Ring 2000

Three stories of life along the margins in Mexico City converge in this inventive thriller. Octavio is sharing an apartment with his brother, which leads to a serious problem when he falls in love with Susanna, his sister-in-law. Octavio and Susanna want to run away together, but Octavio has no money. He does, however, know a man who stages dog fights, and he volunteers his dog Cofi for the next round of fights. Cofi bravely rises to the occasion, but the dog's success in the ring leads to a violent altercation. Elsewhere, Daniel, a successful publishing magnate, leaves his family to take up with a beautiful model, Valeria. Valeria, however, soon loses a leg in an auto accident, and as Daniel tends to her needs, her tiny pet dog gets trapped under the floorboards of their apartment. And finally, El Chivo (Emilio Echeverria) is an elderly homeless man who is trying to contact his daughter, whom he hasn't seen in years.

One of the best ideas Handel and his colleagues ever had was to make an oratorio out of John Milton's verse–specifically, of Milton's "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso" ("The Happy Man" and "The Pensive Man"), with the libretto cutting back and forth between the two poems to make a sort of dialogue, and with an added conclusion titled "Il Moderato" ("The Moderate Man"). The resulting work has never been as famous as Messiah, but it has always been a special favorite of Handel lovers. The King's Consort made a fine recording of L'Allegro in 1999; the selling point of the present version (which appeared almost exactly one year later) is the cast of soloists, which includes soprano Lynne Dawson and countertenor David Daniels, both genuine Baroque superstars, and tenor Ian Bostridge, current king of the art song.