Prokofiev - War and Peace (Munich, 2023)

Sergei Prokofiev - War and Peace

Bayerische Staatsoper, 2023

Andrei Zhilikhovsky, Olga Kulchynska, Alexandra Yangel, Kevin Conners, Alexander Fedin, Violeta Urmana, Olga Guryakova, Mischa Schelomianski, Arsen Soghomonyan, Victoria Karkacheva, Bekhzod Davronov, Alexei Botnarciuc, Christian Rieger, Emily Sierra, Martin Snell, Christina Bock, Sergei Leiferkus, Alexander Roslavets, Oksana Volkova, Elmira Karakhanova, Roman Chabaranok, Stanislav Kuflyuk, Maxim Paster, Dmitry Cheblykov, Nikita Volkov, Alexander Fedorov, Xenia Vyaznikova

ARTE Concert - March 2023

Neither the Bavarian State Opera nor director Dmitri Tcherniakov really knew what they were letting themselves in for when they chose to present Prokofiev's War and Peace on the 5th March 2023, on the 70th anniversary of the death of Prokofiev (not to mention the 70th anniversary of the death of Stalin). They evidently knew about the challenges of putting on a complex Russian opera with huge orchestral and choral forces and a large number of principal roles, but at the time it was planned they hadn't really counted on the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the 24th February 2022. By the time it came to put stage the opera in 2023, it was even more of a challenge in a climate where some Russian artists were being cancelled and there were second thoughts about programming works by Russian composers. Serge Dorny however believed that the production they had envisioned for this epic work could stand on its own merits and make its own points. The reception it received justified that decision, but looking at it more critically now away from the heat of March 2023, while it's still a powerful piece, it's just a little less impressive.

Lately there have been two sides to the operas directed by Dmitri Tchernaikov, or maybe just two sides of the same coin. On one side is the psychoanalytical, taking a distanced perspective and exploring the undercurrents to familiar stories from a kind of laboratory experiment (Les Troyens, Pelléas et Mélisande, Carmen, Das Rheingold) and on the other a kind of deflating of grand myths and legends (Der Freischütz, Parsifal - most of his Wagner) reducing them down into human terms. You could see them both as the same approach, finding the human element within grand sweeps of history and legend. His approach to Russian giants of Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, Borodin and Prokofiev has been a little different, seeing in them something of the history, character and nature of ordinary Russian people, something that perhaps comes more from the original literary sources. There is no greater Russian literary source than Tolstoy's 'War and Peace', but how is a director of Russian origin supposed to approach a Russian opera when there is war in the Ukraine?

Well, as it happens, almost exactly the same way as Tcherniakov has done before. If 'War and Peace' tells us anything, it's how ordinary lives are disrupted by war, how our stories and loves are coloured by war, how our view on life and history is irrevocably transformed by war. That goes for the lives of the high society aristocracy that Tolstoy grew up in and primarily writes about in the novel, and it perhaps brings them down to the same level as everyone else and reminds them of their essential humanity. So, it's a given that there is going to be no glamour in Tchernikov's production of Prokofiev's opera version of War and Peace, but a reminder, as if anyone needed it at the moment, of the nature of life in a time of war.

The director chooses to set the opera not in the grand mansions an ballrooms of Russian high society, nor on the battlefields of Ostrovno or Berezina (and indeed avoids the burning down of Moscow altogether), but instead locates the whole opera in the Hall of Unions in Moscow (which actually survived the burning), where in the past Lenin, Stalin and Brezhnev have all lain in state. Here it's become something of a refugee centre, even before the war has started in the opera timeline. The room is filled with camp beds, mattresses, where masses of civilians are dressed in everyday clothes that they have presumably been wearing for days. The whole scope of the high society engagement of Natasha Rostova and Prince Andrei Bolkonsky takes place among this mess of humanity in peacetime, but even as that relationship is thrown into turmoil by the playboy Khuragin's attempt to elope with Natasha, the very real threat of war looms nonetheless.

The love lives of the aristocracy may seems trivial however when compared to the upheaval that is to take place when Napoleon Bonaparte invades, but it's far from trivial in Tolstoy's eyes. He, like Pierre, who although married loves Natasha deeply himself, comes to despise the trappings of wealth and privilege, society, but nonetheless in his search for meaning and value in life, finds the essence of humanity lies at the heart of it. It may be torn apart by war, but love and family are the essence of society or a nation and it is what keeps people going and enduring the hardships they face. Tcherniakov, while not quite going as far as Graham Vick in explicitly reversing the idea of 'War' and 'Peace' in his Mariinsky production, nonetheless similarly opens his production with Prince Andrei Bolkonsky contemplating suicide, and gives more or less equal weight to both sides of the equation.

The second half when war breaks out is however more of a challenge to accept within the limitations of the House of Unions setting that the director has set for himself and the progress of the opera. It's understandable that you would want to downplay any sense of wartime heroics - not that there is much of that in Tolstoy's vision of the horror of Napoleon's 1812 invasion - but it's harder to work it into the context of a room of refugees who indulge in a "Military-patriotic game ‘Battle of Boprodino' ". It risks downplaying the horror of the reality of the war - and by extension the unavoidable comparison to Ukraine. It's a tough balance to strike, but I would like to think he could have done more with this. Even Les Troyens, while succumbing to it being a play-acting of traumatised victims of war, was able to find a way around the traditional and humanise it without trivialising it. It might have had impact in the theatre, but looking at it now, it seems faintly ridiculous and ill-judged alongside a Russia currently at war in Ukraine.

There's certainly a case for ridiculing the world leaders and warmongers, but the scene of Napoleon played out like a comedy act for the entertainment of the assembled, prancing around throwing wine and food around, chewing his tie to hoots and howls of laughter, doesn't really get across the greater loss of life his ambitions and actions cause for ordinary soldiers and citizens. For all those irritating tropes of it looking like a madhouse, there is however more to direction than scene setting, and the fact that it takes place entirely within Moscow does allude to the fact that the war is within and that figures arise out of this mass and horror begins. This is at least borne out fully in the stage directions and acting performances, which do delve into those deep emotional and life upheavals, particularly on the part of Pierre who is central to the whole work. Its also there evidently in the music, which depicts all the inhumanity that war visits on the ordinary people. 

