Lully - Persee / Novacek, Auvity, Lenormand, Whicher, Laquerre, Coulombe, Niquet, Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, Toronto | 
 enlarge | Actors: Stephanie Novacek, Cyril Auvity, Marie Lenormand, Monica Whicher, Herve Niquet
Studio: Euroarts
Category: DVD
List Price: $29.99
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Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 30625
Format: Classical, Color, Dolby, Dvd-video, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: French (Original Language), English (Subtitled), French (Subtitled)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Region: 1
Discs: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 127 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: 2054178
UPC: 880242541789
EAN: 8802425417898
ASIN: B0007X9T9I
Theatrical Release Date: 2005
Release Date: August 16, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new Item. CD, DVD, Book, VHS more than 400 000 titles to choose from. ALL days Low Price !
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
Superb performance of near-forgotten masterpiece from 1682 March 30, 2008
L. E. Cantrell (Vancouver, British Columbia Canada)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
SOURCE: Live performance by Opera Atelier from the Elgin Theatre in Toronto, 2004. br / br /SOUND: Perfectly satisfactory for a captured live performance on stage before an audience. I find the solo voices and orchestra are well-balanced with a slight and wholly proper emphasis on the former. (On the other hand, the Good Grey English Magazine, "The Gramophone," complains that the theorbo--a kind of two-necked lute--is given undue prominence. I can't say that I noticed it.) The audience--Canadian, eh?--is well-disciplined and discloses its existence mainly in appropriate applause. br / br /CAST: Persee, Perseus, a heroic son of Zeus - Cyril Auvity (tenor); Andromede, Andromeda, Daughter of Kepheus and Kassiopeia - Marie Lenormand (soprano); Cephee, Kepheus, King of Ethiopia / Medusa, snake-haired but mortal, one of three Gorgon sisters - Olivier Laquerre (bass-baritone); Cassiope, Kassiopeia, Queen of Ethiopia - Stephanie Novacek (mezzo-soprano); Phinee, Phineus, brother of Kepheus and jealously in love with Andromeda - Alain Coulombe (bass); Merope, Sister of Kassiopeia and hopelessly in love with Perseus - Monica Whicher (soprano); Mercure, Hermes, divine messenger and trickster god - Colin Ainsworth (tenor); Venus, Aphrodite, goddess of love - Vilma Vitols (soprano); Vulcan, Hephaistos, divine smith - Unidentified (bass); Minerve, Athena, warrior goddess - Unidentified (soprano); Hades, Aidoneus, god of the underworld - Unidentified (bass); Euryale, immortal Gorgon sister - Michiel Schrey (tenor); Stenone, Stheino, immortal Gorgon sister - Curtis Sullivan (bass). br / br /CONDUCTOR: Herve Niquet with Tafelmusik and the Tafelmusik Chamber Choir. br / br /TEXT: With a playing time of only 127 minutes, against the 165 minutes of a rival CD from 2002, this is plainly a heavily cut performing version of Lully's "Persee." I admit to no personal familiarity with this opera beyond what appears on this DVD, but secondary sources suggest that an allegorical prologue has been eliminated in its entirety, along with a scene for Stenone and Euryale and some choral music in the combat scenes in Act V. The opera is sung in 17th Century French with English subtitles. br / br /PRODUCTION: The staging of "Persee," is clearly intended to suggest the late 17th century by the general appearance of costumes and props and the specific use of postures and gestures straight out of baroque paintings and prints. Poor Mercure, for example, is obliged to hold such twisted postures and exaggerated gestures that even the campiest drag queen from my hometown of San Francisco might look askance. Good use is made of some simple painted flats and the boxes on either side of the stage at