Purcell: Dido and Aeneas [Blu-ray]

This is an easy review. This is a creative new production with a marvelous cast!1) The music is a masterpiece!2) William Christie is a master of this era and a great conductor of this repertoire!3) Every member of this cast is a great actor; including every member of the chorus.4) The stage director-Deborah Warner gets wonderful and detailed facial expression from the entire cast and ensemble. All involved truly live the moment.5) The two leads (Malena Ernman as Dido and Christopher Maltman as Aeneas) are two credible lovers. She is also a spectacular and expressive singer. Her dynamic control and phrasing are truly classic. He is very, very fine as well.6) The children really work as an ensemble and especially in the dance moments, with the chorus and especially with the Sorceress and her witches.7) The Sorceress, Hilary Summers is a "camp" hoot. Some reviewers may scoff at this; but it is an acceptable solution to the problem of how to interpret this character and stage the witch's scene.8) The two witches are also of the same mold and work very well.9) Belinda-Judith van Wanroij has much beautiful music to sing and does a lovely job with all of it.10) The costumes work well as does the basic unit set. The nave of a Gothic Chapel?11) I first experienced this great (short) masterpeice in my first Semester of Music & Western Civilization taught by Dr. Robert Crone at Duquesne University's School Of Music. He managed in that excellent class to inspire many of us to love this BAROQUE GEM! Thank You, Dr. Crone. It is really too bad that we didn't have DVDs or Blu-Rays of such Historically Informed Performances back then. We made do with the wonderful EMI Recording with Victoria de los Angeles; a quite good recording for it's time. I highly reccomend this Production to all looking for a Video Recording of this small Baroque Masterwork by a great Baroque composer, Henry Purcell, Who like Mozart died way too young!

I am totally in favor of this recording (unlike the prevoius commentator) From the beginning, when we see the prologue spoken by Fiona Shaw linking together several myths of ancient Greece with so much wit and panache, we realize that we will have a great artistic experience through the entire show.The little children who so much annoyed the previous commentator, are nothing more, nothing less, what Purcell had in mind when he composed the opera to be performed at the Josias Priest's girls' school in London in 1688. They do not harm the performance; on the contrary, they add commedy, drama, pathos when and wherever is needed.The singers are for the most part outstanding and very aware of the baroqque style of singing (little vibrato in the voice and no trills). The short and thankless part of Aeneas is taken by Christopher Maltman, who rally looks like he is in love with Dido and annoyed by being a pawn of the gods and sings with conviction. And the Dido of Malena Erman is superb! What control of breath and legato. And listen to her pianissimi during the lament. I was very impressed and she gets 5 stars for her performance. The sorceress and her witches don't awake terror (which the previous commentator so much missed) but I am happy with the tremendous irony, arrogance, and humor that they bring to the stage everytime they are on it.William Chritie and his Les Arts Florissants are nothing short of magnificent. I already knew his approach thanks to the CD recording that he and his forces had recorded about a decade ago, and I knew what I was going to get and I am not disapointed. He excells in this repertory and if he re-touched the score, even better, since he knows and he is capable. On the other hand, that is normally done since there is no definitive score of Dido and Aeneas.Stage production and direction is what one can expect after the Eurotrash revolution (for the most part, thankfully, in the past): Victorian dresses and minimal staging. Direction is straight and believable.I loved this set and highly recommend it!

I am posting this review so potential buyers of this DVD are aware that the other five reviews posted to this DVD are NOT for this NEW DVD, conducted by VINCENT DUMESTRE but are for the 2011 WILLIAM CHRISTIE performance. I searched for a way to notify Amazon of this error, but none seems to exist, so I am using this method to inform interested parties that the five reviews posted to this DVD as of June 22, 2015, are for A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PERFORMANCE. Maybe someone at Amazon will read this and fix it, meanwhile there are NO reviews yet for this Dumestre performance. If Amazon fixes this, I will delete this "Review"I plan to order this DVD on the basis of the high quality of Dumestre's earlier performances of Lully. I expect it will also be excellent.

First known performance of 'Dido and Aeneas' was at a girls' school in London July 1688,although there has been speculation that it might have been written for an earlier performance at the court. The opera was not staged again in Purcell's lifetime.After 1705 it disappeared as a staged work, with only sporadic concert performances, until 1895 when the first staged version in modern times was performed by studentsThe reviewed version staged by Deborah Warner and directed by William Christie.It seems to be all right to transform operas onto modern times. Sometimes successfully, sometimes not. And there are several hybrides. Sometimes - as this one - with ill-dressed "skinheads" wearing clothes that has nothing with the opera to do. This particular opera is a cocktail of bad approach, Deborah Warner's disrespectful staging onto a wonderful piece of work which deserves much more perception.The recording features noisy floor sounds, this I haven't heard in any other blu-ray opera.Sad to say, but I believe that this is not the last time a director spoils a great opera. Be warned!

Tout le monde a fait un foin pas possible de cette production; je l'ai donc acquise, et quelle ne fut pas ma déception ! Hormis la beauté intrinsèque d'un décors (mais l'oeuvre n'en demande pas tant ! nous ne sommes pas dans Les Troyens de Berlioz !).... C'est agité inutilement; les gosses qui dansent maladroitement et piaillent toutes les cinq minutes sont horripilants et parasitent la belle musique de l'Orphée Britanique. Le prologue est inutile absolument ! Hormis les deux rôles titres fort bien chantants ( respectivement Ernman et le beau Maltman ), les seconds rôles (depuis les sorcières jusqu'aux matelots, en font dix fois trop et du coup chantent plutôt mal ). Quand à la direction de Christie, elle est évidemment bonne ainsi que son orchestre, (mais il existe des tonnes de versions de cet acabit ). C'est à mon sens un faux événement lyrique que cette production horripilante. Non, décidément je vais me séparer de cette version, et je m'en tiens pour toujours à mon sublime CD avec Raymond Leppard et Jessye Norman. Cette mauvaise production du sublime Purcell est selon moi un scandale de snobisme comme seule la France sait les honorer parfois hélas ! Il est des mises en scènes beaucoup plus étudiées que celle ci, qui, somme toute est banale, une fois passé l'agitation inutile.

