniold to spy upon the couple, and it becomes the rock that Yniold cannot move. As such the boat comes to be a symbol of the essence of Mélisande, her desire, her freedom, an object that reflects her status as something that lies outside and apart from the rest of the citizens of the castle and Allemonde. It also becomes her 'bed' in Act V and eventually transports her into the sunset (still standing) at the conclusion.
The boat also of course ties Mélisande to another important symbol in the opera and that is the imagery of water. Here the freedom of boat and the water have a lot more resting on it, since Mélisande is already visibly pregnant at the start of Act IV. Water is present throughout on the stage and is given a darker context beyond the familiar symbolism of hidden depths holding unreachable objects. It's also a path of life, sometimes seen stagnating in the dark, at other times, offering the idea of movement and freedom - as in the beautiful sequence in Act 2 Scene 3, where Mélisande drifts into the scene guided by a semi-submerged Pelléas. Mélisande eventually leaves the castle in the boat, guided by the women servants, into a blazing red sunlight, leaving the dark creatures of Allemonde behind.
It's not all doom and gloom then, and you ought to be able to detect a hint of hope, if not quite optimism, in Debussy's concluding notes and perhaps even in Maeterlinck's words, as Arkel looks to Mélisande's child for the future in a place that - as it currently stands and has been repeatedly emphasised - is no place for children. Tapping into this moment of hope, or at least endurance, Marelli chooses to show Golaud's suicidal despair stayed by the hand of young Yniold, who also has a generally larger silent part to play elsewhere in this production and is characterised as such with expressive personality by Maria Nazarova.
The mood and tone are perfectly judged by Alain Altinoglu's conducting of the Vienna orchestra. The music is haunting and mesmerising as only this work can be, but Altinoglu's attention to the detail and flow demonstrate how Debussy's score really has a force of its own and is never mere accompaniment or mood music. Simon Keenlyside makes his presence fully felt as Golaud, Franz-Josef Selig is a luxury Arkel, his French enunciation beautifully clear and wonderfully phrased. Adrian Eröd plays Pelléas with enraptured romanticism and his voice is well pitched to sing it as such. If Mélisande remains somewhat distant and enigmatic, that's as it should be and Olga Bezsmertna's singing and performance conveys this perfectly.
Links: Wiener Staatsoper Live
Jules Massenet - Werther
Wiener Staatsoper, Vienna - 2017
Frédéric Chaslin, Andrei Serban, Ludovic Tézier, Adrian Eröd, Sophie Koch, Maria Nazarova, Alexandru Moisiuc, Peter Jelosits, Marcus Pelz
Staatsoper Live - 6th April 2017
Andrei Serban productions, or the ones I have seen anyway, are certainly distinctive but hard to associate with any kind of individual style that you might find with other opera-theatre directors. Even though they might seem a little abstract, with stylised modern elements that don't always match the requirements specified in the libretto, Serban's productions nonetheless look good and somehow still often match the tone of the corresponding work fairly well. They aren't traditional and they aren't particularly challenging or experimental, but they get the work done. That's pretty much how you would sum up Serban's production of Werther for the Vienna State Opera.
Peter Pabst's set designs for the Vienna Werther are in fact perhaps less stylised and more naturalistic than most of Serban's other productions. Providing, that is, that you are happy to accept a huge sprawling tree in the middle of the stage not only in the outdoor scenes, but looming there also in the background of Charlotte's otherwise normal living room and in Werther's little bedsit. No one is likely to be put off by such large symbolism in such a Romantic opera where the emotions and entanglements loom large, and it does give the production a certain character that lifts it above the mundane into the realm of the soul. It's the expression of the soul that is what Werther is really about, and it certainly does that at least in Massenet's score.
That grand gesture seems to be enough for Serban, and it's hard to argue with the effectiveness and style with which the production functions and heightens the overheated situations of the drama. The large tree contrasts strongly with the rather suffocatingly stuffy, austere old-fashioned furnishings, costumes and manners. There's a sense that this ever-present looming tree, the enduring symbol of life, nature and solidity comes to present an intense strain on Charlotte when she tries to resist her own nature. With Werther ever present in her mind, the stuffy conformity of her marriage with Albert rightly feels almost unbearably oppressive to Charlotte by the time we come to Act III.
