This is Opera

It is rare when four of the Bolshoi’s greatest stars appear together in their home theatre in one of Russian opera’s masterpieces. The opera was Tchaikovsky’s, The Queen Of Spades, (Pique Dream), and Kultur is proud to present it here, complete, for the first time on DVD. With a libretto written by the composer’s brother, Modest, this tale of terror, with a plot involving obsessive love and gambling, hallucinations and descent into madness never fails to have a profound effect on its audience. The Bolshoi’s production is riveting, with sumptuous sets and costumes, and the famed Bolshoi chorus and corps de ballet are at their most elegant and spectacular.

The aria Ombra mai fu at the start of Act I of Handel's opera seria Serse (Xerxes) is likely to be its best-known asset. Serse was written in 1733-38, at the end of Handel's career as an opera composer: he concentrated on oratorio after 1741. It is a great achievement. Not least because it uses the music, and the marriage of words and music, to evoke in the audience pathos, sympathy, delight, and as much tempered ridicule as tempered tenderness.

For decades there has been only one recording of Admeto available: a quite splendid performance from 1977 (Virgin Records 5613692) directed by Alan Curtis with Il complesso barocco. One of the first baroque operas to be recorded with original instruments, it reflects the best of the historical performance movement. It is thus with considerable anticipation and curiosity that one approaches this new release of Handel’s Admeto, sung in English (to a fine translation by Geoffrey Dunn), directed by Sir Anthony Lewis, and recorded just nine years earlier in 1968. The cast for this recording is no less remarkable. Dame Janet Baker plays the self-sacrificing Alcestis; Admetus is sung elegantly and expressively by Maureen Lehane; Sheila Armstong is a brilliant and stylish Antigona, and the mezzo soprano Margaret Lensky provides a touching portrayal of the lovesick Thrasymedes.

This is the masterwork, Gluck's last important opera, which convinced the teenage medical student Berlioz, when he first heard it in 1821, that he had to be a composer. He worshipped Gluck and took his side in the phoney "Gluck vs.Piccini War". He set himself the task of sitting in the Conservatoire library to copy out the entire score in order to absorb its lessons. Its directness and drama influenced his artistic style his whole life through, as evinced by key points in "Les Troyens".

This latest version of Gluck’s masterpiece is something of a double hybrid: its starting point is the Berlioz version, which combines what Berlioz regarded as the best of the Italian original and the French revision (and using a contralto Orpheus), and then it is modified further, with a number of reorderings and some music restored, as well as revised orchestration. It isn’t very ‘authentic’, in terms of Gluck No. 1, Gluck No. 2 or Berlioz, but that of course doesn’t much matter as long as it works.

For some years now, Domingo has been, on stage, the greatest Otello of our age. On record, though, he has had less success. Leiferkus and Domingo have worked closely together in the theatre; and it shows in scene after scene – nowhere more so than in the crucial sequence in Act 2 where Otello so rapidly ingests Iago's lethal poison. By bringing into the recording studio the feel and experience of a stage performance – meticulous study subtly modified by the improvised charge of the moment – both singers help defy the jinx that so often afflicts Otello on record.

THE ILLUSTRIOUS Neapolitan singing teacher Nicola Porpora (1686–1768) was also a notable composer. The core of his output consisted of more than fifty opere serie,with texts by the best-known librettists of the day. Live performances of these works remain rare, but we can rejoice in all-Porpora CDs by a number of virtuoso countertenors, among them this one by Max Emanuel Cencic. Even if his disc hadn’t included seven world-premiere recordings, it would still merit significant attention, thanks to his exceptional vocalism.

Not many versions of the Symphonie fantastique rival Myung-Whun Chung’s in conveying the nervously impulsive inspiration of a young composer, the hints of hysteria, the overtones of nightmare in Berlioz’s programme. He makes one register it afresh as genuinely fantastic. Some may well prefer the more direct, more solid qualities that you find in the new Mehta version, also well played, and recorded with satisfying weight, but the volatile element in this perennially modern piece is something which Chung brings out to a degree I have rarely known before, and that establishes his as a very individual, sharply characterized version with unusually strong claims.

Universally acknowledged as the greatest of all Russian operas, this is a faithful and often dazzling production of the standard Rimsky-Korsakov version taped ³live² at the Bolshoi in 1978. As Boris, the renowned Yevgeni Nesterenko is as justifiably identified with the role in his generation as Chaliapin, London and Kipness were in theirs. Nesterenko gives a remarkably vivid, human portrait of the tormented half-crazed Tsar, and is supported by a first rate ensemble in a richly designed and costumed production that represents opera at its grandest.

Although I Puritani was performed during the Metropolitan Opera's first season in 1883, it had not been seen there for decades until this production by Sandro Sequi was unveiled in 1976. It was one of the greatest triumphs for the partnership of Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti, and it is to the credit of all concerned in this recent revival that one soon forgets names from the past and enjoys what is a spirited attempt to evoke mid-19th-century style.