Given Tcherniakov's previous explorations of the nature of the Russian people through their legends, their literature and their composers, his take on Prokofiev's War and Peace could be seen a lament for the state of Russia perhaps, or the Russian people, or their victims. Which is another way to look at war, but hardly insightful either in the light of war in Ukraine or indeed in the depth to which Tolstoy explores the subject. Bearing in mind the challenges that had to be faced at the time of the production however, and the delicate balance that had to be maintained, it's about as much as you could expect, and it certainly hit the mark with the audience in Munich. Tcherniakov, who is more accustomed to facing boos and howls of derision at a curtain-call, is met here with roars of approval from an audience who clearly have been deeply emotionally engaged with what has been shown on the stage.

That may have been partly due to the highly charged atmosphere in a time of war - opera should be 'of the moment' and meaningful to a modern audience and Tcherniakov undoubtedly succeeded in striking a chord with his audience - but the director also did it on his own terms, finding the essential human quality within the work and also finding a way to explore the essential idea of Russian character and nature facing the upheaval of life that lies at the heart of the work ('Russian' in spite of the fact that many of singers are also from former soviet states), taking nothing away from the challenge of striking a balance and finding a universal character to the work. The highest praise in that regard however has to be reserved for the central singing performances: Moldovan Andrei Zhilikhovsky as Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, Ukrainian Olga Kulchynska as Natasha Rostova as Armenian Arsen Soghomonyan as Count Pierre Besukhov all never anything less than impressive.

The success of how that is put across is also testament to the power of Prokofiev's musical "reduction" of War and Peace, but reduction is hardly the appropriate term for this opera. With its huge cast required for the principal roles, its huge chorus and huge orchestral forces required to play Prokofiev's complex score, no undertaking of War and Peace is taken lightly. Vladimir Jurowski took a measured approach to the score, including some significant cuts, but only in terms of managing sensitivities which could not be ignored or taken lightly in the present climate. It's clear however that he takes on such challenges without losing any of the impact or intent of the score. The decision to go ahead with some judicious cuts was clearly the right one, Tcherniakov's production might not look now like it really addresses the complexities of the work, but it was the right one for the time, the power of the work and its importance enhanced by the reality of current events.

External Links: Bayerische Staatsoper, ARTE Concert

Prokofiev - The Fiery Angel (Madrid, 2022)

Sergei Prokofiev - The Fiery Angel

Teatro Real de Madrid, 2022

Gustavo Gimeno,Calixto Bieito, Ausrine Stundyte, Leigh Melrose, Dmitry Golovnin, Agnieszka Rehlis, Mika Kares, Nino Surguladze, Dmitry Ulyanov, Josep Fadò, Gerardo Bullón, Ernst Alisch, David Lagares, Estibaliz Martyn, Anna Gomà

ARTE Concert - April 2022

Based on a Symbolist work by Valery Bryusov with autobiographical experiences that were shared to some extent by the composer, Prokofiev's The Fiery Angel is one of the most impressive and original works of opera I've come across. Musically and thematically it is quite unlike anything else in opera and each new production - although they aren't that common - always suggests new ways of looking at it. There have been some interesting perspectives taken on the work in recent years in Munich, Aix and Rome, but the idea of seeing what a director like Calixto Bieito can make of it is always going to be an intriguing proposition. It turns out that the Madrid production of The Fiery Angel doesn't seem to have a whole lot to say that is new, but the opera nonetheless remains fascinating, particularly with Ausrine Stundyte again taking on the mesmerising role of Renata. 

Sure, in some respects you can see Renata as a typical opera heroine abused and mistreated and misunderstood by the men in her life, her behaviour out of step with society around her, but in the case of Renata, there is indeed quite a bit to misunderstand. Not that her state of mind is any excuse for the abuse she endures or indeed the exploitation of her vulnerability, but fundamentally does seem to be the rationale for the irrational here. Because for whatever reason (there are hints and suggestions but nothing is made explicit), Renata is indeed not functioning on a rational level. Whether a victim of childhood abuse or suffering from schizophrenia, she has clearly been scarred by her childhood experiences, experiencing visions of a celestial being appearing in her bedroom, a fiery angel who becomes intimate with her.

This unfortunately sets her up to become a victim to be further exploited by the men she meets. She lets herself be taken in by Count Heinrich, who she believes is the angel Madiel in a corporeal form, and his eventual rejection only deepens her trauma. Even the noble knight, Ruprecht who comes to her aid in her distress, sees a vulnerable woman he can exploit sexually. His behaviours and actions are suspect, but when he is rejected he does at least try to consider his better nature and help, although it seems to be primarily because he is still fascinated by this extraordinary woman. With his assistance, Renata is exploited even further by charlatans and astrologers, as she tries to find a way to Madiel through occultism and mysticism. 

On one level then it is a familiar situation of a woman being exploited and shunned by a conformist society, leading her to seek answers elsewhere, but The Fiery Angel is also a work that seeks to explore the far reaches and complexities of human experience, Renata's journey being one to get in touch with a spiritual dimension or existence of life outside of the common experience. She has a sense of having touched on forbidden knowledge and seeks to press it further. For Ruprecht too, there is even a fascination for the mystery of a woman that Renata represents. She stirs up a riot of feelings that involve lust, compassion, fear, jealousy and possessiveness. Combined, The Fiery Angel is an exploration of human dualism, what it means to be human, a material physical being with a spiritual mind, mortal creatures with aspirations of an eternal afterlife. On an everyday level grappling with this dualism extends to male and female divisions, base instincts and a higher purpose, purity and corruption, subjective and objective realities.

In other productions by Mariusz Treliński at Aix-en-Provence and Emma Dante in Rome, the stage directors have sought ways to bring the otherworldly level of the opera expressed in the music to the fore, whereas Barrie Kosky's Munich production highlighted the comic absurdity. Calixto Bieito takes a surprisingly much more down to earth approach, seeing the opera very much as an opening into the mind of a woman rejected for not conforming to the expectations of society. It's even set (restricted I feel) in a specific period, the 1950s, before a more general liberalisation and a sexual permissive society. Initially we see Renata seeking mystery in the spinning of a bicycle wheel, creating patterns, the bicycle perhaps alluding to a childhood trauma. The set meanwhile consists of a block of compartments that, as occasional projections of Ausrine Stundyte as Renata illustrate, are representative of the idea that we are seeing into her mind.

