| December Music On DVD |
| Written by Kevin Filipski | |||
 THE MAGIC FLUTE Starring a cast of first-rate singers–including Matthew Polenzani, Nathan Gunn, Rene Pape and Ying Huang–and conducted by James Levine, this one-act Flute distills the essence of Mozart into 110 blissful minutes, and the HD cameras show off Taymor’s singular visual stylings to their full advantage, including her remarkable masks and eye-popping puppets. The quibbles are minor: no backstage interviews and no inclusion of the full-length Taymor Flute. At least we have this new seasonal favorite on DVD. also available.... Bernstein Conducts Bernstein (Deutsche Grammophon) presents Lenny leading the London Symphony Orchestra and Vienna Philharmonic in his own music, including the expressive Serenade, with violin soloist Gidon Kremer (best extra: Bernstein documentary: Teachers and Teaching); Donizetti’s fizzy comic romp L’elisir d’amore (Harmonia Mundi) needs two world-class singers in the leads, and this 2006 Paris Opera staging has them: tenor Paul Groves and soprano Heidi Grant Murphy; Daryl Hall and John Oates Live at the Troubadour (Shout Factory) is an unplugged concert by pop music’s most successful duo from May of this year–the hit list includes stripped-down versions of classics “She’s Gone,” “Sara Smile” and “Rich Girl” (best extras: Hall and Oates interviews); I Puritani (DG BluRay) and Manon (DG BluRay) are splendid operatic vehicles for today’s most glamorous soprano, Anna Netrebko, and BluRay technology shows off her star power as actress and singer; Angela Gheorghiu: My Puccini (EMI Classics), a new CD release, includes a bonus DVD that has an interview with the Romanian soprano and several live excerpts of her singing Puccini’s glorious tunes; The Nutcracker (Opus Arte), shown on PBS last season, is a wonderful San Francisco ballet staging that may give George Balanchine’s classic a run for its money (best extra: interview with choreographer Helgi Tomasson); a rare concert video, Parliament-Funkadelic—The Mothership Connection Live 1976 (Shout Factory) displays George Clinton’s raucous live group at the peak of its considerable musical–and theatrical–powers for a Halloween concert in Houston; even though it was eleven years in the making, Steven Sebring’s documentary Patti Smith—Dream of Life (Palm Pictures) doesn’t really tell us much about Smith we didn’t already know (best extra: interview with Patti’s son Jackson); German soprano Nadja Michael, the current singer-actress of choice to play the anti-heroine of Salome (TDK), Richard Strauss’s pummeling opera, immerses herself fearlessly in this hit-and-miss 2007 La Scala staging; a quick overview of one of Britain’s biggest 1960s bands, The Story of the Yardbirds (Zeit Media Ltd.), doesn’t unearth any new discoveries, but includes intriguing interviews with members Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page (best extra: vintage performance footage); finally, Jacques Offenbach’s delightful operetta Le vie parisienne (Virgin Classics) is given a delicious 2007 staging by the Lyon Opera, which has set it in a cosmopolitan, touristy Paris, starring a terrific, energetic cast.
|