Blu Ray opera

Posted by: Phil Cork on 24 June 2009

All,

There seem to be a number of HD Operas emerging, notably from Opus Arte (Royal Opera House), Deutsche Grammaphon etc. Also, they're often priced by Amazon at £17 as opposed to the £30 that Opera DVDs are conventionally priced at, which represents pretty good value.

I thought i'd create a thread within which we could track forthcoming releases, and the quality of the ones we've seen.

Don't all shout at once.... ;o)

Phil
Posted on: 24 June 2009 by mudwolf
heya Phil, sounds good, I prefer to watch opera than just listen to it. I'm sure the Met HD operas will be available but I"ve not researched them. I"ve seen several and am really impressed.
Posted on: 24 June 2009 by JWM
Unfortunately, the great Turandot with Sutherland, Pavarotti, etc won't ever appear on Blu Ray... Frown
Posted on: 29 June 2009 by Frank Abela
The main problem with many of the opera DVDs released in the 90s is that they were simply re-recorded versions of the original videos which, although musically strong were very poor visually as well direction. I can only imagine that blurays done the same way will be awful. Any idea on whether what you've seen is better?

Off to see ROH's La Traviata live at the local VUE tomorrow - Renee Fleming and Joseph Calleja - yippee! You might still be able to get tickets to a local cinema near you (but I doubt you'll get tickets for the Royal Opera House).
Posted on: 29 June 2009 by Avalin
For those of you that enjoy Wagner, I highly recommend Die Walkure in Blu Ray from the Aix/Salzburg festival. It's the BPO with Simon Rattle, Willard White, Ben Hepnner etc.

It's a good production and very well recorded. Aix is a super modern house with very good acoustic.

I am waiting for their Siegfried and Gotterdamerung to be recorded and released

Saw Siegfried there last July and off again for Gotterdamerung in few days.

If you are really interested, it's being streamed via French Radio Classique on 6th July starting at 1630 Uk time.

Happy listening and watching

Geoff
Posted on: 01 July 2009 by Phil Cork
quote:
Originally posted by Frank Abela:
The main problem with many of the opera DVDs released in the 90s is that they were simply re-recorded versions of the original videos which, although musically strong were very poor visually as well direction. I can only imagine that blurays done the same way will be awful. Any idea on whether what you've seen is better?

Off to see ROH's La Traviata live at the local VUE tomorrow - Renee Fleming and Joseph Calleja - yippee! You might still be able to get tickets to a local cinema near you (but I doubt you'll get tickets for the Royal Opera House).


Frank, i have a number (will post which ones from home later) and they're all great HD quality. The opera houses have been recording/transmitting in HD for a while now, so more recent productions will be good quality. Also being BD, the audio is pretty good also. I can't imagine they'd bother to transfer old non-HD recordings.

As regards last night's performance my Fiancee was there and was a little disappointed with Renee Fleming's performance in the first act - second was outstanding apparently but many of the major arias are early on. Calleja was excellent vocally but a little wooden? a bit like Ramon Vargas...?

Phil
Posted on: 01 July 2009 by Frank Abela
quote:
6th July starting at 1630 Uk time.


Geoff - oooooh, tempting, but I'm not sure I can get the time off...

Phil, we haven't been to the opera in many years. Just too painful to get in to London (and we're only 40 miles away). So for us, we were absolutely transported last night. I thought Renee Fleming was a touch cool to start with, but her really big parts are the 2nd and 3rd acts so I wasn't too worried about that.

I thought Joseph Calleja was amazing. Yes, his acting needs a little work, but I'd hardly call it wooden and his vocal expression was so palpable and so much better than so many others (Alagna, Vargas, the lot of them really apart from Domingo) that I really started to wonder if this Maltese boy could really be one of the opera greats. Of course, since I'm a Maltese boy too, I may be biased. Smile

I must say, both the wife and I were quite transported by the experience. The only downside was that the main stage camera at the back of the auditorium suffered from terrible blurriness on the right hand side so the right hand side of the stage was very blurrrry. the rest of the cameras were dead sharp throughout so we know it was the camera in the theatre, not our cinema.