What's Available Now from BelAir Classiques?

BelAir Classiques published several Blu-ray titles:

  1. Richard Wagner Die Walküre to libretto by the composer. Stéphane Braunschweig directed this production in 2007 at the Aix-en-Provence Festival. Stars Robert Gambill, Mikhail Petrenko, Sir Willard White, Eva-Maria Westbroek, Eva Johansson, Lilli Paasikivi, Joanna Porackova, Elaine McKrill, Julianne Young, Andrea Baker, Erika Sunnegårdh, Heike Grötzinger, Eva Vogel, and Anette Bod. Sir Simon Rattle conducts the Berliner Philharmoniker. Costumes by Thibault Vancraenenbroeck; lighting by Marion Hewlett. Released in 2008, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. This disc is available now from Amazon in these countries: USA, UK, Germany, Canada, or France.

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  2. Tchaikovsky Gala. On December 31, 2007 the ballet troupe of the Teatro alla Scala in Milan threw its New Year's Eve Gala (which we assume is an annual event exclusively for its patrons). The program consisted of excepts from Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, and the Nutcracker ‎ ballets. Elisabetta Terabust directed the proceedings. The Swan Lake stars are Polina Semionova, Roberto Bolle, Maurizio Licitra, Gianni Ghisleni, and Flavia Vallone. The Sleeping Beauty stars are Marta Romagna, Alessandro Grillo, Mick Zeni, Matteo Buongiorno, Bryan Hewison, Antonio Sutera, and Daniela Cavalleri. The Nutcracker stars are Nadja Saidakova and Ronald Savkovic. David Coleman conducts the Corpo di Ballo ed Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala. This disc, released in 2008, is encoded in 1080p and has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio. This disc is available now from Amazon in these countries: USA, UK, Germany, Canada, or France.
     
    [This disc is froth, not broth. Prince Siegfried and the Queen are intrigued when Baron Rothbart arrives to be Master of Ceremonies at Siegfried's party. The ceremonies will consist of about 75 minutes of highlights from Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, and the Nutcracker. Still, the party will end badly with Siegfried blownfused and it's curtains. (Stated differently, try imagining Swan Lake without Odette or the white acts.) Now, there's some refined and athletic dancing here, especially by local deity Roberto Bolle and Polina Semionava, an import from Berlin. But what this disc does for us is to show just how hard it is to have a ballet without a libretto.
    Because a gala is a convention of insiders celebrating each other, anything can happen and outsiders have no gripe. But even by this low standard, this disc disappoints. The camera work is poor with soft images and motion blur throughout. There is a bonus with rehearsal shots, etc. that could have been OK, but it's in SD and looks like student work. So unless you are crazy about La Scala or Semionava, we suggest you save your booty for some broth, not froth.     Henry McFadyen, Jr.]
     
  3. Stravinsky and the Ballets Russes. In June 2008 the ballet troupe of the Mariinsky Theater in Saint Petersburg presented The Firebird and The Rite of Spring in celebration of the debut of the Ballets Russes in Paris (in 1909). Special efforts were made to recreate both works as they were originally performed by the Ballets Russes. Valery Gergiev conducts the Mariinsky Orchestra in both productions. Denis Caïozzi directed both shows for TV and video. This disc, released in 2009, has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. This disc is available now from Amazon in these countries: USA, UK, Germany, Canada, or France.
     
    [In 1910 ballet lovers were used to pieces like Swan Lake, and Giselle. So try an experiment. Watch the "white acts" from those two popular works and immediately switch to The Rite of Spring. Maybe then you can get some understanding why The Rite of Spring was so controversial when it debuted. The Rite of Spring and the The Firebird were, of course, both produced by the avant-garde Ballet Russes company, which was active from 1909 to 1929. Although these shows were hugely influencial, they were not long produced. Knowledge about the choreography, the sets, and the costumes was scattered and eventually almost lost. There is a valuable bonus on the disc in which Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer describe their herculean efforts to research the original productions and revive them. The music and the dancing presented here could hardly be better, and one is convienced that all is true to the original experience. For anyone specially interested in the history of ballet or the Ballet Russes phenominum, this is an A++ disc. For others, this is probably not a show that you would want to watch repeatedly. So I suggest that B is the correct grade with a "+" in appreciation of the fine sound, video, and disk authorship provided by BelAir. Henry McFadyen, Jr.]
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  4. Christoph Gluck Orpheus und Eurydike dance-opera. Choreographer Pina Bausch directs this unusual production, with singers and dancers simultaneously on stage for each character, at the Palais Garnier in February 2008. Orpheus is danced by Yann Bridard and sung by mezzo soprano Maria Riccarda Wesseling; Eurydike is danced by Marie-Agès Gillot and sung by soprano Julia Kleiter; Amor is danced by Miteki Kudo and sung by soprano Sunhae Im. Also stars Yong Geol Kim, Nicolas Paul, Vincent Cordier, Emilie Cozette, Eleonora Abbagnato, Eve Grinsztajn, Muriel Zusperreguy, Caroline Bance, Christelle Garnier, Alice Renavand, Amélie Lamoureux, Charlotte Ranson, Séverine Westermann, Natacha Gilles, Marie-Isabelle Peracchi, Bruno Bouché, Vincent Chaillet, Sébastien Bertaud, Alexis Renaud, and Erwan Le Roux. Thomas Hengelbrock directs the Balthasar-Neumann Ensemble and Choir. Set, costume, and lighting designs by Rolf Borzik. Costumes made by Marion Cito; lighting made by Johan Delaere; lighting engineers were Michel Susini and Madjid Hakimi. Released in 2009, this disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. This disc is either available now or available for preorder from Amazon in these countries: USA, UK, Germany, Canada, or France.
     
