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Whistle Stopper - Puccini: La Rondine
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List Price: $32.98
Our Price: $21.84
Your Save: $ 11.14 ( 34% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Arthaus Musik
Starring: Fiorenza Cedolins, Fernando Portari, Sandra Pastrana, Carlo Rizzi, Emanuele Giannino
Directed By: Graham Vick
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 0807280132991
Format: Classical
Label: Arthaus Musik
Manufacturer: Arthaus Musik
Number Of Discs: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Arthaus Musik
Region Code: 0
Release Date: 2008-08-26
Running Time: 106
Studio: Arthaus Musik
Theatrical Release Date: 2008
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: NYC PRODUCTION
Comment: SIMPLY PUT THE NYC OPERA PRODUCTION OF "LA RONDINE" WAS WONDERFUL. IT IS A SHAME THERE IS NO DVD OF THE ORIGINAL THAT AIRED SOME TIME AGO WITH ELIZABETH KNIGHTEN. BEVERLEY SILLS CONSIDERED THIS ONE OF HER FAVORITES. THE SECOND ACT WAS LITERALLY, A SHOW STOPPER. ACT THREE WAS AS OPERATIC AS CAN BE.
I ALSO THINK MARTHA DOMINGO'S ENDING DETRACTS FROM THE NATURAL CONCEPT.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An Underwhelming Rondine
Comment: This production of Puccini's La Rondine comes from the Fenice in Venice. The director, Graham Vick, made the decision to move the story to the 1950s, with women dressed in what look like Balenciaga knock-offs. The updating in itself doesn't do much harm to the story except for the fact that the plot itself -- a woman who can't marry her lover because her past will bring disgrace to his family -- doesn't translate particularly well to 1950s mores, particularly in Paris where the opera is set. That alone, however, would not create that much of a problem if it weren't for the musical and theatrical values of the production. The singers are average at best. The only reasonable well-known singer is Fiorenza Cedolins as Magda, the female lead. She is in poor voice in the first act -- the act in which her big aria occurs, the well-beloved 'Che il bel sogno di Doretta', the so-called 'Doretta's Dream'. The voice improves as we go along in this video of a live production, but Cedolins' acting is not at all convincing. Even worse is her lumpy tenor, Fernando Portari, whose voice is OK but whose acting is awkward at best. The couple are not helped by Vick's insistence that they do things like lie full-length on the stage floor while singing, making what are supposed to be coltish or erotic movements but which in their portrayals simply look embarrassing. Their love scenes, particularly in the last act which occurs at the seaside, are not only not convincing, they are cringe-making. The second couple -- Sandra Pastrana as Magda's maid Lisette and Emanuele Giannino as the poet Prunier -- are not really any better. Lisette is supposed to be saucy; she comes across, rather, as stiff; her singing is adequate, but just. Giannino is a better actor but his voice is marginal for the part. Indeed the best singer/actor in the cast is Stefano Antonucci as Rambaldo, whose mistress Magda is; his part, however, is relatively short. There is some interest in the second act, which occurs in a cabaret, Chez Bullier, because there is some enjoyable dancing by the crowd done by a Venetian group called 'Acrobatic Swing Dance', as choreographed by Ron Howell; one wished they were onstage longer. The Fenice orchestra, under Carlo Rizzi, is fine and indeed the best part of the show.
Let's face it, La Rondine is not Puccini's strongest score, nor does it have the most believable plot, and it is not done any favors by this production, sad to say.
Scott Morrison
Customer Rating:
Summary: Beautifully staged La Rondine
Comment: I saw this production from La Fenice at the Charles Theater in Baltimore. It was not a live broadcast, but part of a series of opera productions from La Scala and this one from La Fenice broadcast to movie theaters in the US.
While the setting for the story has been updated, the staging was not at all bizarre (as some directors have done to beautiful operas and destroyed the production in so doing). The singing is very good from singers that are not well known in this country - but so what! There are many European singers who never appear in the US and they are outstanding artists.
A word about the Marta Domingo production. I saw it at the Washington Opera and, while it is a beautifully staged production, the ending is very strange, not what Puccini intended. Marta Domingo has the heroine commit suicide by walking into the sea at the end of the opera. In fact, she decides that she can't marry her young lover and decides to return to the elderly Rambaldo, the wealthy man with whom she was having a long time affair.
Puccini would not have approved of this ending to his opera.
Buy the DVD and enjoy the music and you will come to like the production as well.
John Cahill, music teacher
Customer Rating:
Summary: What kind of fool had this idea?
Comment: I can't review something I haven't seen and never will see. What a travesty this will be. Modern dress (the 1930s?)? Why can't "directors" leave well enough alone? Marta Domingo's LA Opera production is gorgeous and the performance is beautiful. We shall never see it, she told me, because the unions can't agree on a commercial recording. Thank goodness I taped it from the PBS telecast. I am fiercely pro-union, but if you don't have a copy of the LA version, you don't have a copy of Rondine. I wish I had been able to copy the Canadian TV production of 1967 with Teresa Stratas. That was a beauty of a Rondine too. This opera has some of the best of Puccini, especially the ending farewell duet. It's beautiful and bittersweet and it always makes me cry.
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