Those rooms or compartments are mostly bare empty rooms, ready to be filled with horrors, each in their own little world, none of them connecting up to form any coherent view of reality. Significantly, perhaps rejecting any idea of a spiritual realm beyond physical reality, the few rooms that are decorated, the only lights in the darkness, are related to Agrippa von Nettesheim who in this version is less of a sorcerer than a physician, a man of science who is aware that we are still far from having all the answers. Her childhood bedroom, the source of her trauma, is also shown in all its horror. With an older man appearing, there is the suggestion of abuse by her father, who she looks up to. She sees Heinrich, an older man, as a substitute for her father, but inevitably that is a terrible mistake that only deepens her trauma. The tavern scene with Faust and Mephisopheles pushes Renata to her limits, and is quite disturbing in its own way. As she disturbs the community of nuns in Act 5, there are correspondences with Penderecki's opera Die Teufel von Loudun, which also featured Ausrine Stundyte in a recent Munich production.

Prokofiev, in a work long laboured over that he never saw performed in his own lifetime, strives to find similar expression in the music for the tangible and intangible, and it truly is a remarkable endeavour. The music is powerful and dynamic, sweeping between sensual and disorientating, evoking objective and subjective realities. I think its complexities came across better in the Rome production, but that might just be that the recording benefitted from superb High Resolution sound mix on the Blu-ray presentation. Here, conducted by Gustavo Gimeno, the detail isn't all there, nor the same dynamic shifts of tempo and volume.

Where the opera really comes to life however here in this Madrid production is in the singing performances. Once again - a revelation in the same role in Aix-en-Provence - we have a marvellous performance by Ausrine Stundyte. It's a role that has considerable vocal challenges but there are dramatic challenges too that require expression beyond the external, a requirement for Renata to be possessed of a deep and mysterious inner life. Bieito makes it physically challenging too and Stundyte is again impressive. Leigh Melrose is also excellent, his Ruprecht grappling with things beyond his comprehension and his own limited knowledge and experience. He brings that out in a similarly committed physical performance. 

The origins of the work and its Symbolist trappings leave a lot of room for analysis in The Fiery Angel, but it seems like the controversial Catalan director Calixto Bieito uncharacteristically seeks to demystify the work and restrict its possibilities. In his hands it does indeed boil down to familiar opera themes of a woman with unconventional individual behaviours being shunned by a closed society, moulded to conform and eventually destroyed by it. Prokofiev music suggests a wider context, but in that dialectic between the score and stage representation, the opera still works and weaves its fascination. Principally of course its real human level is expressed by the singers, and with prior experience of these roles, Stundyte and Melrose are thoroughly convincing.

Links: Teatro Real, ARTE Concert

Prokofiev - The Fiery Angel (Rome, 2019)

Sergei Prokofiev - The Fiery Angel

Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, 2019

Alejo Pérez, Emma Dante, Leigh Melrose, Ewa Vestin, Anna Victorova, Mairam Sokolova, Sergey Radchenko, Andrii Ganchuk, Maxim Paster, Goran Jurić, Domingo Pellicola, Petr Sokolov

Naxos - Blu-ray

Composed in 1927 but considered far too extreme to stage, Prokofiev's The Fiery Angel was never fully performed or staged during the composer's lifetime. It is however an extraordinary opera and is indeed a work of extremes, one that pushes at musical, dramatic and psychological boundaries. There are consequently many different ways of approaching it, but in almost every case you have to wholeheartedly embrace its extremes and its madness. Emma Dante's 2019 production for the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma succeeds in just about every level, perhaps even getting close to illuminating what this strange and almost forgotten masterpiece is all about.

What it is, is what it is about. It's indeed about extremes, about the human experience pushing and being pushed to extremes, to the extent that it borders and almost spills over into madness; and what is madness but humanity pushed to extremes? The troubled Renata is not just schizophrenic who searches to recapture a hallucinatory vision of an angel that visited her as a child, but she is chasing what the angel represents; a growing to sexual awareness as well as the longing for fullness of being. She was able to indulge this burning desire in her marriage to Count Heinrich, but since he has abandoned her, her thirst for and taste of forbidden pleasures has not been sated.

The same can be said about Ruprecht, the travelling knight who hears her torments while staying next door to her in an inn. He doesn't see her the way others do as a wanton madwoman, but having seen much of the world and having visited the new world of America, he finds her state of mind compelling in its willingness to embrace something bigger than itself, her uniqueness and her determination to achieve it, and is consequently filled with lust for her. For this, he is even willing to indulge her journey to Cologne, visiting mages, scientists and philosophers in her quest to rediscover Heinrich - or what he represents for her in her mind - and he too wholeheartedly follows her down some strange paths.

The scientists, religious guides, occultists and the esoteric forbidden texts that they seek out and pore over are just another representation of the human desire to extend and expand knowledge of the capacity of mankind, to experience life fully on all fronts; love and tenderness, hatred and death, body and soul. It's evidently an endless quest, torn between angels on one side and demons on the other. That essentially is what Prokofiev pours into his incredible score for The Fiery Angel and it's what director Emma Dante strives to do justice to in visual and dramatic terms. If you achieve that, you have something remarkable; total opera. That is certainly the impression you get from this production.

It's a busy enough drama, but there is so much going on in the musical expression of the drama and its undercurrents, that it's simply not enough to just tell the story. The director finds some quite brilliant ways to highlight the ideas, the less tangible and the unknowable side of Renata and Ruprecht's restless quest, looking for answers, trying to solve the mysteries that lie on the boundaries of human experience and sexual desire. Setting it mainly in a crypt and in a book filled library to highlight the themes, Dante also employs extras and dancers who whirl and spin around the singers, dancing and moving to the music, a legion of fleeting thoughts and impressions that go through Renata's disturbed mindset. Even her related story of Heinrich and her encounter with Madiel finds visual representation on the stage, as they are very much present in the music.

If you can illustrate what the music is expressing the way Dante does - and it really is vivid, colourful, endlessly creative music - and you have great singers to draw the human side out of it, you have got an opera here that itself pushes the limits of human and artistic expression. The musical performance under the direction of Alejo Pérez is a marvel, perhaps all the more impressive for it being illustrated so well on the stage, but the sound recording on this video release is also just breathtaking, capturing the wild dynamic of the ever changing and evolving sound world, giving a wide soundstage to the instruments in the Blu-ray's High Resolution audio mixes. It sounds as incredible as it looks.

