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Gluck - Alceste Robert Wilson · John Eliot Gardiner · Anne Sofie von Otter · English...
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JazzDigger Home > G - Jazz Artists > Paula Gardiner > Item 2
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Gluck - Alceste Robert Wilson · John Eliot Gardiner · Anne Sofie von Otter · English...
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by Anne Sofie von Otter, Paul Groves, Dietrich Henschel, Yann Beuron, and Ludovic Tézier
Price:$26.99
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Listener Reviews & Comments
When is a CD more visually exciting than a DVD? That's not a joke; the answer is this Chatelet production of Gluck's Alceste. I've watched glaciers - literally - for hours, and seen more action than this.Was Brian Large, the director, momentarily suffering a post-encephalitic syndrome such as Oliver Sachs reported in Awakenings? LSD could not make this staging meaningful. This Alceste makes Wagner's Rheingold seem like a Rossini romp. It turns "Remenbrance of Things Past" into a haiku. It makes the American election process seem cogent. What do you get when you pop this disk into your player? Blue. Faded Levi blue. A blue backdrop with hazy blue stage lights, sectioned by various blackish pillars and cubes. A small blue cube gyrates slowly overhead throughout the first act. A dozen female dancers in off-the-shoulder blue prom dresses, with blue Egyptian head-gear, glide stiffly fore and aft, their arms bent hieroglyphically. Eventually Alceste enters, sheathed in a simple red robe which, if you watch long enough, begins to seem blue also. Lo, the blue backdrop is declared to be a temple. There is a large gray-blue statue with impressive genitalia. A priest begins to sing sad blue phrases of omen. Blue moons later, Admetus emerges from the indigo shadows, saved from death by Alceste's sacrifice of her life, an act which makes him feel.... blue. Oy! I've seen screen savers with infinitely more variety. Handel's Admeto, by the by, written in the same geological moment, handles the same story, but Handel had a handle on the human attention span. As if the visuals weren't lifeless enough, the voice recording is dismally unlifelike. No matter how high I turned the volume or diddled the EQ, the singers sounded distant and pallid, as if I were sitting in the highest balcony of an opera house stuffed with baffles. It's a colossal shame, really. The music, though somber and monochromatic until the very end, has its dolorous charms, especially as conducted by John Eliot Gardiner and performed by the English Baroque Soloists on period instruments. The miking of the orchestra, by the way, was quite intimate, as if that mattered when the singers were so stifled. Please, don't make this your first pre-Mozart opera DVD! If you want a symbolist/minimalist staging of a Greek tragedy played on early instruments, get the DVD of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, as performed by Tragicomedia nd Concerto Palatino. How subtle the difference that separates a great production from a dud!
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Gluck - Alceste Robert Wilson · John Eliot Gardiner · Anne Sofie von Otter · English...
by Anne Sofie von Otter, Paul Groves, Dietrich Henschel, Yann Beuron, and Ludovic Tézier
Price:$26.99
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