|
I charge those who turned their noses up at the Royal Opera's superb concert performances of Donizetti's Dom Sebastien last September to sit through all two-and-a-half hours of this dismal DVD of his earlier Linda di Chamounix.
Written in 1841 for the Kärtnertortheater in Vienna, the opera is one of Donizetti's most interesting and inventive, particularly in terms of operatic conventions of the time. He pulled out all the stops for the work, which he hoped would make his name in Austria. The plot is typically peculiar, but it provides an unusual opportunity to employ the genre of opera semiseria, mixing buffo elements in the character of the Marchese with the more tragic role of Linda, who has the obligatory mad scene for instance.
A farmer called Antonio has asked the Marchese di Boisfleury to employ his daughter Linda as a maid. Linda is in love with Carlo, who is pretending to be a poor artist but is in fact the Visconte di Sirval. Hearing of the Marchese's dishonourable character, Antonio decides to send Linda to Paris as a factory worker instead. However, Carlo reveals his real identity and furnishes an apartment for her, where her father finds her and disowns her. She discovers that Carlo has been engaged to another woman and becomes mad; but in the last act, he comes back to her, freeing her from madness, and all ends happily.
Perhaps it would all seem a little more rational if Daniel Schmid's production was more lucidly staged. Instead, it's pretty ghastly from the visual point of view. Florence von Gerkan's costumes are traditional, but the backcloths by Erich Wonder resemble the kinds of paintings you see in the window of a New Age Traveller's shop. Schimd doesn't seem to be convinced by the story and so transports the whole thing into a kind of pastiche-fantasy setting. Most of Donizetti's operas need to be staged with a certain reverence to the original settings if they are to succeed, and for me the odd stagecraft makes this DVD repulsive to watch.
Musically, things are little better, with most of the singers indifferent or worse. Edita Gruberova is a big draw in the title role, but she is far past her best, with tuning problems, little warmth of tone and a strangely disengaged manner on the stage (perhaps she disliked the production as much as I do). Cornelia Kallisch is acceptable in the trouser role of Pierotto, but the scenes between him and Linda are dull.
Deon van der Walt is sometimes exciting as Carlo, and sometimes lacks focus, whilst Jacob Will brings out only the repulsion and not the buffo side of the Marchese. Nadine Asher as the mother is one of the stronger singers.
Adam Fischer moves the score along with reasonable pace, but the Zurich Opera Orchestra is really flagging at the end, and the Chorus is never as rousing as it should be in this music.
While it's wonderful to see TDK bringing out so important a Donizetti opera as this on DVD, perhaps this production doesn't serve them as well as it could.
 | 
more 