There's only one way to sing The Fiery Angel and that's with total commitment and controlled outpouring of passion. The only other work that I think comes close to this - or that this comes close to perhaps - is Wozzeck. Both take on an ambitious musical exploration of depths of human soul, the challenges of life, subject to misfortune outside of one's control to influence. It's up there with Elektra too in that respect. Like those works - early twentieth century masterpieces all - Prokofiev's piece is incredibly demanding but when done well impressive on a scale that few other operas can match.

The cast here are all excellent, all of which contributes to the overall impact of the opera and the production. Renata can't be anything but remarkable but that shouldn't be taken for granted, and Ewa Vestin has terrific presence, giving an excellent dramatic and singing performance that is controlled in its outpouring of emotions. She is matched by a fine Ruprecht in Leigh Melrose, but there are also excellent performances from Maxim Paster as Mephistopheles and Goran Jurić as the Inquisitor, the two anchoring opposing forces of the opera's extremes. Absolutely faultless in performance, impressive in direction, this is nothing but glorious opera.

The Naxos Blu-ray give this the kind of presentation you could hope for. The A/V quality is superb, the image clear, colourful and detailed, but it's the Hi-Res audio mixes that lift this to another level. The force and detail of the orchestral performance has tremendous presence around the singing voices, spread across the spectrum in both stereo and surround mixes. The enclosed booklet contains an essential detailed synopsis and an interesting interview with Emma Dante. The Blu-ray is all-region (A/B/C), BD50, with subtitles in English, German, Italian, Japanese and Korean.

Links: Teatro dell'Opera di Roma

Prokofiev - The Fiery Angel (Aix, 2018)

Sergei Prokofiev - The Fiery Angel

Festival d'Aix en Provence, 2018

Kazushi Ono, Mariusz Treliński, Aušrinė Stundytė, Scott Hendricks, Agnieszka Rehlis, Andreï Popov, Krzysztof Bączyk, Pavlo Tolstoy, Łukasz Goliński, Bernadetta Grabias, Bożena Bujnicka, Maria Stasiak

Culturebox - 15 July 2018

It's hard to say exactly what the true nature of Prokofiev's The Fiery Angel is, whether it's a satire, an exploration of mental illness, decadent, absurdist, symbolist, but I'm pretty sure it's not a comedy. Any yet it's a work that does push the boundaries of human experience or at least the expression of them, so the absurdity of madness can indeed appear to be strangely comic, a side of the work that Barrie Kosky emphasised in his typically colourful and somewhat camp 2015 Munich production of the work. Director Mariusz Treliński takes it a little more seriously and is more open to alternative interpretations, but The Fiery Angel remains an enigmatic experience.

Written by Valery Bryusov, whose work is associated with Russian Symbolism and the Decadent Movement, The Fiery Angel is intentionally allusive and unconnected to any superficial narrative viewpoint, more concerned with exploring hard to define and even taboo human states and emotions. If there's an edge of absurdity in The Fiery Angel it's because it heads towards those outer reaches, exploring the fragility of the human psyche and human desires, where love turns to obsession and where madness is just one step removed from reality, and it's an easy line to cross.

In The Fiery Angel, Ruprecht a German knight, finds a distressed woman in his lodgings. Renata tells him that she has lost the love of her life, Heinrich, a man she believes to be the human incarnation of the Madiel, the fiery angel. First encountering Madiel as an eight year old child, Renata has followed a chaste and ascetic path towards sainthood, walking barefoot and inflicting wounds on herself. Wishing a more physical communion however angered Madiel and he disappeared in a pillar of fire. Heinrich, although denying he was Madiel, has now left her, and Renata reaches out to Ruprecht, seeing advice and guidance from alchemists, spiritualists and occult practices, in hallucinatory drugs and all manner of strange rituals.

That suggests that there is a dividing line between reality and a world where visions, unconventional thought and even madness takes over, but it's not that clear-cut. Ruprecht's reactions towards Renata's story and her experience, not to mention the physical presence of this vulnerable woman, brings out a side to the knight that is split between chivalry and lust that - when he cannot resist the woman and in this production tries to rape her - is followed by subsequent feelings of guilt. Possibly. There's nothing about those areas of human behaviour that the work explores that can be determined to fit a logical, consistent thought process that makes rational sense. And that's before the work becomes even more complicated.

Although it is set in medieval Germany, there is an autobiographical element to The Fiery Angel in Bryusov's involvement with the poet Nina Petrovskaya who had just ended a relationship with fellow Symbolist writer Andrei Bely - all Russian artists personally known to Prokofiev. Petrovskaya committed suicide in 1927, the same year that Prokofiev finished The Fiery Angel, although the opera was never performed in his lifetime. There is however no correlative map to help you understand what is real, imagined and hallucinated, or what is merely a Symbolist writer's attempt to find a colourful and darkly poetic expression of deep emotional states.

For the Polish director Mariusz Treliński, directing The Fiery Angel for the Aix-en-Provence Festival in 2018, Prokofiev's music is very much an expressionistic response to the meteoric decline in rational behaviour that occurs when love turns to obsession and madness, Ruprecht, Renata and Heinrich all coming crashing down to earth. Treliński's working methods often draw on cinema references and techniques; David Lynch's Blue Velvet is always going to be a reference for something like The Fiery Angel, but Treliński also seems to draw on the heightened expressionism in the neon and colour saturated imagery of Nicolas Winding Refn's Only God Forgives and Neon Demon.

It's a fluid dream-world then, the sets and locations blending and dissolving into one another. It looks amazing, nightmarishly surreal and hallucinogenic, finding creative ways to represent the intentions of the work, the feelings of the characters and the expression of it all in Prokofiev's music. In his duel with Heinrich, Ruprecht is transformed into a small child with an absurdly large Ruprecht head representing his feelings of inadequacy; the spiritualist Agrippa von Nettesheim appears in multiple forms that may part of his occult persona or just be one of many other visions that assail the Ruprecht in his impressionable drug-induced state.

The Fiery Angel however is not entirely just the subjective impressions of a disturbed mind or minds, but it does place them in the context of other social factors. Renata's behaviour and self-harm also suggests childhood sexual abuse and conflicting feelings for her abuser, but certainly in Prokofiev's version there is confrontation with a patriarchal society, with its institutions and with the repressive influence of religion. It suggests that evil can come in the form of what is perceived to be good, and how it can be difficult to tell the difference. There's a lot to take in here and much that won't make sense, but Treliński illustrates and delves into those mindsets as vigorously, unflinchingly and richly as Prokofiev's highly expressive score, conducted here by Kazushi Ono.