The Vienna production harnesses much of the force of the deeply suppressed erotic charge that Massenet managed to create in Werther. The idea of composing the opera came to the Massenet after attending a performance of Parsifal and soon after visiting the home of Goethe, where he was struck by a passage of 'The Sorrows of Young Werther'. Inspired by his visit to Bayreuth and the sentiments of Goethe's famous work, these two powerful experiences are forged into a deeply romantic and emotionally charged work that captures perfectly the subject and heightened sentiments of Werther.
It's not Parsifal however but Tristan und Isolde that seems to exert the strongest influence over the opera. If there's little that is directly Wagnerian about the score other than the use of leitmotif and musical themes that surge throughout the whole work, there is something of the doomed lovers situation in Werther and Massenet is no less skilled in swirling those charged situations of repressed and unconsummated Romantic desires around in a potent concoction that can only be resolved in death. If Tristan were the only one who drank the potion and Isolde resisted, he would be Werther; hopelessly melancholic at the impossibility of their union. Death can only follow, and there is even an emotional and musical echo of the Wagner's Liebestod in Charlotte's response to Werther's fatal wounding.
Werther is not so much Wagnerian however as a full-blooded expression of German Romanticism, and the true nature of the force of those sentiments is fully delivered by the orchestra of the Wiener Staatsoper under the baton of Frédéric Chaslin. There's no holding back on the huge sweep of the score, but it neither overplays nor seeks to find some kind of subtle naturalism in the situations. The score should be given this kind of full unmediated expression, and so too should the singing.
I've never been totally sold on the baritone version of Werther, but Ludovic Tézier shows here that it's not so much tenor or baritone that matters as who is singing the role and what they can bring to it. Tézier may not have a tenor's romantic allure, but he has the melancholic aspect of Werther in his demeanour, in the haunted inflections of his voice, and his delivery is superb. Charlotte is a role that Sophie Koch sings often and she is one of the best interpreters of the role. There's a little more strain showing in her voice these days, but everything that is required is there. Her delivery of the tumultuous reflections of Act III, for example - so important to the work as a whole - is outstanding. There are good performances and solid casting right down the line, with Adrian Eröd as Albert and Maria Nazarova as Sophie.
The fate or at least the state that Charlotte is left in at the closing notes of the opera are also all-important, in many ways much the same as with Isolde when Tristan expires. Having Charlotte turn the pistol on herself as some other productions have done could certainly be justified as an expression of where her mind is, even if it could be said to be over-playing the drama. Serban's direction for this scene is a little more even-handed or at least proportionate, but having Albert a bystander to the final scene, stomping off in a huff over what he has witnessed rather than being stunned into shock - surely the more likely reaction - tends to take away from where your sympathies and the emphasis ought to lie. It doesn't quite take away however from what has come before, with Koch and Tézier together generating a passionate and intense climax of real Romantic stupor.
Links: Wiener Staatsoper Live
Richard Strauss - Der Rosenkavalier
Salzburg 2014
Franz Welser-Möst, Harry Kupfer, Krassimira Stoyanova, Sophie Koch, Günther Groissböck, Mojca Erdmann, Adrian Eröd, Silvana Dussmann, Wiebke Lehmkuhl, Rudolf Schasching, Stefan Pop, Tobias Kehrer, Martin Piskorski, Franz Supper, Dirk Aleschus, Roman Sadnik, Rupert Grössinger
Medici.tv - August 2014
It's probably a self-evident truth and practically a definition of opera, but perhaps more so than any other work, there needs to be a perfect coming together of all the various elements in Der Rosenkavalier. Each of its elements - not just the music, the singing and the staging, but all the other areas that are considered less important - all have their part to play in making this difficult opera work. Truly work as it's meant to. As Salzburg productions go, their 2014 Der Rosenkavalier isn't one of their most adventurous, but in almost every area it serves the intentions of the work, showing in the process just how perfect Der Rosenkavalier can be, and consequently just how miraculous the nature of opera itself can be.
Strauss and Hofmannsthal's first fully-fledged collaboration (after adapting Hofmannsthals' dramatic version of Elektra), Der Rosenkavalier is an immense but delicately poised work that presents considerable challenges in its huge orchestration, the intricacy of interplay and interaction and the demands that it places on the singing voices. Attention to these demands is necessary to achieve a very specific tone and mood, and a production can't really stray too far away from these intentions without undermining the entire purpose of the work. As it says itself, it's a Viennese farce and nothing more, but like the Mozart comedies that it is styled on, Der Rosenkavalier opens up deeper meditations on life, love, time, on the necessary but beautiful pain that comes with the passing of the old and the birth of the new. Der Rosenkavalier in itself, reverential and referential of older opera works, indulges this nostalgia for the past at the same time as it points a way towards the future.