I love this opera. But where do I begin - I hated this depressing travesty of a production from the start. Everything is wrong with it. Where is the drama, dignity, magic and emotion of the original baroque masterpiece? It left me totally unmoved, except with exasperation.In my opinion the production is a horrible mismash of bad ideas from the outset, with little apparent appreciation of the underlying structure and beauty of the original music and drama written by Purcell and Tate.In the presentation of the key main role, there is no leader-like dignity in the playing of the Carthiginian Queen, who behaves like an irritating overwrought emotional wreck from Desperate Housewives with far too much 'actorly' gasping and sobbing after sung lines - completely unnecessary as the music, honestly and sincerely sung, says everything. Poor acting and mugging in modern opera productions is surely no longer acceptable, especially when its being filmed in close up (and with sharp-eyed blu ray clarity). Where was the critical judgement of the director in guiding the performance?As for the essential storyline element of drama, threat and foreboding that should be provided by the wonderfully evil Sorceress and Witches' scenes - Here it is played for laughs (or so I assume) with 'funny' wigs and over-the-top pantomime acting, (amateur night again). Its truly cringeworthy and, once again in my opinion, a major directing error of judgement discarding a key element of the story.)With all palace, witches, and harbour scenes, Purcell's beautiful, dramatic and expressive musical interpretation of the libretto is the core of the piece. It only requires sincerity in performance to fully convey the emotion to an audience, not tricks and superfluous 'stage business'.Christopher Maltman is the only performer worthy of note. His trademark honesty and sincerity with music and text are apparent in the underwritten part of Aeneas, and he does the best possible with it, especially when just allowed to sing. However, he is up against the odds here.For those of a nervous or irritable disposition, I have to mention the frequent, irritating and pointless presence of the young school kids frequently running wild on stage. Why? And just to make them totally ingruous they are in modern school uniform - compared to the dog's dinner of the other costumes - some generic 'historical drama', some not.There is also the incomprehensible incongruity of the invented prologue (disparate, unrelated poetry from a different era read by Fiona Shaw looking, equally incongruously, like St Joan complete with wooden sword, and in scruffy jeans - again why?).And final 'honours' go to the overwhelmingly drab, lazy and minimal scenery and lighting design.You may be surprised to learn, it wasn't for me! For lovers of this great Purcell opera, I would strongly recommend going instead for the beautifully realised DVD version directed by Peter Maniura with Maria Ewing as Dido, filmed in stunning style at Hampton Court House and grounds. This one hits all the right notes. (Good DVD, but sadly not Blu ray.)

Recorded at L'Opera Comique in December 2008, running barely over an hour, Purcell's short opera Dido & Aeneas has been padded out with a Prologue and Musical Improvisations added by Les Arts Florissants' conductor and founder; William Christie.Deborah Warner's production transposes the action into a Shakespearean setting; it has the chorus and characters performing on a sparse stage. Added are a chorus (who do not sing) of 25 young school girls (in modern school uniforms) running about the stage at various times for no apparent reason.The main protagonists are dressed in Elizabethan style clothing whilst the main chorus is dressed in modern casual. Added into the cast are acrobats that do nothing to enhance the story but only serve to distract from the drama (a disturbing trend in modern opera productions, similar to the idiotic trend of earlier years where directors insisted that composers insert ballet sequences into operas).I did not understand the reason for the prologue, the text of which (Adonis and Echo) has nothing to do with the Opera's plot. Spoken and delivered with enthusiasm by Fiona Shaw, as if addressing a matinee audience consisting only of children. Bare footed, dressed in jeans and swinging a makeshift wooden sword, occasionally letting forth unpleasantly loud stressing on vowels that were painful to my ears.Swedish soprano Malena Ernman carries the burden of the drama as Dido Queen of Carthage, torn between duty and her passion for the Trojan warrior Aeneas. Christopher Maltman is Aeneas, and Judith van Wanroij is Belinda.Hilary Summers as the Sorceress together with her two underlings plays the witches' scenes with comic idiocy like pantomime villains, destroying the seriousness of the drama.There lies the problem with this production; it is serious drama reduced to a side-show or pantomime.Musically I could not fault this production. However, after viewing this Blu-ray, I reached for my DVD of the 1995 BBC production of this opera filmed at Hampton Court House with spectacular scenes and effects, the lead characters played by Maria Ewing and Karl Daymond. I prefer the BBC production over Deborah Warner's; her additions are too gimmicky and distracting for multiple viewings. The only thing that will draw me back to this Blu-ray is Malena Ernman and Judith van Wanroij.There is not much to say about the Blu-ray. Visually it is very good but I found the audio to distort when the singers were reaching for the louder notes (this may also have been the problem with Fiona Shaw's Prologue). However, as this opera does not have to be played loud, this is a minor problem that can be overcome by turning on the subtitles and reducing the playback volume.The extras consist mainly of the Producer/Director and Conductor explaining (or justifying) their additions an departures from the standard productions of Purcell's work.I give the Singers and Orchestra; 5 stars, the Production; 3 stars and the Blu-ray; 4 stars.

beautiful voices, stunning performance. A joy to watch .

Was soll ich groß schreiben? Viel Geld bezahlt für diese Blu-ray Disk, und nun liest sie mein Universalplayer nicht, obwohl ausdrücklich "Toutes régions" angegeben war...