It would be harder to carry off however if you don't have someone like Aušrinė Stundytė singing the role of Renata, and she is simply phenomenal here. It's not enough that she can take on the challenge of the singing, being on stage continuously for most of the two hours of the opera, but director Treliński also expects her to act out Renata's condition as if she were a film actress. Filmed for live broadcast with close-ups that show every gesture and expression, it's a thoroughly convincing performance. The mostly Ukrainian, Polish and Russian cast have the advantage here with the language, which must have made it all the more of a challenge for Scott Hendricks as Ruprecht, but while I can't account for his Russian, it was an excellent performance, perfect for the demands of the role and the production.

Links: Festival d'Aix en Provence, Culturebox

Prokofiev - The Gambler (Vienna, 2017)

Sergei Prokofiev - The Gambler

Wiener Staatsoper, Vienna - 2017

Simone Young, Karoline Gruber, Dmitry Ulyanov, Elena Guseva, Linda Watson, Misha Didyk, Thomas Ebenstein, Elena Maximova, Morten Frank Larsen, Pavel Kolgatin, Marcus Pelz, Clemens Unterreiner, Alexandru Moisiuc

Staastoper Live - 7th October 2017

Sergei Prokofiev's desire to write an opera based on Dostoevsky's The Gambler is an interesting one and comes at a significant point in Russian history. The Gambler is a short novella, but it deals with some fundamental Russian characteristics and behavioural traits that Prokofiev converts to the opera form in a stark and original manner. It's as if the composer were exploring the Russian character in a classic piece of literature and experimenting with it in a new form of musical expression. Completed in January 1917 however, Russia was about to embark on its own new direction with the 1917 February Revolution, leaving Prokofiev's opera unperformed and the composer himself soon afterwards going into exile.

The essential tone of The Gambler however is determined by its original author Fyodor Dostoevsky. Although it can be read as such, this was no academic study of the Russian propensity to throw their lives into the maw of fate, irrationally risking everything on the turn of a roulette wheel. As with much of Dostoevsky's work, The Gambler has the tortured quality of the author's own personal experience. That's vividly expressed in the writing and Prokofiev's brilliance was his ability to convert that obsessive quality into a driving dynamic music that pushes boundaries and yet remains essentially Russian in its character.

There's something of a revolutionary spirit in Alexei Ivanovich, or at least - since his concerns are very much self-obsessed - there's a certain disregard for the social order that he sees around him in the casino of a German spa town. 25 years old, university educated and employed as a tutor for Russian family, Alexei believes he's as good as any of the titled aristocracy and worthy of the love of Polina, the stepdaughter of the General. He's scornful of the bourgeois lifestyle, where they are always concerned about money and never happy. The General himself has debts to pay however, so Alexei knows that he needs to have money if he is to woo Polina away from a French Marquis who has given the family a loan.

Alexei's "Tatar nature" however has led him to see gambling as an alternative means of acquiring wealth and happiness and earn the respect of Polina. "Money is everything", he tells her, "You would see me differently. Not as a slave". But he has exhausted the savings of his salary and lost the huge sum of 6,000 guilders playing roulette at the casino. The General is worried at the instability and lack of rational behaviour that Alexei exhibits, and has to apologise on his behalf to try and prevent a duel with Baron Wurmerhelm when the tutor calculatedly goes out of his way to insult the Baroness.

The General however is soon rather more concerned about equally reckless behaviour that threatens to undermine his own financial prospects and his marriage to his fiancée Blanche. He has been depending on an inheritance from his grandmother, Babulenka, who he has told Blanche is at death's door, but the old lady has turned up in town and is gambling and losing every last crown of his future inheritance at the casino.

The Gambler, like Pushkin's Queen of Spades, like Tolstoy's Pierre in War and Peace (and Tolstoy's own early life of aristocratic dissolution and gambling debts) deals very much with that self-destructive tendency in the Russian nature to throw oneself at the hands of fate where the stakes are winning all or losing everything. There's no half-measures. There's a self-contradiction in the position of Alexei who has ambitions towards acceptance and respectability in this society and also in the General who values honour and reputation. It seems that there is also a certain amount of concern about keeping up such appearances and measuring up to their international neighbours, with Germans, French ad English all present in this setting.

Karoline Gruber's direction of the Vienna State Opera's new production of The Gambler attempts to bring together all the colour and contradiction of the positions expressed in the work, along with all the madness that ensues when alcohol is added to the mix. The set depicts the German town as a fairground ride, a merry-go-round on a Russian roulette wheel, which is lot of metaphors to mix that don't necessarily go together, but then neither does the Russian psyche depicted by Dostoevsky and Prokofiev, which is complex and contradictory at war and at play. The costumes are cartoonish and caricatural, with Baron and Baroness Wurnerhelm looking like something out of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and the gamblers in the casino and Alexei transforming into half-reptilian monsters.

It all looks terrific, with plenty of gold glitter thrown as well, creating a fantastical, non-naturalistic look that probes the deeper nature of the work. The larger-than-life character can also be applied to Prokofiev's score and Simone Young conducts to bring all that wild dynamic out of the orchestra performance. Rather than see it a collection of scenes, Young brings a greater sense of the work as a grand canvas that has coherence, is constantly building and upping the ante, marching towards an inevitably dramatic conclusion.

The greater coherence of the work is also brought out in the excellent singing performances. Alexei was one of the first roles I saw Misha Didyk singing (in the Barenboim/Tcherniakov 2008 Berlin Staatsoper production), and it's still one of his best roles. He can be a little strained elsewhere, but is generally more contained in the Russian repertoire and doesn't let Alexei slip overboard into wild madness - or at least not too early anyway. There's terrific singing also from Linda Watson, full of character, poise and recklessness as Babulenka; Elena Guseva is an impressive Polina, the role well sung and played with an appropriate sense of coolness gradually dissolving as Polina recognises that she has no control of her own fate. Dmitry Ulyanov plays the exasperated General well, but Elena Maximova's Blanche could do with a little more character and fieriness.