the Elgin Theatre become effective playing spaces. No attempt, however, has been made to replicate the elaborate, gorgeous and stunningly expensive stagecraft of the 17th Century. br / br /COMMENTARY: The Good Grey Gramophone informs me that "Persee" went unperformed for more than two hundred years until it was revived by Opera Atelier in 2002. Having watched this performance, cut down as it is, I can only wonder why. Opera of this vintage is not and never will be a favorite of mine, but nevertheless, "Persee" is, beyond any doubt whatsoever, a first-rate piece of musical theater. br / br /Giovanni Battista Lulli was born in Florence in 1632. When he was fourteen, he moved to France and promptly became then and forever Jean-Baptiste Lully. In France, he started off as a nobleman's page, rapidly acquiring fame as a dancer, actor and composer. Before he was twenty, he was working for Louis XIV, the Sun King, himself. From there by easy steps, he became head of the king's 21-piece "small" orchestra, then Music Master for the royal family, finally earning a royal monopoly for producing operas in Paris. On top of all that, he was a successful courtier in Louis' hot-house of a royal court. And, oh, yes, he also performed in some of Moliere's works and collaborated with him on a series of ballets--in which he had the innovative notion of including professional female dancers for the first time. He died in 1687 from an infected wound he had accidently given himself while conducting. br / br /Lully wrote about twenty operas, which he called "tragedies en musique," based either on classical subjects, such as "Psyche" (1678), "Proserpine" (1680) and "Persee" (1682) or on such Romance novels and epics as "Amadis de Gaule" (1684), "Roland" (1685) and "Armide" (1686). br / br /"Persee" was an opera written with Louis XIV very much in mind. In fact, the Sun King had suggested the topic to Lulli, as the composer and librettist made exquisitely clear in their obsequious printed dedication of the work to him. By 17th Century standards, it is a pretty faithful adaptation of the story of Perseus as it appears in Ovid, although it stops short with the translation of Perseus, Andromeda, Kepheus and Kassiopeia into the heaven immediately after the triumph over Phineus. The most unexpected and amusing change is the astonishing transformation of the three Gorgon sisters into two basses and a tenor. br / br /The music of this 1682 opera is quite unlike that of the succeeding generations. Lully shifts from recitative into song (not arias as understood by Handel, say) with a casual smoothness that Wagner, himself, might have envied. On the whole the music is straightforward and not excessively decorated. The orchestral texture, with its emphasis on plucked rather than bowed instruments, is a bit odd but still quite pleasant. br / br /The singers are uniformly excellent, almost amazingly so. Frankly, I can't believe that a cast of better singing, better acting, better dancing, better looking performers could be assembled to surpass this one. Even so, there is one stand-out performance, that of Olivier Laquerre, who is an excellent King Kepheus and then, buff and bearded, is an absolute hoot in snake-haired drag as Medusa! br / br /Five golden and bejewelled stars from the Sun King's court? Believe it!
LIKE IN VERSAILLES !!!!!!!!!!!! January 7, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
The staging is really superb br /Auvity , as Persee , sings lika an angel !!! br /Gorgeous work ! br /Highly recommended !
I am in love January 22, 2007
Sepand Ghanouni
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
Oh my G-d I am in love. I have fantasized about this type of production since I was five. Beautiful stage, old-fashioned costumes, demure women whom I just want to hug, oh and wonderful frozen poses. This opera is exactly how every production must be like. Buy it, buy it, buy it. I am truly in love.
