Absolutely Delightful!
Beautifully staged and filmed, and with a strong cast without a single weak link, this is amongst the best of the Rosenkavaliers on DVD. Andrew Litton's conducting is a great asset. Some Rosenkavaliers take themselves a bit too seriously, but not this one, which never forgets it's a comedy, and will make you smile many times over. The final trio is heart-rending. A huge success all round.
Nope!
I'm not a scholar or opera critic, just a music lover. Except for about 15 minutes of simply transcendent singing and orchestration, this is a sheer waste of time. First let me say that Cheryl Barker performs with an enchanting, crystalline beauty that perfectly matches her role. Catherine Carby as Octavian has a fine voice but is the victim of the libretto and the stage director, both of whom left her to figure out how not to look like a cardboard prop on stage for about 95% of the time she appears. The idiocy of having a woman of her maturity trying to play a young man of 17 is outdone only by the moron who wrote the part to be played that way in the first place. Even when the opera debuted in 1911 someone in the audience was bound to know that it wasn't 1611! All the technical credits are fine; it's the opera itself that should have stayed in the coffin with Mozart. I'm not a snob, and I'm not an expert of any kind. My advice is to skip this DVD, support your local...
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