Links: Wiener Staatsoper, Wiener Staatsoper Live

Prokofiev - The Fiery Angel (Munich, 2015 - Webcast)

Sergei Prokofiev - The Fiery Angel

Bayerische Staatsoper, 2015

Vladimir Jurowski, Barrie Kosky, Evgeny Nikitin, Svetlana Sozdateleva, Heike Grötzinger, Elena Manistina, Vladimir Galouzine, Kevin Conners, Okka von der Damerau, Igor Tsarkov, Jens Larsen

Staatsoper.TV - 12th December 2015

We are well used to seeing productions from the Bavarian State Opera that are more than a little unconventional, often even seeming to have scant regard for the directions of the libretto. With Prokofiev's The Fiery Angel - a fairly rare work that was first performed only after the composer's death - the Munich opera company seem to have found a work that is truly bizarre enough to fit with what commonly takes place on their stage. Somewhat surprisingly then, especially since it's Barrie Kosky who is given charge of the direction here, the production struggles to match or keep up with the strange happenings that take place in Prokofiev's highly unusual work.

Even by Prokofiev's extravagant operatic range, The Fiery Angel is over-the-top in almost every respect. This is a composer who can plunge into the particularly Russian nature of the worlds of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky with ambitious and dynamic works like War and Peace and The Gambler, but he also reveals a side for the comic and the absurd in his Betrothal in a Monastery and The Love for Three Oranges. Musically and thematically, The Fiery Angel is no less flamboyantly orchestrated for the rhythms, patterns and strange paths that its plot takes. It's not an opera that is memorable for melodies or arias, but every dramatic line and gesture is underscored with complex arrangements and an invigorating punchy delivery.

The music then is perfectly suitable for a work that has few recognisable sentiments in its headlong descent into madness. The person suffering from delusions that take her on a spiraling sequence of hallucinations is a young woman called Renata. She has been discovered by Ruprecht, a rather more worldly-wise man who has found her in his hotel room raving about her childhood encounter with a fiery angel, Madiel. The angel however, becoming aware of Renata's growing carnal lust, abandoned her, but Renata believed that Madiel subsequently took human form in the shape of Count Heinrich. However, he too abandoned her after a year.

Ruprecht is inclined to take advantage of the young woman's delusions in her search for Heinrich/Madiel, her fiery angel, but as he makes the pretence of assisting her by exploring esoteric texts and seeking instruction from Agrippa von Nettesheim, he soon becomes caught up in the strange world that Renata lives in. The line between fantasy and reality (and erotic role-playing) becomes increasingly blurred as they are visited by nightmarish visions of Faust and Mephistopheles, which in turn leads to a kind of religious epiphany when Renata decides to enter a convent only to face trail by the Inquisitor for being possessed by a demon. The whole nightmarish descent into deeper madness is played through here over almost two and quarter hours without an interval. With Vladimir Jurowski conducting the Bayerisches Staatsorchester through Prokofiev's challenging score, it really is a whirlwind ride.

With such a subject and treatment, you would expect that the stage presentation would also be on the extravagant side, particularly as it's the Bayerische Staatsoper and Barrie Kosky is directing. Surprisingly, the opera set for the hotel room looks more like the Marschallin's boudoir in Der Rosenkavalier, with numerous footmen and porters on call at Ruprecht's arrival. With Prokofiev's tone being fairly manic from the start, perhaps Kosky felt it might be a little better to introduce a little bit of normality at this stage by way of contrast to where the opera goes later. That might not be a bad idea if the director were able to establish a more consistent tone that works with the opera, but instead all Kosky has to contrast it with in the latter half of the work is all the familiar camp hallmarks that seem rather too crude to have any bearing on the intent of the opera.

Kosky goes to town of course on the tavern scene, with the obligatory dancing men in drag, and he has Mephistopheles wave his willie around and play suggestively with large sausages. As one of the more unhinged scenes in a fairly bizarre opera, one doesn't expect the director to read anything deep into the irreverent and sexually-charged content, but there are surely more inventive ways of doing it than this. In a work like The Fiery Angel, you're not so much looking for elucidation as something that might engage and hold the audience through the increasingly absurd turn of events. On its own, Prokofiev's difficult score is fascinating in its own right, but at over two hours long and with no intermission (an intermission would only break the mood and the flow), it needs a little more visual engagement. The letterboxing of the stage and Rebecca Ringst's set designs at least manages to inventively keep things moving through a five-act opera, suggesting an interior world more than actual locations.

The uninterrupted two and a quarter length of the work is just as much a challenge for the performers, particularly as Vladimir Jurowski is intent on keeping up the pace and momentum, fairly rattling though the complexities of the score. Taking on most of the singing challenges as Renata and on the stage for pretty much the entire length of the performance, Svetlana Sozdateleva copes incredibly well, even when she has to endure the indignities of Kosky's direction. Such is the commitment and personality that she brings to a difficult character that Sozdateleva makes almost everyone else seem rather dull by comparison - Kevin Conners' delirious Mephistopheles excepted. Evgeny Nikitin consequently, while he sings well, never seems to get to grips with who Ruprecht is or what he wants. Prokofiev, admittedly, doesn't make that easy to determine, but you might have hoped for more from Kosky and the Bayerische Staatsoper.

The next live opera broadcast from the Bayerische Staatsoper is a new production of Verdi's UN BALLO IN MASCHERA on 19th March, conducted by Zubin Mehta and directed by Johannes Erath, with an outstanding cast that includes Piotr Beczala, Simon Keenlyside (fingers crossed) and Anja Harteros.


Links: StaatsoperTV

Prokofiev - War and Peace (Mariinsky II, 2014 - Cinema Live)

Sergei Prokofiev - War and Peace

Mariinsky II, St. Petersburg - 2014

Valery Gergiev, Graham Vick, Andrei Bondarenko, Aida Garifullina, Yulia Matochkina, Larisa Diadkova, Sergei Aleksashkin, Yevgeny Akimov, Maria Maksakova, Ilya Selivanov, Edward Tsanga, Yekaterina Sergeyeva, Gennady Bezzubenkov, Vasily Gerello 

More2Screen Cinema Live in HD - 16 July 2014

It seems obvious to divide War and Peace into two distinct parts. That's the way that Tolstoy divides the novel and that's the structure that Prokofiev follows in his opera version. But when did Graham Vick ever do the obvious? The British director is not one to shy away from controversy either, but while his staging and Paul Brown's set designs take considerable modernising liberties with the Mariinsky's 2014 production of Prokofiev's 1942 epic War and Peace, he uncharacteristically tends to steer away from any overt contemporary political commentary in relation to war and peace as far as it relates to Russian current and foreign affairs.