Superb audio engineering, superb performances August 7, 2006
George E. Darby (Honolulu)
9 out of 11 found this review helpful
This DVD is a must have for audio engineers and those who treasure great audio engineering. The challenges of using close mics in chamber music are the greatest in the art... the mixer (one of my past careers) becomes the equal of the conductor. This recording is the best, absolute best, close mic recording of chamber music I have in my extensive collection. You hear the ensemble better than any person in the room, including the conductor .... which will be euphoric as long as you like hearing the timbre, attacks, and releases of the instructments as much as melody and harmony. In keeping with the instrumental recording, the voice recording is perfect as far as audio engineering. In a few cheek to cheek duets, the vocal balance has moments in which Persee overshadows Andromede, or Andromede overshadows her partner ... but those are perfomance-related, not audio-related, issues given the close juxtaposition of the performers, so the final audio product tallies at 99.9. The intrumental performance is not "Pinnock tight", esp. in the cadenzas and codas, but nevertheless works very well with the vocals. The video is a more average story... the camera framing and switching are excellent, but theatrical stage lighting is not cinema lighting or even TV studio lighting, and one of the (four?) cameras has an inop capacitor on a CCD (upper center, thankfully used mostly in wide shots, you can see how critical I am). Costumes are a 10. The stage is small and spartan, but in a way that focuses your attention on the performances and recording. Total score: 99
Great Art at its Best August 6, 2006
Brian J Hay (Sarnia, Ontario Canada)
16 out of 16 found this review helpful
About five minutes into 'Infortunes, qu'un monstre affreux' mezzo soprano Marie Lenormand sings a line of music that's indescribably beautiful. A moment later Monica Whicher sings the second part of it. Their voices are perfect. The accompaniment is perfect. The next four minutes are rapturous musical bliss. No subtitles are needed. They're meaningless anyway. They don't matter. The sets don't matter. The story doesn't matter. Just the music ...only the ravishingly beautiful music ... this is the type of thing a person gets lost in, the type of thing only the greatest art is capable of. It's pure perfection, something that's worth any amount of searching. It's priceless. Wow! br / br /This production didn't settle in that easily, not at first anyway. Even with some acquaintance with Lully's music the prominence of lutes over strings (violins etc.) and harpsichords made the style of his music feel unfamiliar. For one used to the more rigid forms of opera seria opera buffa the blurring of lines between recitative and full number created another hurdle. The sets, costumes and lighting all seemed to belong to one family of colours. They aren't really. But the predominant (some would say excessive) use of browns and related colours created that impression--at first glance it was like watching something filmed in sepia. Skipping through chapters in search of a highlight probably didn't help either ... br / br /But patience is a virtue. On the second evening the film was started at the beginning and watched properly (at least until the sixteenth chapter but I'll get back to that later). It was worth the effort. After a short period of acclimatization everything meshed. The lack of distinction between song and recitative was serving the drama wonderfully. The use of both lutes and harpsichord for the continuo enriched its tonal colouring with each being used to highlight the other. The singing and acting was all of the highest order. The music was a delight. The set was still a little brown but that was a tiny detail. This production is fabulous. The section (chapter sixteen) mentioned at the beginning of this review stopped me in my tracks. It was watched about five times (give or take a few) before moving on. br / br /There's not enough kind or complimentary words in the English language to do justice to this stellar but (largely) not well known cast. Marie Lenormand has one of the silkiest mezzo soprano voices I've heard in a while. Monica Whicher's voice is radiant and her technique is excellent. Cyril Auvity sings in a soft but powerful tenor with no hint of shrillness that powerful tenors often fall into. Oliver Laquerre and Alain Coulombe have commanding bass voices that never sounds harsh. Mezzo soprano Stephanie Novacek sings in creamy tones marginally lower than those of pure sopranos. Colin Ainsworth is one of the few countertenors (I've heard) who uses his tonal qualities without sounding as if he's singing in a falsetto voice. Vilma Vitols has a flexible mezzo voice capable of immense power and enormous subtlety. Lully's vocal writing stressed subtlety over power and all of these singers shade the nuances in his music beautifully often seeming to glide through the work as opposed to just singing it. The combination is exquisite. br / br /Opera Atelier and Tafelmusik are both familiar names in Canada. And that's as it should be. Tafelmusik has been one of the leading period instrument ensembles for ages and their recordings (usually under the baton of Jeanne Lamon) are invariably excellent. Here they're working under the baton of Herve Niquet and the result is great. He clearly has an affinity toward this repertoire. Opera Atelier is committed to both performance excellence and introducing young people to the medium of opera. Over the years their productions have been consistently phenomenal. Their revival of this piece (which they did for the first time in 2000) was hailed as the operatic event of the year. It was the first time Persee had been performed since the 18th century. br / br /This is a great production. The staging is largely traditional with the exception being the costumes which (appear to) draw their influences from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries with a touch of modern ballet thrown in. The sets are ornate and reminiscent of the era the music stems from. The sets are spacious and leave plenty of room for the considerable amount of dance used to portray the action sequences. Director Marshall Pynkoski (one of the founders of Opera Atelier) did a great job of pacing the action and keeping the story moving. The orchestral playing is great. The quality of the sound is pristine. And the singing is marvellous. Browns and reds occasionally seem a bit overused but that's a minor complaint about a magnificent production. br / br /It gets the highest rating.
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