Korngold - Die Tote Stadt (Brussels, 2020)

Erich Wolfgang Korngold - Die Tote Stadt

La Monnaie-De Munt, 2020

Lothar Koenigs, Mariusz Treliński, Roberto Saccà, Marlis Petersen, Dietrich Henschel, Bernadetta Grabias, Martina Russomanno, Lilly Jørstad, Florian Hoffmann, Nikolay Borchev, Mateusz Zajdel

La Monnaie Streaming - November 2020

As far as the arts are concerned, the Covid pandemic has changed everything over the last year. Those productions that have managed to be performed in the brief gaps between lockdown measures have had to be rethought and reworked for safety, both for the audience and the performers. In the case of Die Tote Stadt at La Monnaie, it's been particularly challenging for a director like Mariusz Treliński, the Polish film director who likes to take a flamboyant hi-tech approach to his opera productions, using movie references and cinematic techniques. Here it's like his toys have been taken away from him, but as I've noted before, this is such a powerful work in its own right that it needs little in the way of theatrical enhancement.

The production, intended to celebrate the centenary of the work, did start out rather differently when it was first produced in Warsaw, and it did indeed originally have all of the director's familiar enhanced theatrical and cinematic visuals. By the time it came to La Monnaie in Brussels - Belgium hit particularly bad by the spread of the virus - it was necessary to have a rethink to involve less technicians and put as much social distancing between the performers, the orchestra and the audience as possible.

I have to admit, as someone who has enjoyed this director's work in the past Manon Lescault, The Fiery Angel, Iolanta, Duke Bluebeard's Castle) I would have loved to see the full-blown production aligned to Korngold's extravagant orchestrations and melodies, but there is no doubt that the Brussels version of this particular work, re-orchestrated for 57 musicians with the runtime reduced to under two hours, benefits from letting the macabre elements of the Symbolist drama and the concentration of Korngold's musical composition speak for itself.

To say nothing of how it speaks a little more directly than ever before of the nature of the times we are living in, where the idea of a dead city is very much a real thing, and where many can undoubtedly identify with the loss of loved ones. Unsurprisingly, since it relates to a living double replacing a dead woman, Treliński relies on Alfred Hitchcock's 'Vertigo' as a reference, and the correlation it has with that work is again in these times much more evident and real, the focus turned very much more inward on the mindset of someone who has been disturbed by the death of a loved one.

The revised production design makes use of three boxes that provide some social distancing, but also serve as a way of showing mental distancing from reality and, although neon-lit, may even remind you of coffins. Ghosts reach out and cling to Paul, naked bodies lie under shrouds that he tries to reanimate. Sung with fervour by Roberto Saccà and with Lothar Koenigs ramping up Korngold musical forces with the reduced orchestration scarcely noticeable, you almost think he could do it. Some enhancements in the way of projections are sparingly and effectively used as backgrounds to allude to the location of the dead city being a projection of a disturbed mind rather than specifically Bruges or any real concrete place.

It's appropriate then that much as Paul is unable to see the beauty of the living Marietta as he longs for an impossible ideal of the perfection of the past that is Maria, opera too now has to deal with a much less perfect reality. That comes through in the performances which have been adapted to the new reality, allowing flesh and blood singers to convey everything that is great about Die Tote Stadt and everything that Korngold makes of it. Marlis Petersen embodies that in her singing and in her superb acting performance. Her 'Marietta's Lied' is just phenomenal in this context, and Paul/Roberto Saccà can be seen to be visibly moved by the beauty of life being breathed into music.

The orchestra of La Monnaie also take centre stage here. Almost literally. They are on the stage behind the performers, probably masked. The orchestra pit is used to extend the boundaries of Paul's mind, the singers donning protective face masks when they venture close to the socially distanced audience at the front of the theatre. Rather than be distracting this actually adds a frisson of real world concern and meaning to the subject. There's no happy ending to Paul's grief and delusion in Mariusz Treliński's take on the story; the nightmare is the reality. Paul remains locked in, in lockdown; there's no escape from the city of death or the madness that descends.

Like in many other areas of our lives, there's clearly a need for opera to adjust to the new reality. Necessity is the mother of invention, and I have to say that La Monnaie have always been creative in their approach to opera, whether it was while holding productions in other locations during the restoration of the theatre a few years ago or in pioneering free live streamed broadcasts. Working with a director like Treliński on Korngold they prove that it might not be necessarily be a bad thing to rethink approaches to opera and music and get back to basics. The new reality imposed by the pandemic is something that we might have to live with for a much longer time, but when opera and theatre does comes back, as it surely will, there's hope that it can be stronger than before.