What Vick does manage to bring out of this work however is the recognition of the fact that war and peace are, if you want to put it in such terms, two sides of the same coin. They aren't as distinct as the title of Tolstoy's masterwork might make them seem (although such considerations are infinitely more subtly drawn in the epic and intimate scope of the actual novel). How Vick approaches this is clever, even if it seems counter-intuitive and almost deliberately contrary. He reverses the traditional division of the two-part work, depicting Act I's Peace section as War, and Act II's War section as Peace. He's not too subtle about it either.

The intent is made clear right from the opening scene, as Prince Andrei Bolonsky looks out over the garden in dark contemplation over the turn his life has taken, leaving him a widower. In Vick's interpretation, he's at war with himself, contemplating suicide with a gun held to his head, only to be saved at the last moment by the freshness of Natasha Rostova's appreciation of the beauty of the spring night with her sister Sonya. It's a strong opening scene that sets the tone for the work and encapsulates much of Tolstoy's views of the individual human experience in relation to history and historical events, and Vick's staging of this scene alone brings that out very well. In reality however it does much more than that.

Already Paul Brown's busy set designs hint at a wider view of history and war that goes beyond the traditional military one. A class war might be an obvious one to allude to in the Russian context, but as I've said, Vick doesn't do obvious. The second scene, at the ball, more or less suggests that a rather more self-destructive aristocracy. Actually, never mind 'less', it's clearly 'more'. Footmen wear gas masks set out chairs for the ball, and they are worn also by the dancing guests. And just in case the poster images of designer goods, commercialism, wealth, industry and gold don't make it clear enough, a tank also rolls across the stage. All this is in the traditional 'Peace' section of the opera.

Arguably, although the score for this section is quite lyrical with a hint of Tchaikovsky in the ballroom dances, Prokofiev's rather more modern score brings out this sense of unease and corruption within a decadent aristocracy. That edge is certainly given full expression in Vick's staging, Hélène Bezukhova's meeting with Natasha, for example, taking place in a gilt-marbled bathroom with gold fittings where the Countess has been snorting cocaine, both women dressed and looking like fashion-models (and as such both very HD-friendly for this live broadcast). Similar scenes are played out by Hélène's brother Anatole's attempted elopement with Natasha in a limousine where a gun is brandished by his driver, and cocaine use is again in evidence.

There's clearly a war of some sorts here, but Vick isn't able to pin it down to any one thing, and as a consequence risks dissipating any impact that might be gained through a more specific contemporary commentary. Act II then throws in footage of WWII (which would indeed have been relevant to Prokofiev writing in 1942) and mixes troops in modern combat gear with officers in Napoleonic uniforms (mostly on the high command, if that's a purposeful distinction). The context is however very specifically Russian, but there's no getting around that fact with the nature of the work, and the addition of all the huge nationalistic choral pieces, added by the composer at the behest of the Russian censor.

There's no more rousing piece in this respect than Field-Marshal Kutuzov's rousing proclamation in Act II over the fate of the Russian people and the decision to temporarily sacrifice Moscow to Napoleon's army. Vick stages it marvellously - and it's sung marvellously too by Gennady Bezzubenkov - the Commander striding out afterwards into the Orchestra Stalls of the Mariinsky II to receive approval, handshakes and high-fives from members of his people. Most significantly here, as throughout the whole of Act II, is the slogan of 'Peace' (мир) featuring prominently in the background. As he depicted 'War' in Act I (война), Act II in Vick's production is all about 'Peace' and, arguably, the sacrifice of Moscow and all the efforts of the heroic Kutuzov are designed to bring about peace, not wage war.

Dividing such an epic work up into a number of scenes makes it difficult for Prokofiev to really do justice to Tolstoy's masterpiece. This is my first time hearing the work, so it might reveal other aspects in time, but the score does indeed seem to be patchwork in nature, not really grasping the scope or bringing it together in as consistent a manner as Tolstoy. On the other hand, certain important aspects work very well on both the grand scale and the intimate. Pierre's declaration scene to Natasha in Act I is very lyrical and affecting. Pierre is the heart of the work, the one whose eyes are open to the corruption of the elite in Act I, the only hope of decency in this vile society of wealth and privilege, and his resolve in Act II brings about a sense of healing and continuity. As such he's also central to Vick's concept and in terms of staging and singing (a heartfelt performance by Yevgeny Akimov) this works remarkably well.

Also important to the work and well-arranged by Prokofiev - although the immense scope of the work means that they only have relatively minor roles in Act II - are Natasha and Andrei. Again, hope, reconciliation and mutual understanding on the small scale is important if it is to be understood in terms of the grander picture of history, and that's all there in the opera. Vick's attempt to put all that on the stage isn't always successful and Paul Brown's busy set designs can be a little messy and not too pretty to look at, not always complementing Valery Gergiev's conducting of the work at the Mariinsky II, but the singing contributes immeasurably towards making this work. More than just being HD-friendly in appearance, the young cast are also incredibly talented singers. There's not a weak element here, but Aida Garifullina is simply outstanding as Natasha and is a fine match for Andrei Bondarenko's sensitive account of Andrei.

Prokofiev – The Love for Three Oranges

Sergei Prokofiev – L’Amour des Trois Oranges

Grand Théâtre de Genève

Benno Besson, Ezio Toffolutti, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Michail Jurowski, Jean Teitgen, Chad Shelton, Katherine Rohrer, Nicolas Testé, Emilio Pons, Heikki Kilpeläinen, Michail Milanov, Jeanne Piland, Clémence Tilguin

Geneva, Switzerland - 23 June 2011

One would imagine that Prokofiev’s 1921 absurdist opera The Love for Three Oranges would be somewhat difficult for anyone more used to a traditional opera format. There are no nice principal characters to sympathise with in their predicaments, there are no memorable arias – even the fact that it deliberately avoids any traditional form is a kind of in-joke dating back to 1761, the original drama by author Carlo Gozzi intentionally avoiding theatrical conventions of the comic and romantic tragedies of the commedia dell’ arte thereby setting himself into opposition against the two major proponents of this form, Pietro Chiari and Carlo Goldini. In reality however, Prokofiev’s opera version is an absolute delight throughout, remaining faithful to the anarchic, nonsensical and childish absurdism of Gozzi’s original, while setting it to some of the most beautiful theatre music that playfully matches the mood and tone of the piece, setting leitmotifs to the characters and themes in a way that adds fluency and consistency to the work as a whole.