The person best placed to draw out those qualities in a production of Der Rosenkavalier and bring the necessary balance of warm nostalgia and reflective meditation on the meaning of it all, is traditionally the conductor. It's always the conductor who is in charge of Der Rosenkavalier. Leading the ever impressive Vienna Philharmonic, Franz Welser-Möst's control and management of the score is absolutely stunning, weaving Strauss' complex lines through the singing voices, matching the melodies, the tempo and the sheer majesty of a score whose lyricism and evocation of resonances belies any notion of the work being merely "a Viennese farce and nothing more". More than anything else, it's Strauss's writing that fleshes out the broad strokes of the stock characters, imbuing them with considerably more personality and humanity and making their concerns and behaviour universally recognisable.
It's immediately apparent that the Salzburg production has a handle on all these essential ingredients. From the overture to the impression that is created by the elegant set for the Marschallin's bedroom in Act I, everything feels right and sounds right. All the more so on account of the singers we have in the roles of Marschallin and Octavian. Sophie Koch is maybe not so sure of voice on the top notes as she once was singing Octavian, but her experience counts. She knows the role well and is better fitted than most to handle the intricacies of this difficult trouser role (ahem, Glyndebourne!). Krassimira Stoyanova is a glorious Marschallin and gives a great performance here. She has an amazing voice that is perfect for big roles like this, and she is simply just one of the best Marschallins in the world at the moment. I don't think there's any particular chemistry between Stoyanova and Koch, but they work together well and bring their own character successfully to the roles.
I was disappointed however by Günther Groissböck's Ochs von Lerchenau. Not with his singing, which I thought might have been challenged by such a role. True, he doesn't have the commanding boom that is required and is probably a little too young and handsome for the role, but he navigates his way perfectly through the long and challenging sing-speech rhythms of the part. His timbre is lovely and his delivery is perfectly good, but I just couldn't take to him as the baron. He never looked terribly comfortable with the part either, his gestures limited to an arrogant sneer and swagger, adopting a teapot stance and flicking his hand dismissively now and again. His concentration on the delivery means that he sings the role almost entirely without looking at any of the other characters he is interacting with. It's possible I suppose that this is how the role has been directed, Ochs always dominating, the other characters always behind him, subservient to his sense of self-importance.
Whether it was an issue with casting or direction, Baron Ochs consequently failed to come to life for me or really make the necessary stamp on the significance of his role in Der Rosenkavalier. Other than that however, Harry Kupfer's direction is hard to fault. The stage design is classy and elegant, the silver-grey colour scheme giving a sense of a cool nostalgic detachment for an idealised past. Hans Schavernoch's set is made up of large panels and props that glide into position, while large projected photographs of classical Vienna scenes, rooftops and parks place the work perfectly into the essential context of the wider world that the opera is set in.
The stylised version of this cold idealised Vienna contrasted perfectly with the warm richness of the lives and sentiments of the characters within it. Act I and II contrasted noble elegance with vulgar extravagance of marbled ostentation, while Act III didn't just reveal the darker underside of the comic playing, it practically built the set around the performers in the location of a misty Prater park, making it feel wholly a part of the wider world. Everything slips into place the way it ought to, as elegantly as Strauss's score, and the finale consequently was simply gorgeous. Och ungraciously fades back into the mist, the Marschallin glides off in her Rolls Royce, leaving Koch's Octavian and Mojca Erdmann's delicately sweet-toned Sophie to look ahead to the future.
Aribert Reimann - Medea
Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper, Vienna, 2010
Michael
Boder, Marco Arturo Marelli, Marlis Petersen, Michaela Selinger,
Elisabeth Kulman, Michael Roider, Adrian Eröd, Max Emanuel Cencic
Arthaus, Blu-ray
With very little to compare it to, the best way I can think of to describe Aribert Reimann’s Medea
is that it can be very difficult to listen to. But, with it being a
modern opera, you probably could have guessed as much anyway. As a world
premiere, recorded in 2010 at the Vienna Staatsoper, it’s not even as
if you can measure or contrast the performance against other recordings.