Links: La Monnaie-De Munt

Korngold - Violanta (Turin, 2020)

Erich Wolfgang Korngold - Violanta (Turin, 2020)

Teatro Regio Torino, 2020

Pinchas Steinberg, Pier Luigi Pizzi, Annemarie Kremer, Michael Kupfer-Radecky, Norman Reinhardt, Peter Sonn, Soula Parassidis, Anna Maria Chiuri, Joan Folqué, Cristiano Olivieri, Gabriel Alexander Wernick, Eugenia Braynova, Claudia De Pian

Dynamic - Blu-ray

As well as the overwhelming and inescapable influence of the legacy left on the world of opera by Richard Wagner, German and particularly Austrian composers like Korngold were certainly under the influence of the intoxicating new ideas and expression that was in the air in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century. It's only recently however that we are getting the opportunity to hear and see stage performances of the lush fantasies of composers like Franz Schreker and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, whose careers were impacted or cut short during the rise of Nazis in the 1930s. The image of a glamourous decadent society in the operatic works of these so-called 'degenerate' composers is inevitably tempered by an awareness of the darkness in the heart of humanity or at least within human society.

Korngold was certainly something of a prodigy, showing remarkable talent in composition and orchestration from a very young age. The evidence of Die Tote Stadt alone, written at the age of 23, clearly shows just how incredibly accomplished his early opera works were before he left Germany under advisement and established himself as a composer in the United States. The recent revival at the Deutsche Oper of Das Wunder von Heliane (1927) was another eye-opening glimpse into those incredible accomplishments, another dreamy and slightly unsettling exploration of Freudian themes as well as revealing something of a debt to Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. The even earlier one act opera Violanta, premiered in 1916 and written when Korngold was just 17, is very much within the same decadent fantasy realm of repressed desires, lusts and fantasies, and the musical influence accordingly owes a great deal of debt to Richard Strauss's Salome.

The comparison with Salome strikes you almost immediately from the opening melancholic overture to Violanta in the rather decadent setting of a Renaissance carnival in Venice. Elegant, masked guests arrive at the House of Captain Trovai, indulging in pleasure and milling around while two uniformed guards discuss how the Lady Violanta is in a dark melancholic mood, one young guard teased for being in love with her. "He dreams of her white body, in which the moon plays the lute" certainly adheres to the imagery in Wilde's play that Strauss set so vividly to wild, decadent and powerful music in 1905. Korngold's music is not quite as harsh and dissonant, displaying more of a Puccinian love of melody and romanticism, but by the same token it doesn't have quite the same conviction or philosophical underpinning to push against conventional thought or morality.

The threat to their pleasure comes with the troubling news that the notorious womaniser Alfonso has returned to Venice. Despite the painter Giovanni Bracca's admonition that "Women frequent the shores of adventure" Simone Trovai is sure that his wife Violanta hates Alfonso for his baseness and his offense. Alfonso is certainly no Jochanaan; he seduced Violanta's sister Nerina while she was a novice at a convent and the young woman subsequently killed herself. Since then Lady Violanta has been sad, melancholic and avoided society.

Simone however can't help but be troubled to discover that Violanta has gone to sing and dance for this man with the intention of seducing him as a way to avenge her sister. Inviting him to their home, Violanta demands that Simone must kill Alfonso. Her husband is horrified that such he is being asked to kill a man who commands power and respect, but he is prepared to do it. All he has to do is wait for Violanta to sing a song that will be the cue to act, but when Violanta comes face to face with Alfonso, there is a danger that she too will be seduced by his nature.

There are variances in the situations but the musical cues of foreboding, hidden lusts and lush decadence are very similar to those of Salome, with ecstatic raptures woven around matters of debauchery and death. Which is not to say that Korngold doesn't have a way of making his own mark upon them. Like Strauss, the singing challenges are also considerable, not just for the principal role of Violanta but all of the roles are heavily demanding in the Wagnerian sense. In the 2020 Teatro Regio Torino production Annemarie Kremer is excellent as Violanta, giving a commanding central performance that has to be convincing and maintain force and seductiveness over the course of most of the hour and a half of the opera. Alfonso has to measure up to her, challenge her dominance in the same way as Jochanaan, but here with an almost lyrical Heldentenor Lohengrin-like purity of voice to go with his seductive and secretly vulnerable character and Norman Reinhardt captures that well with a fine performance.

