Posts tagged ‘vod’
Don Carlo directed for stage by Nicholas Hytner – Tonight at the Metropolitan Opera in New York!
Don Carlo by Verdi is once again in the spotlight as Nicholas Hytner’s staging of the opera will open tonight at the Metropolitan Opera.
It is with Verdi‘s Don Carlo that Hytner made his debut at the Met in 2011, he presents it again this season for a series of 7 performances (until March 17), conducted by Lorin Maazel and starring Ramón Vargas in the title role, Barbara Frittoli, Anna Smirnova, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Ferruccio Furlanetto, and Eric Halfvarson.
The dark and profound opera pictures the personal and political dramas of the Royal Spanish family at the peak of the Inquisition. It has been reworked several times and has a complex history. For this production at the Met, Hytner chose the original five acts version sung in Italian.
We encourage all New Yorkers to attend this spectacular show! If you were not lucky enough to get tickets, you can still wait until the production is taken back to Covent Garden in May, starring Jonas Kaufmann!
But the simplest way to have your share of Don Carlo is to watch it on medici.tv, with Rolando Villazón as Don Carlo and Marina Poplavskaya as Elisabeth de Valois!
Gérald Caillat followed the members of the Spira mirabilis and reveals the unique methods of this atypical orchestra – New VOD release on medici.tv.
Spira mirabilis was founded in Italy by a bunch of young musicians, who play in the best European orchestras.
Those musicians decided to gather, not with the goal of creating an orchestra capable of performing on stage, but in order to make music together. Thus, the instrumentalists study a work and discuss all the possible interpretations, before deciding which way they would like to perform it. No music director, but all of them are music directors.
A unique method, illustrated in this excerpt: watch the musicians rehearsing the Scherzo from Schumann’s First Symphony:
- La Spira, a film by Gérald Caillat, available on medici.tv (with English subtitles/French subtitles),
- Visit the official website of the Spira mirabilis.
Conductor Georg Solti, in conversation with John Culshaw. Video available on medici.tv.
medici.tv celebrates Georg Solti’s centenary (born October 21, 1912), medici.tv broadcasts a programme taken from the BBC archives. It features videos of the Hungarian musician conducting The Flying Dutchman‘s overture by Richard Wagner (one of his favorite composers), rehearsing Richard Strauss’ Don Juan de Richard Strauss, answering John Culshaw in an interview, and conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. A “best-of” programme, which David Patmore introduces with those words…
During the autumn of 1958, Solti conducted the Wiener Philharmoniker for a the first ever complete recording of Das Rheingold (Decca Records). It was acclaimed worldwide, and even made the Billboard Top Ten best-selling albums for a short period in the USA. It is with Wagner that Solti established himself as a recording conductor in Europe and America.
In 1959 Solti made his debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden with Der Rosenkavalier, and the offer of the musical directorship soon followed, which Solti took up in 1961. The early years at Covent Garden were not easy for Solti, who faced continuing press hostility, with critics disliking his high levels of nervous energy and in particular his fast tempi, extreme dynamics, and demands for precise articulation. It was only after he had been in post for approximately three years that the critical onslaught began to abate. But in Solti’s favour there was his undoubted commitment to raising performance, ans especially orchestral, standards.The Solti of this time is vividly seen in the account of the Overture to Wagner’s Flying Dutchman recorded for television in 193.
At the beginning of 1965 Solti initiated a series of new productions at Covent Garden. Magnificent as Solti was as an interpreter of Wagner, it was as a Strauss conductor that he perhaps achieved some of his finest work. Here the pursuit of technical excellence is balanced by a seemingly new and overt appreciation of the expressive nature of the music.
By 1985, the time of the telerecording of the performance of Beethoven’s Fifth with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall, Solti had been chief conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for seventeen years. By now Solti had few rivals as a conductor in concert and on record. Although he was seventy-three of age at the time of this performance, much of the old fire remained, with a continuing emphasis upon rhythmic tautness, strong dynamic contrasts, and a persistent sense of high drama in performance. That this style was highly effective in performance is plain for all to see and hear from this historic video recording, a fitting tribute to a great conductor.
