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Capriccio (DVD)
|
Composer |
Richard Strauss |
|
Conductor |
Donald Runnicles |
|
Director |
Stephen Lawless |
|
Performers |
Kiri Te Kanawa (Countess Madeleine) Maria Fortuna (Italian Soprano) Tatania Troyanos (Clairon) David Kuebler (Flamand) Craig Estep (Italian Tenor) Michael Sénéchal (Taupe) Håkan Hagegård (Count) Simon Keenlyside (Olivier) Dale Travis (Major-Domo) Vistor Braun (La Roche) |
|
Orchestra |
Chorus and Orchestra of the San Francisco Opera |
|
Label |
Arthaus Musik |
|
Code |
100354 |
|
Released |
September 1, 2003. Recorded at the San Francisco Opera on June 20, 25 and 28. |
|
Running time |
144 minutes |
|
Edition details |
Region 2 (Europe, Japan, South Africa and the Middle East including Egypt), PAL, ASIN: B00008O8C0 |
|
Notes |
For more details of this production click here: |
This DVD has recently been re-released for the German market, complete with a booklet of photos: It can be ordered through http://www.die-opernsammlung.de/
What the critics say
Alan Blyth for Gramophone, 2003. You have to register to access this review, but it is free of charge.
‘A happily traditional, keenly sung account of Strauss’s subtle conversation-piece’
‘…Simon Keenlyside a quizzical, lyrical Olivier.’
Eric Myers for Opera News, November 2003
http://www.metoperafamily.org/operanews/_archive/1103/Video.1103.html
“David Kuebler and Simon Keenlyside, as the verbally-jousting composer and poet, are a virile team, with Kuebler showing a particularly appealing timbre.”
“In the right hands, Strauss's final opera can emanate the kind of near-mystical glow shared by such earlier successes as Der Rosenkavalier and Ariadne auf Naxos. Performances such as this one helped earn Capriccio a place in the standard repertory.”
Richard Fawkes’ choice for Opera Now, January/February 2005
This is the exquisitely cast San Francisco production by Stephen Lawless which has Kiri Te Kanawa on top of her form as the Countess who has to decide whether are more important in opera or music. Based, by conductor Clemens Krauss, on a libretto previously set by Salieri, the intellectual dilemma is turned into the very real choice the Countess faces between the poet (Simon Keenlyside) and the composer (David Kuebler). There are even some laughs along the way as Victor Braun, in a scene-stealing performance as the stage director, puts on a disastrous entertainment for the Countess’s birthday, the star of which is the late Tatiana Troyanos (who dies two months after this recording was made). Delightful.
George Hall for BBC Magazine
Performance: 4 stars
Sound: 4 stars
Richard Strauss’s final opera, a ‘conversation piece’ that charts a leisurely discussion about the merits and demerits of opera itself, might seem to be made for the small screen rather than the vast expanses of the opera house. This San Francisco production was filmed in 1993. Stephen Lawless’s staging, with period (late 18th-century) set and costumes, offers a fair degree of detail in many of the leading characterisations and in their interaction, but the stage lighting often registers as too dark.
Simon Keenlyside’s superb Flamand and David Kuebler’s soulful Olivier stand out as poet-and-composer rivals for the love of the Countess whose chateau is the setting for the action. Kiri Te Kanawa looks and often sounds glamorous as this aristocrat with refined tastes, though her German is indistinct and her delivery of the text bland.
She’s outclassed by Tatiana Troyanos as the actress Clairon, in one of her final appearances before her early death, and by Victor Braun’s expert La Roche – a portrait of the seen-it-all-yet-still-believes-in-it stage director. There’s a treasurable account of the prompter Monsieur Taupe from veteran Michel Sénéchal.
Donald Runnicles conducts a performance that maintains sensitivity and fluidity and misses none of Strauss’s musical in-jokes. The orchestra is assured and neat in the chamber-music textures.
Limited information in the booklet – only Runnicles, Te Kanawa and Troyanos are allotted biographies – and no extras on the disc itself. But as a performance of a late-Romantic masterpiece this has a good deal going for it.