Updating it from the Renaissance period to the 1920s the intention ought to be to highlight or draw on some of the undercurrents in the world of that time feeding into Korngold's composition, but there's no explicit references or obvious parallels made. Director Pier Luigi Pizzi however successfully contours that mood of seductive decadence and death effectively, with a hint of Klimt in the designs and costumes, Violanta wearing a voluptuous figure-hugging sparkling gold sequined dress. The whole of the one-act drama takes place in a room with long red and gold curtain drapes hanging over red velvet couches and there is a wide open circular window at the back like a dark moon showing gondolas gliding by. It creates an appropriately Styx-like quality to the location, spanning the gap between life and death.

Making the whole drama work convincingly, making the characters and the denouement credible and meaningful is a trickier prospect and it needs a little more of the edge of conviction that a director like Christof Loy can bring to this kind of work (Das Wunder von Heliane, Der ferne Klang). With fine singing performances, a strong central performance from Annemarie Kremer, and with Pinchas Steinberg bringing out the youthful musical splendour of Korngold, highlighting the characteristics that would become more familiar in the Korngold of Die Tote Stadt, the Teatro Regio Torino production give a fine account of this wonderful rarity.

Pizzi's set is dark and shadowy with bold burning reds, so it's a bit tricky to transfer to video accurately and consequently there are some variances in tone depending on the camera angle used, but the Dynamic Blu-ray HD presentation is generally very good at capturing the mood of the piece and the production. The LPCM stereo and surround DTS HD-Master Audio tracks are warmly toned, fully capturing the mood and colour of Korngold, although the recording is perhaps not quite as detailed as you might find on other High Resolution recordings. There are no extra features, but as usual Dynamic provide good information on the work and the production, including an interview with Pier Luigi Pizzi in the enclosed booklet.

Links: Teatro Regio Torino

Korngold - Das Wunder der Heliane (Berlin, 2018)

Erich Wolfgang Korngold - Das Wunder der Heliane

Deutsche Oper Berlin, 2018

Marc Albrecht, Christof Loy, Brian Jagde, Sara Jakubiak, Josef Wagner, Okka von der Damerau, Derek Wetton, Burkhard Ulrich

Naxos - Blu-ray

Like many other German and Austrian works that were categorised as 'degenerate' Entartete music by the Nazis in the 1930s, Korngold's early operas have as a consequence been consigned largely to obscurity. That is undoubtedly unfair, as the banning of such works had little to do with any kind of musical discrimination or value judgement and everything to do with whether a composer was of Jewish origin or had Jewish family connections. The neglect and loss of such works and any legacy they might have had could however also have as much to do with them being out of touch with changing musical tastes and the reality of people's lives on the ground.

The near-eradication of such works from music history may not be so much to do with the labelling of such music as degenerate as much as the operas and their themes being rather too 'decadent' in subject matter at a particular juncture in history when the world was about to plunge once again into war. Korngold's operas would certainly fit in with the decadent fantasies that seemed to flourish around this period. With fairy-tale worlds peopled by ambiguous figures and wrapped in lush chromatic orchestration, Richard Strauss, Franz Schreker and Erich Wolfgang Korngold relished delving freely into a dark core of madness and forbidden lusts that had been unleashed post-war in the new century.

If they don't reveal any great psychological insights, works like Die Frau ohne Schatten, Die Gezeichneten and of course Korngold's Die tote Stadt are nonetheless fascinating and exquisitely beautiful works that are very much the product of their (short-lived) time. So too it transpires is Das Wunder der Heliane (Heliane's Miracle), another Korngold masterpiece that has been largely neglected or deemed irrelevant to the development and progress of 20th century opera. Composed in 1927 with a trial at its centre, there's a sense even that Das Wunder der Heliane challenges itself in response to such conflicts, if only within the world of opera. Are you willing, it seems to ask, to sacrifice the beauty of Romance for a harsh, unyielding, joyless life without magic and love in it?