What you can be sure of however, since the composer is still alive and
taking an active part in its production – even down to writing the
libretto himself, choosing the cast and writing specifically for their
voices (as opera would have been traditionally done in the past) – is
that this version of Medea is, for better or worse, as close as it is possible to be to Reimann’s intentions.
Whether it’s difficult or not
is not what matters then, whether it’s not the most harmonious or
beautiful sounds you’ve ever heard in an opera, nor whether it’s
completely faithful to the composer’s intentions (though it is
undoubtedly is all of the above), as much as whether it works as an
opera on its own terms, that its story or message connects with the
listener on some level and that its presentation is suited to the
content. Medea is a familiar figure in the opera world – Cherubini’s
version of the Greek tragedy and Maria Callas’ interpretation of it are
almost legendary – a formidable female role on a par with Salome and
Electra, and perhaps in that respect the name of Strauss can be invoked
in the intensity and psychological acuity with which Reimann scores his
version of the Medea legend.
The source is classical, of
course, but Reimann draws from other sources than Euripides, bringing in
the legend of the Golden Fleece and the Argonauts from Franz
Grillparzer’s version of the stories. Reimann is known for his literary
adaptations (particularly for his version of Lear), but as to what
purpose or intent a modern opera looks back at classical subjects is
difficult to say. Surprisingly, the composer seems to view Medea’s
dilemma as being one of class anxiety and social climbing, both on her
part from her background of Colchis - she is seen by herself and others
as a barbarian - and on the part of Jason who, after suspicion has
fallen on them for the death of Pelias, has fled Jolkos and sought
sanctuary from King Creon, abandoning Medea in the process for the
sophisticated life of Corinth and the hand of his rather more beautiful
daughter Creusa.
Relating this conflict between
old world and the new, between past and present – the set contrasting
the bleak lunar landscape inhabited by Medea with the almost space-age
nature of Corinth – the orchestration is accordingly made up of slow,
discordant notes that are stretched and bent, a strangled string
section, with woodwind trills, flatulent brass and deep percussive,
almost industrial sounds. But it’s the voices that are the most
expressive of the dilemma of the characters – high, emotional,
intentionally strained, notes of anger, betrayal and despair that come
close to a scream, yet – particularly in the case of Marlis Petersen as
Medea – always remaining tuneful and musical. Medea consequently is not
for those seeking beautiful melodies or harmonies, but rather a deeper
expression of darker natures, uncomfortable alliances and fractured
relationships in an intense retelling of the ancient Greek myth. On that
level, Reimann’s Medea expresses everything the story ought to and as forcefully as it ought to be.
On Blu-ray, the opera looks and
sounds magnificent (or indeed terrifying and deeply unsettling). The
High Definition image is superbly clear, with strong contrasts and deep,
well-defined colours. Both the PCM Stereo and the DTS HD-Master Audio
5.1 tracks carry the full force of the music, the surround mix in
particular deep and reverberating on the lower frequencies. Other than
some notes on the composition and its performance in an accompanying
booklet, there are no extra features on the Arthaus disc.
Puccini - La Bohème
Bertrand de Billy, Robert Dornhelm, Rolando Villazón, Anna Netrebko, George von Bergen, Boaz Daniel, Nicole Cabelle, Vitalij Kowaljow, Adrian Eröd, Stéphane Degout,
Axiom Blu-ray
There is no reason, in theory, why it should be any more difficult to bring an opera to the film screen than any other piece of musical theatre. In the case of opera, actually, one would think it should be relatively straightforward – the most popular repertory operas have at least a hundred or two hundred years of conventional productions and experimental stagings behind them, ample time to explore and fine tune the dramatic core of a piece. With opera however, there are however other technical considerations and conceptual decisions that have to be made when adapting it for the screen as a movie as opposed to the more common approach of shooting it as a filmed stage production. At its most successful, in Brian Large’s live TV film version of Tosca or in Joseph Losey’s Don Giovanni, there is a something to be gained from the filming of scenes in the actual locations specified in the libretto (The Roman locations of Castel San Angelo and others in Tosca and the Venetian Palladian constructs of Don Giovanni), that go some way to helping the viewer see past the exaggerated theatrical mannerisms and problematic issue of integrating and syncing the live or recorded singing performances to the dramatic action.
