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![Rodelinda (Glyndebourne Festival Opera) [DVD] [Import]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41vdYYkCHEL.__AC_SX300_SY300_QL70_ML2_.jpg)
That is, the best production I can imagine of the best opera by the best of all opera composers. Well, I could back-pedal and equivocate on the last of my superlatives; there's Mozart to be considered, and a few others. But I'd stick to my guns on the first two:
Rodelinda is Handel's finest theatrical accomplishment, the opera in which the music and the drama are most affectively integrated and consistently inspired. Part of its success results from a libretto based on a play be the great French dramatist Pierre Corneille, the only libretto of any Handel opera, in my opinion, that isn't marred by extraneous bombast or silliness. Composed for the London stage in 1725, Handel's score for Rodelinda shows a concentration and expressive coherence quite apart from his Italianate florid display pieces written before or after. In fact, Rodelinda comes closer to being "through composed" (in the English sense) than any other large scale work by Handel, perhaps by any composer of baroque opera. The integration of singing and orchestra is magnificent, fully as 'intellectual' as any work of JS Bach yet infallibly emotive and stage-worthy. This is an opera which must NOT be smudged by vulgar stage capers or clownish costumery. It has to be all of a piece, a darkly anxious melodrama that ends in relief of tension, a 'happy ending' still tinged with sorrows endured.
That's the accomplishment of this production. Every note and every image sustains the mood of passion. There are no cheap tricks or pratfalls. The staging captures the glamour and worldliness of the pre-WW2 black-and-white cinema, yet there's no clash of anachronism of the sort that hampers more than helps many productions of 18th C opera. The photography is totally proficient in realizing the cinematic ambience. Costumes and sets blend with the demeanors of the singing actors, and those actors are superb in gesture, posture, facial expression, all the qualities of Hollywood sophistication. Beautiful, stately Anna Caterina Antonacci is perfect as Rodelinda, a film-maker's dream casting. Kurt Streit, if he were not singing for his supper, would have done well as a rival for Fairbanks or Valentino. Umberto Chiummo, the odious schemer Garibaldo, could easily play Iago in Shakespeare's Othello or the gnarliest mafioso in any Hollywood gangster flick. This is a filmed stage opera that truly works as a visual film!
And the music is divine. From the first entrance of conductor William Christie, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment performs Handel's challenging score flawlessly. WE get to see the players during the overture, as should almost always be the case on opera DVDs, and their confidence in their instruments and pleasure in the music is visible in their faces. This, dear readers, is exactly how baroque music should be performed, on the instruments for which Handel composed and with the tasteful virtuosity Handel presupposed.
Antonacci and Streit are matched in vocal artistry especially by countertenor Andreas Scholl in the role of Rodelinda's true husband Bertarido. All through the opera, I anticipated their climactic duet, as they await their fate at the harsh hands of the tyrant Grimoaldo, and my anticipation was rewarded. It's not the showiest duet in Handel's oeuvre, but it's one of the loveliest, and the two lovers sing it exquisitely. Likewise, the arias of Rodelinda are not as flashy as those of Tamerlano or Serse but their affective musical impact accumulates powerfully.
I've seen/heard this production, with a different cast, on stage in two cities, and I've watched this DVD three times since I bought it. Is that an adequate testimony to how good I think it is?
他の国からのトップレビュー
Gio
The Best of the Best by the Best!
2010年5月25日にアメリカ合衆国でレビュー済みAmazonで購入
maria
Rodelinda
2012年9月11日にアメリカ合衆国でレビュー済みAmazonで購入
Fair and balanced critic
Wondrous! Spellbound for the entire performance
2012年12月27日にアメリカ合衆国でレビュー済みAmazonで購入
Janis Cortese
Took a bit of getting used to, but excellent in the end
2008年12月28日にアメリカ合衆国でレビュー済みAmazonで購入
Alfredo R. Villanueva
LONG LIVE ANTONACCI!
2015年11月20日にアメリカ合衆国でレビュー済みAmazonで購入