That seems to be the choice open to the Stranger, imprisoned for bringing a message of joy and light to a land where love and laughter are forbidden. The King, a stern and embittered figure who has never even known the love of the Queen, visits the Stranger in his cell to tell him that he will stand trial and face execution for his frivolity. The Queen, Heliane however proves to be more yielding to the Stranger's outlook, offering him her hair, her feet, her mouth and then her nakedness, but not her body. The King, going back to plead with the man to ask him how to win the love of the Queen, is outraged when he discovers her naked with the Stranger.

That's the first highly charged Act of Das Wunder der Heliane, the subsequent two Acts setting these forces against one another, leading to the death of the Stranger in Act II and his 'resurrection' at the miraculous intervention of Heliane, whose goodness and purity allows them to consummate their love in death in the finale of Act III. There doesn't appear to be much Wagner or Schopenhauer influenced philosophical underpinning to this pseudo-mystical Liebestod, just throwing out the idea of beauty, purity, love and light as the true enduring force in the world, even stronger than death.

If there's any way of making a credible case for this idea, it's in how Korngold smothers any philosophical shortcomings with persuasive swathes of strings, harps, 'seraphic voices' and all manner of celestial instrumentation. Who could resist or deny that there is indeed something miraculous and otherworldly in the music at least? If anyone can convince you of the argument of Das Wunder der Heliane, it's Korngold's orchestration at his most extravagant. It's rather like Strauss in this register - full-on, rich and complex, underscoring high emotion with soaring crescendos.

Like Strauss it also places exceptional demands on the singers, who not only have to be capable of the stamina to handle its technical complexities, keeping up with the continuous augmentation of musical emotions, but also rising above it and making it feel like it comes heroically from the heart. I haven't come across American tenor Brian Jagde before, but he is supremely capable of bringing all that to the role of the Stranger, in thrall to love and beauty. The rush of 'pure' lusts inspire him to soar to incredible heights in his Act I scene with Sara Jakubiak's Heliane that culminates in her revealing herself fully to him. The singing with the orchestration and the charge of the chaste eroticism reaches everything that Korngold could wish to achieve in a scene like this.

Christof Loy's direction doesn't try to compete with the charge that is already there, but his directions certainly help bring it about. It's almost impossible to sustain that kind of charge and tie it into further miraculous associations between love and death (although Tristan und Isolde - clearly the major influence on this work - of course proves otherwise), so Loy aims for a more sober set design, setting the drama in a courtroom inspired by Billy Wilder's Witness for the Prosecution, with dark classical wooden panelled walls and no unnecessary adornment or effects. As is often the case with Loy, he seems to give a problematic work the best possible presentation that highlights its strengths and mitigates against any weaknesses, and he does it with some style too.

Korngold's score also demands a certain flair and Marc Albrecht is an experienced conductor in this field. To judge purely on impact, the whole character of Korngold is there, distinct from Wagner, Strauss or Schreker, using unconventional instruments in an idiosyncratic way to achieve similar effects. The demands are not just on the principals then but the whole cast and there are consequently impressive performances from Josef Wagner as the distraught and furious King, Okka von der Damerau as the king's Messenger, Burkhard Ulrich as the Blind Judge and Derek Wetton suitably otherworldly as the Gatekeeper. This is a hugely impressive and revelatory production in every respect of a neglected Korngold rarity.

Recorded live at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin in 2018, Das Wunder der Heliane is given a superb presentation on Blu-ray disc by Naxos. The HD image is good, but evidently the real benefit of the format is in how it gets across the power, complexity and detail of Korngold's majestic score in the high resolution DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0 soundtracks. The spread of the surround track gives a more immersive experience, while the 2.0 track is more direct and powerful, particularly on headphones. Korngold specialist Brendan G. Carroll provides an introductory essay in the booklet, and also some items from his own archive on the disc, including an 8-minute recording from 1928 of the Act III Zwischenspiel and a picture gallery of rare photographs, posters and images. The BD is all-region compatible and there are subtitles in German, English, French, Japanese and Korean.

Korngold - Die tote Stadt (Dublin, 2019)

Erich Wolfgang Korngold - Die tote Stadt

RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, 2019

Patrik Ringborn, John McKeown, Celine Byrne, Charles Workman, Ben McAteer, Katharine Goeldner, Julian Hubbard, Clare Presland, Susanna Fairbairn, Alan Leech

National Concert Hall, Dublin - 12 April 2019

You don't get many opportunities to see a Korngold opera in Ireland, so when even a concert performance of Die tote Stadt comes up it's an event that can't be missed. In fact, a concert version comes with the additional benefit of putting the orchestra up on the stage with the performers and when you have a master orchestrator like Korngold, even at 23 years old when he composed his most famous opera, you really get a unique chance to experience the intricacy, beauty and power of the work.