A literal approach may in some cases be the best way of counteracting the heightened emotional realism of conventional opera performances when brought to the screen, but, just as with stage performances of opera, there is room for a more naturalistic or experimental approach when the themes are sufficiently universal and not necessarily tied to the period. Such would perhaps be expected to be the case with Puccini’s La Bohème, which relates a familiar subject that has not dated in the 100 or so years since its writing. It may be set in a Paris of the 1830s, where guards patrol the gates to the city, where starving poets and artists suffer for their art in freezing garrets, and pale heroines die long drawn-out deaths from tuberculosis in the name of love, but essentially the theme is as old as the hills – it’s about the joys and the vicissitudes of love. It’s somewhat surprising then that the film’s director, Robert Dornhelm, with two of the brightest young stars in opera on board for a feature film adaptation of Puccini’s classic tearjerker La Bohème, settles for an approach that remains resolutely stage-bound – not filmed live, on location or during performance, but using opera production values, sets, lighting, costumes, theatrical acting and mannerisms that belong very much to a traditional period staging of the opera.
Naturalism is not the operative word for Dornhelm’s approach to this film version of La Bohème, but then really, naturalism has little to do either with Puccini’s adaptation of Henry Murger’s collection of stories in Scènes de la vie Bohème. Even accepting the notion of love at first sight, the romance that develops here between a seamstress and a poet is rather precipitous (particularly in this film version which takes their introduction a little bit further than usual with a bedroom coda to Act 1) and the structure of the opera is somewhat schematic, the four acts being divided fairly equally into the birth of love, the joy of love, the torment of love and the death of love. What gives this romance conviction in Puccini’s musical scoring is the harmonisation, both vocal and emotional, that exists between the two leads, and the counterbalance to this in the tempestuous relationship between Musetta and Marcello, which brilliantly follows a similar trajectory but practically in reverse. Quite wonderfully, Puccini's score plays on this reversal and counterpoint in the overall structure with the repetition of themes - in one scene making Mimi's theme express the discovery of love, and in another using the same theme to express the end of love, as if they are indeed just flip-sides of the same emotion.
There can be no doubts about the evident chemistry between Netrebko and Villazón, a partnership that has achieved much acclaim and success in recent years, and that is successfully carried across to the screen in this film version of La Bohème. Rolando Villazón’s intensity, enthusiasm and expressiveness is well suited to the overheated emotional content of a Puccini opera and particularly to the role of Rodolfo, but his acting remains very much in the theatrical style. Anna Netrebko’s more demure and reserved performance perhaps fares somewhat better when transferred to the screen, without losing any of her character’s necessary reserves of emotional depth. The character of Mimi, signalled quite clearly from early on as being ready to pop her clogs at any moment, can be somewhat pathetic (in the pathos sense of the word), but Netrebko, as we’ve already seen in her performance of Violetta in La Traviata alongside Villazón again (reviewed here), has the ability to play the doomed heroine who is unlucky in love without sentimentality. Despite the urgent emotional underscoring of Puccini’s music that almost demands a heightened performance to match, she manages to give her character a small sense of dignity and nobility, reacting to her circumstances with quiet passion and internalised desperation. Netrebko’s breakdown scene with Rodolfo in the snow by the tavern in Act 3 in particular is magnificent, her Mimi writhing around like a soul in torment, on the verge of breaking up with her love and close to death, yet driven to keep going by the sheer force of the love that exists between them – one that is fully felt despite the vast ellipses in the storyline between acts. The beautiful heart-rending quartet with Musetta and Marcello that ends this scene is also marvellously performed, another highlight of the production.
As good as all this is in operatic terms, Robert Dornhelm’s filming of La Bohème doesn’t particularly distinguish itself on the screen. While there are one or two distinctive and effective moments, nothing really feels inspired and, at best, the direction can be described as functional, serving the material reasonably well in a traditional staging that feels familiar from countless other productions right down to the lighting, colouration and décor. At worst however, the dissolves, superimpositions and split screens employed are simply a distraction, being particularly overused in Mimi and Rodolfo’s respective introductions in their garret scene ("Chi son? Sono un poeta" and "Si, mi chiamano Mimi"), while the lip-syncing – technically largely unavoidable, though some of it was recorded live – only adds to the lack of naturalism.