In the hands of a sympathetic stage director – and there could hardly be a more appropriate choice for this staging at the Grand Théâtre de Genève than the renowned theatre director Benno Besson, a collaborator and friend of Bertolt Brecht, who has staged several Carlo Gozzi works and is familiar with his themes – this can be wonderful material to play with. Working in collaboration with Ezio Toffolutti, the Geneva production is a wonderful but knowing staging – one that adheres to the original themes and, surprisingly, manages to even illuminate some of their meaning, showing that it is not entirely absurd just for the sake of it. On the face of it however, the story of a hypochondriac Prince, son of the King of Clubs, who strives to overcome his debilitating weakness through laughter, only to be forced on a quest for the love of three oranges, does sound rather silly – and it is entertainingly played in this way, with all the colour, spectacle and well-rehearsed slapstick of a pantomime.

Watching all this nonsense however – presented as it is on a stage within a stage – is an audience from Venice’s La Fenice theatre, supporters of Goldini and Chiari, looking for traditional romance and drama, who interrupt the opera from time to time to clash with proponents of this new absurdist form of drama. It adds another level to the drama and the entertainment, as well as an appropriate sense of theatricality to the proceedings. It’s such turgid traditional drama fed to the Prince as Marcellian verse by Leandro, the Prime Minister, that is partly responsible for his condition, so a heavy does of absurdist nonsense is just the ticket. The planned and rehearsed antics of the jester Truffoldino however fail to rouse so much as a chuckle with the prince (although they do entertain the real audience), and it is only when Leandro’s co-consiprator, the witch Fata Morgana, accidentally falls over on her backside, legs in the air, that the prince gets an unrehearsed eyeful of reality …and, no doubt, a spark of desire. No matter that this desire can only be satisfied, having braved the dreaded ladle of the Cook, by a quest for the love of three oranges, the peeled back skin of oranges clearly indicate the female anatomical parts that are to bring the Prince happiness when he draws Ninette from one of them.

All this absurdity falls into place meaningfully partly due to the wonderful stage direction, but also if it has any coherence and meaning for a modern audience, it’s down to Prokofiev’s playful, richly brilliant scoring. It’s impossible not to be fully drawn into the proceedings with so much to enjoy from moment to moment, particularly since the score was given a superb, vivacious performance the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande under the baton of Michail Jurowski. Whether you actually cared for the characters never mattered – they sang no wonderful arias to persuade you of their charm or depth of soul – but the singing and acting here were of a fine standard nonetheless to keep the audience enthralled, entertained and, in this production, educated even in the finer points of mid-eighteenth century Italian theatre.

Prokofiev - The Gambler

Sergei Prokofiev - The Gambler

Staatsoper unter den Linden, Berlin, 2008

Daniel Barenboim, Dmitri Tcherniakov, Vladimir Ognovenko, Kristine Opolais, Misha Didyk, Stefania Toczyska

Unitel Classica - C-Major

Dostoevsky’s short novella The Gambler is usually paired in book form with Poor Folk, the two stories reflecting rather contrasting themes and styles, but also in a way complementing each other. In Poor Folk, (if memory serves me correctly) a letter-writing couple find that their choices are limited, and the nature of their love defined and denied by the more pressing efforts put into simply struggling to exist. The characters in The Gambler on the other hand may appear to have so much money that they can fritter thousands away on the spin of a roulette wheel, but in reality they are similarly trapped in a lifestyle that restricts and distorts their course of their lives and their actions towards other people. In many ways both stories say a lot about social distinctions, but more in a way that reveals various attitudes and aspects of the Russian character.

Prokofiev’s opera version of The Gambler adheres fairly closely to the characters, themes and narrative of Dostoevsky’s book, the action set in a resort town of Roulettenburg, where the General, his family and entourage are staying at a hotel and making use of its casino. Alexsy, the tutor, has recklessly lost all of the General’s step-daughter Polina’s money on a game of roulette, but is determined to do everything he can to not so much win it back – though that would help – as much as win her favour. Polina however is toying with him, at the same time as accepting the advances of the Marquis, urging Alexsy on to act outrageously towards Baron and Baroness Wurmerhelm. The General meanwhile is in serious debt to the Marquis, but is expecting to gain an inheritance from the imminent demise of his mother. His engagement to Blanche rests on this inheritance also, since it is clear that she will not stick around unless the money comes through. To everyone’s great surprise however, the ailing old lady, Babulenka, thought to be on the point of death, turns up in Roulettenburg, with her own ideas on how to spend her money.

Composed in 1916, The Gambler is a little-known and rarely performed early Prokofiev work, and it’s not the easiest opera to like. It’s filled with unsympathetic, rather hateful characters whose sense of reality and the nature of their relationships with other people have been corrupted by money.  The music and singing moreover are not exactly harmonious – you won’t find any hummable arias here. On the other hand, the rising fever pitch that eventually explodes in Act 4 (with some magnificent singing in the last two Acts) is perfectly appropriate for qualities and themes of Dostoevsky’s work, and those are brought out exceptionally well in controversial director Dmitri Tcherniakov’s staging for the 2008 production at the Staatsoper unter den Linden in Berlin. A modern-day staging (there’s nothing in this opera that fixes it in any period, and the themes are completely relevant and modern), Tcherniakov assists in putting across the complexity of the relationships between the characters by allowing different rooms of the hotel and casino to be seen simultaneously in a kind of split-screen form, adding to the picture we have of the personalities, even contradicting and contrasting what is being said by the characters with what is really going on behind the scenes.

Prokofiev’s score does much the same thing, underscoring the behaviour of the characters with emphatic woodwind trills, staccato strings and deep notes from the brass section. The DTS HD Master Audio 5.1 track on the Blu-ray disc is marvellous for capturing the huge dynamic range of the score, balancing the mix superbly between the singing and the orchestra. Partly that’s down to the scoring being composed not to compete with the singing but rather support it, partly that’s down to Barenboim’s management of the orchestra, and partly it’s down to the excellent surround mix. Consequently the singing dominates and is strong and clear, but when the orchestral parts and flourishes are called for, they are almost overwhelmingly powerful. The 1080/60i transfer is perfectly clear, the direction for television (with some side-stage angles) capturing the flow of what is occurring on the stage. Other than some brief notes in the booklet, there are no extra features on the disc.