© David Patmore / ICA
- Watch this film on medici.tv
- Read a biography of Georg Solti
- Visit icartists.co.uk
The complete Prokofiev symphonies and four of the composer’s piano concertos with Daniil Trifonov, Alexander Toradze, Alexei Volodin, Sergei Babayan and the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra!
Excerpts from the concerts:
Live / Legacy: The complete collection available by subscription
40 programmes gathering unique archive material from the BBC, Boston Symphony Orchestra and WGBH resources, and featuring the ICA most emblematic conductors: Erich Leinsdorf, William Steinberg, Klaus Tennstedt, Charles Munch (our picture), Georg Solti…
With material recorded between 1953 and 2010, the majority of the programmes are enjoying their first commercial release. This collection has already been rewarded with many prizes.
- View all the programmes available on medici.tv
- Visit the ICA Classics website.
This week, two new operas enter the medici.tv catalogue: Tamerlano by Haendel and Aida by Verdi !
The first one, a true baroque masterpiece, most likely Haendel’s greatest psychological drama, gave the lyric repertoire one of the most virtuoso tenor roles: Bajazet, here sung by the astonishing tenor Plácido Domingo. The staging proposed here is the one Graham Vick imagined for the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in 2001: it was filmed during its revival in 2008 at the Teatro Real de Madrid. Aside from Mr Domingo, the cast features major singers on the baroque scene, such as Sara Mingardo (Andronico). The orchestra, performing on non-period instruments, plays under the baton of Paul McCreesh.
Excerpt:
The second new opera in this week is Aida, filmed at the Gran Teatre del Liceu (the emblematic Barcelona Opera House), in the trompe-l’oeil style sets created for the 1945 production of the work on the very same stage!
Excerpt:
“In a far-off land, inaccessible to your steps
“There is a castle by the name of Montsalvat
“A light-filled temple stands within it
“More beautiful than anything on earth
“Therein is a vessel of wonderous blessing
“That is watched over as a sacred relic
“That the purest of men might guard it
“It was brought down by a host of angels
“Every year a dove descends from Heaven
“To fortify its wondrous power
“It is called the Grail
“And the purest, most blessed faith is imparted
“through it to the Brotherhood of Knights
“Whomsoever is chosen to serve the Grail
“Is armed by it with heavenly power
“The darts of evil prove powerless against him
“Once he has seen it,
“the shadow of death flees him
“Even he who is sent by it to a distant land,
“appointed as a champion of virtue
“Will not be robbed of its holy power
“Provided that he, as its knight,
“remains unrecognised there
“For so wondrous is the blessing of the Grail
“That when it is revealed it shuns
“the eye of the uninitiated
“Thus no man should doubt the knight
“For if he is recognised, he must leave you
“Hear how I reward the forbidden question!
“I was sent to you by the Grail
“My father Parsifal wears its crown
“I, its knight
“Am called Lohengrin“
(“In fernem Land”, excerpt from the 3rd act of Lohengrin, opera in three acts by Richard Wagner, libretto by Richard Wagner)
Richard Wagner was one of the rare musicians who were so fond of literature that they wrote their libretti themselves. We owe him wonderful texts inspired by medieval legends, and written in a purely lyric and poetic German language. And as a child, before he realized his passion for music, Richard Wagner claimed he would write plays for the theatre!
- Watch Lohengrin on medici.tv, directed for stage by Nikolaus Lehnoff for the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus, and conducted by Kent Nagano. With Klaus Florian Vogt (Lohengrin), Solveig Kringelborn (Elsa von Brabant), Tom Fox (Friedrich von Telramund) and Waltraud Meier (Ortrud)
Sorry, this entry is only available in Français.