Like Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande or Schreker's Die Gezeichneten, the lush orchestration of Korngold's Die tote Stadt has a dreamy seductive quality that when combined with the nightmarish qualities of a Symbolist-influenced text that has undertones of decay and decadence, creates an atmosphere of gathering unease. In Pelléas et Mélisande there's no musical way out of the nightmare and you remain trapped within it, with Die Gezeichneten the illusion eventually comes crumbling down, revealing the true horror underneath.

With Die tote Stadt ('The Dead City'), Korngold's orchestral crescendos are more ambiguous; in some way they seem to break the illusion, but in others, they just seem to enforce how strong the madness lies within Paul's delusion that his dead wife Marie has been revived, reincarnated or reproduced in some way in the form of Marietta.

That certainly came across forcefully in the performance of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the Swedish guest conductor, Patrik Ringborn. Not only did we have the luxury of hearing Die tote Stadt performed in all its glory in concert performance, but the performance was also able to take advantage of the National Concert Hall's pipe organ that emphasise the eerie climactic moments of mad love.

We were also fortunate that Celine Byrne and Julian Hubbard had extended their stay in Dublin after their stint on Madama Butterfly for Irish National Opera a few weeks ago, and having seen thought that both were phenomenal in that, a concert performance of Die tote Stadt was surely going to be a treat. And of course it was.

I hadn't realised how difficult a role Marietta is, or I had forgotten, but Celine Byrne demonstrated the kind of voice needed to not just reach and sustain its tricky heights and German cadences, but how important it is to bring an expressive lyricism to Marietta's predicament and a cool authority to the ghostly spirit and allure of Marie. Whether it's a more challenging role than Madama Butterfly or it's a case of different challenges that depend on voice type I'm no expert, but Byrne grew magnificently into the role, or perhaps it's Marietta who gradually grows and asserts her own personality away from the pull of Paul's dangerous obsession to transform her into a dead woman.

Whether I overlooked it or there was no information on the performers when I booked my ticket for this, I was delighted to find Charles Workman cast in the role of Paul. Workman is one of my favourite tenors in early twentieth-century repertoire of this kind, works like Jenůfa and Die Gezeichneten, and this is a gift of a role for him. With that lyrical voice he could just glide softly and beautifully around such lush orchestration, but he is more than capable of rising above it and against it with expression and force, particularly in the jarring behaviour of Paul. It's marvellous to hear him sing and perform in this context in a concert performance, and particularly when he is a perfect match for Celia Byrne. The duet between Paul and Marietta's (or is she the dead Marie in Paul's dream?) at the end of Act II was one of the highlights of the performance.

Also terrifically impressive in concert performance is Northern Ireland baritone Ben McAteer. His Frank provides a wonderful contrast and balance to the richness of the voices that accompany Korngold's orchestration. There was a wonderful clarity to Julian Hubbard's singing, although that fared better as Victorin from the front of the stage that trying to soar above the orchestra from the back of the choir as Gaston. Katharine Goeldner made Brigitta's role significant, and there was lovely support from Clare Presland, Susanna Fairbairn and Alan Leech as Marietta's lively singing colleagues, all contributing to the richness of the score, the performances and the surreal madness that Die tote Stadt is capable of attaining.

A live stream of this concert was recorded for RTÉ Lyric FM

Links: National Concert Hall

Korngold - Die Tote Stadt

Erich Wolfgang Korngold - Die Tote Stadt

Finnish National Opera, 2010

Mikko Franck, Kasper Holten, Klaus Florian Vogt, Camilla Nylund, Kirsti Valve, Markus Eiche, Sari Nordqvist, Kaisa Ranta, Melis Jaatinen, Per-Hakan Precht, Juka Riihimaki, Antti Nieminen

Opus Arte - DVD

Written when he was just 23 years of age and first performed in 1920, the high Romantic notions conflating love and death are particularly evident in Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Die Tote Stadt - The Dead City. The Liebestod-like sentiments are expressed in Wagnerian fashion with an underlying Straussian Salome-like discordance, but what is notable about Die Tote Stadt is how it takes these ideas to even greater levels in its consideration of the underlying psychology or even pathology of his main character through dreams fantasies and impressions. The formal challenges of representing this in a production of the work then are considerable, but so too is the technical virtuosity of the orchestra and the singers to express this often difficult work. Both elements however are handled exceptionally well in this 2010 production from the Finnish National Opera.