Uninspired and uninspiring though this may be, ultimately this production of La Bohème is indeed about the singing and playing of Netrebko and Villazón, and Dornhelm’s production, for all its safe and traditional staging, provides a more than adequate platform for that to be enjoyed by audiences for years to come, and succeeds moreover in wringing out all the emotional charge from what still remains a powerful and moving opera.
Disc
La Bohème is released on Blu-ray in the UK by Axiom Films. The disc is BD50 and the film comes with a 1080/50i encode. Inevitably, this has an impact on the running time, which consequently runs to 109 minutes as opposed to the theatrical running time of 115. Whether this has an impact depends on the original source - it may have been shot at 25fps and slowed down for theatrical release, but I have no information to suggest this is the case. If the image has been speeded up to make it 50i, this could have implications for the accuracy of the audio, but the Blu-ray this may have been pitch corrected to allow for this. Extra features are Standard Definition PAL (576/50i). The disc is All Region.
Video
While the film often looks great, and there are certainly no serious problems with the transfer, the benefits of the High Definition transfer are not always evident on this Blu-ray release. Perhaps on account of the colour timing and the bright lighting that looks more theatrical than naturalistic, contrasts are strong and shadows are exceptionally dark. The transfer does exhibit signs of being somewhat DVNR processed, with haloing also being visible in places, but overall detail and colouration however are good and the image does retains a little grain that keeps it looking like it is from a proper 35mm film negative. Stability and fluidity are relatively good, but some minor flicker may be detected in backgrounds.
Audio
The audio track comes in the form of a fine DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix, with a supplemental Dolby Digital 2.0 track. The handling of the sound is wonderful on the lossless DTS track, the surround distribution enveloping and effective. Vocals remains up front and, in the main, the singing is clear and warmly toned, hitting the high points without any trouble and balancing vocal harmonisation well. I thought I could detect some distracting microphone sounds and noise on the track in one or two places where the recording is less than perfect, but not with any kind of frequency. I detected no such problems with the orchestration, the lossless audio track enabling the instrumentation to achieve a wonderful natural tone, with fine dynamic, particularly in the clear rounded bass tones.
Subtitles
English subtitles only are included. They are optional and in a white font. When spread across two lines, the subtitles lie partly in and partly outside the frame. I wasn’t entirely happy with the translation which is just plain inaccurate in places, and also prone to miss out not insignificant lines. Apparently, the subtitles were supervised personally by the director, so I think this is another area where his decisions are less than effective.
Extras
Interviews are conducted with the director Robert Dornhelm (23:14), with Anna Netrebko (6:00) on the character of Mimi as opposed to Musetta, with Rolando Villazón (5:10) on the film experience and how it differs from opera, with Nicole Cabelle (2:47) on her toning down of Musetta and with Geroge von Bergen on the opera itself and Marcello’s role in it. It’s Dornhelm’s interview which is most revealing, the director admitting that he initially edited the film with numerous green-screen effects and blending (the utterly kitsch results can be seen briefly in the Making Of). He confesses that he has no great feeling for opera, and that in the case of La Bohème he believes that there was no reason to reinvent or modernise, since opera it is a dying artform that belongs in a museum – an incredible and telling admission that I personally couldn’t disagree with more.
The Making of La Bohème (28:31) however is rather good – taking time to interview the cast on their feelings (most of the interview footage is reused here), before getting behind the scenes and eavesdropping in on the rehearsal and filming. Since an opera film production is rather different from a regular film production, this is very interesting indeed. There are also some very funny outtakes at the end, and – of course – footage of Villazón goofing around on the set. Great fun.
The extras are rounded out with a Trailer (1:30) and a Stills Gallery of 21 promo stills. A booklet is also included with the package.
Overall
While there is no substitute for the ambience of a live performance in an opera house, the High Definition image and sound on Axiom’s Blu-ray release of La Bohème is certainly the next best thing and, for most of us, the only real option to see the pairing of Netrebko and Villazón in one of the most dramatic and romantic of operas. Yet again, their collaboration and respective qualities proves to be perfectly matched, and even within the limitations of a filmed performance and Robert Dornhelm’s mostly rather uninspired, traditional staging that plays safe in aiming for the opera fan more than the cinema-goer, there are nonetheless some truly great moments that make it all more than worthwhile.
This review was first published on DVD Times/The Digital Fix in 2006