Much like Alfred Hitchcock's 'Vertigo', which follows a similar dysfunctional character who attempts to recreate his dead love in another person and relies very much on the varying tones and labyrinthine character of San Francisco and its outlying locations, Die Tote Stadt is a psychological study that is connected very closely with the nature of a city, in this case Bruges. You could say that this aspect is somewhat over-emphasised in the libretto, Paul noting that "the dead woman, the dead city... there's a mysterious bond between them" and Brigitta quoting Paul as saying "Bruges and I, we are one, we worship the most beautiful, the Past", but this is just one element in a deeper conflict that Paul has to reconcile between the past and the present, between the living and the dead, between an ideal and the reality.

Just as Paul's home then is a shrine to his dead wife Marie, so too he sees Bruges as a city of the dead, a monument to those who have lived before, the memory of the past being desecrated by the living. Whether this needs additional emphasis or not, Es Devlin's designs for Kasper Holten's production emphatically puts both Paul's room and the city, as a reflection of his inner mindset, right up there on the stage. It looks terrific, the room expressionistically designed with oppressive angles, littered in an obsessively organised fashion with pictures, portraits, mementos and shrine-boxes dedicated to Marie. At the back, tilted, but almost at right-angle to the stage, a vertiginous section of the city is revealed, bearing down on Paul.

Two other elements of the production and the stage design are relevant to this expression of Paul's mindset. One is the large bed in the centre of it all, which indicates on the one hand that much of what goes on is a dream in Paul's head and on the other hand it reflects much of Paul's repressed and misplaced urges. Much like Stefan Herheim's psycho-sexual study of Wagner in his Bayreuth Parsifal, where figures similarly emerge from beneath the sheets, there's a sense of guilt and corruption that Paul here associates with the sexual act, unable to reconcile the pure memory of the dead Marie with his feelings for the sensuous dancer Marietta. The other element helps make this problem more concrete by using an actor to play the ghost of Marie, having her present on the stage with her lookalike Marietta. It may not be called for, but it does make Paul's dilemma all the more real.

If there are any questions about Kasper Holten employing such techniques, they are at least borne out in how they fit with Korngold's musical arrangements for Die Tote Stadt. Musically, the opera doesn't follow any straightforward formal structure or narrative but follows its own chromatic muse, blending styles and working with a fragmentary montage of songs and waltzes, switching from lush orchestration to discordance according to the ecstatic reverie or the the tormented state of its protagonist. Wagner and Strauss may be the antecedents of this style, but there's a commonality here with Puccini, particularly the impressionistic style of Il Trittico and his latter works, and an awareness of cinematic structures which Korngold would develop later through his years in Hollywood.

The opera is consequently highly demanding of its performers, particularly the role of Marietta, which is pitched at the level of a Straussian soprano. Camilla Nylund has everything that is required here, the range, the stamina, and a necessary beauty in the colour of timbre and expression. She is simply phenomenal. This is a great performance. Klaus Florian Vogt's high sweet tenor might not seem like the ideal voice for the equally challenging role of Paul and he does struggle sometimes at the lower end of the tessitura.  He brings a glorious soaring quality however to those ecstatic moments and a sense of vulnerability to his character that is not there, for example, in Torsten Kerl's strident singing of the role on the 2001 Opéra National du Rhin recording.

The Opus Arte release of the Finnish National Opera's 2010 production is released on DVD only, spread across a 2-disc set. The source is certainly not HD, but even in Standard Definition the image quality is somewhat disappointing, lacking real clarity and even appearing to be a little juddery in its NTSC transfer. It does however represent the light, colour and detail of the darkened stage production reasonably well. The LPCM stereo and DTS Surround 5.1 audio tracks don't have the depth of a high resolution recording either, the music not really lifting out or revealing the detail and colour of the orchestration, but that could also be down to the performance which doesn't seem to express the full quality of Korngold's lush score.  The only extra feature on the disc is a Cast Gallery.  Subtitles are in English, French, German, Japanese and Korean.