    [In memoriam. December 16, 2009. I had never heard of Pina Bausch when I fist viewed her Orpheus und Eurydike dance-opera yesterday. The starting point is a German language version of the opera, which Gluck wrote in 1762 (in Italian). The three main characters, Orpheus, Eurydike, and Amor, are sung on stage by opera singers and are also danced by leading members of the Paris Opera Ballet. The rest of the on-stage cast are ballet dancers. This unusual array of forces works well---it's a ballet show, but ballet and opera make roughly equal contributions to the overall effect. The music is original-instrument quaint. The dance style is "Tanztheater" modern, which, with it's relatively simple forms and use of repetition, meshes well with old music. Although the dancing is incisive, it is also elegant, smooth, tasteful, and profound. I watched the curtain calls. Orpheus (Yann Bridard), 90% naked in his dancer's briefs for every minute of the ballet, went off stage and returned with a woman in hand. I was touched by the sad tenderness and respect he showed to his companion---this is Bausch I thought. And when the camera then gave a close-up of Bausch, I thought,"Dear God! This poor woman is ill." I hit the Internet. This production of Orpheus und Eurydike was filmed in February 2009, and Bausch died in June. She was 69.
    Actually, Bausch choreographed and first produced     Orpheus und Eurydike 35 years ago when she was 35. Her husband, Rolf Borzik, designed the set, costumes, and lighting. Borzik died 5 years later. Bausch dropped Orpheus und Eurydike from her repertoire. She went on to do many hard-edged controversial and iconoclastic productions which made her famous in the tiny world of modern dance. In a sense, the revival of Orpheus und Eurydike is a memorial of Borzik, whose work, but for this recording, might have been forgotten.
    The newspapers reported that Bausch died 5 days after being diagnosed with cancer. I don't believe that. On re-watching the ballet-opera, I have no doubt that Bausch was writing her epithet with this revival. I also understand where the dancers got the intensity and reverence with which they handle their roles in this work: they were dancing their memorial to Borzik and Bausch. Alas, the Internet doesn't tell most of us where we will go after we die. But if you would like see the fate of Philippina Bausch, here's how you can. Get the HDVD and watch the Third Movement of     Orpheus und Eurydike, called "Frieden" ("Peace" or "Paix"), and you will see her dancing there. Henry McFadyen, Jr.]
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  5. Christoph Gluck Orphée et Eurydice in French (Orfeo ed Euridice in the original Italian name) opera to libretto by Pierre-Louis Moline (sung in French). David Alagna made theatrical and musical adaptations and directed at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna in January 2008. Stars Roberto Alagna (brother of the director), Serena Gamberoni, and Marc Barrard. Giampaolo Bisanti conducts the Teatro Comuniale di Bologna Orchdestra with chorus master Paolo Vero. Set design by David Algana; costumes by Carla Teti; Light design by Aldo Solbiati. Released in 2010, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. This disc is available now from Amazon in these countries: USA, UK, Germany, Canada, or France.
     
    [In Orpheus and Eurydice (English spelling) Gluck wrote a relatively simple opera that blends singing, orchestration, drama, and dance. It was first performed in 1762 in Italian. It has a lean core of satisfying music that lends itself to adaptation. Gluck was the first adaptor --- he tinkered with the work repeatedly and also wrote a much-modified version in French. Later composers and directors have continued this tradition. This mutability has been the key to the survival of Orpheus and Eurydice in the face of competition like Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro, a vastly more complicated and mature work that came along only 24 years later and marks the beginning of the Age of Opera.
    So let's celebrate rather than bemoan the fact that current versions of     Orpheus and Eurydice might be pretty surprising to Herr Gluck if he could tune in. That healthy attitude will prepare us to enjoy the Alagna brothers version we review now, which I describe as an indie motion picture that happens to use a performance on an opera stage as a location.
    Using the Gluck's 1774 French version, the Alagnas recast the main roles (historically usually all sung by women or castrati) so that Eurydice is a soprano, Orpheus a tenor, and Amor (more about him later) becomes a baritone. To the modern ear this is a huge improvement over listening to three female leads. The Alagnas assume that the audience doesn't know the story of the classical myth all that well and then provide the following version: We meet Orpheus and Eurydice at their joyful wedding, which is immediately followed by the death of Eurydice in a car wreck. At the funeral, Orpheus' grief is so moving that the undertaker (called "Le Guide" instead of "Amor") intervenes and offers to take Orpheus into the netherworld to fetch Eurydice. Le Guide explains, of course, how Orpheus can't look at his bride lest she die again. Sexpot Eurydice is grumpy after being aroused from the blissful anesthesia of death. Denied a loving look from her husband, she proves that she knows how to get what she wants. After her second death, Orpheus follows her lead.
    Having come up with a suitable plot for 2010, the Alagnas move chunks of the music and libretto around to fit. The emotional effect is the same as ever with the Gluck's wrenchingly mournful music relentlessly threatening to push you over the edge into tears. But now the Alagnas add something you don't expect: camp humor. The humor is mostly provided by Marc Barrard's portrayal of Le Guide. Standing tall with lugubrious face surrounded by a floor-length black leather trenchcoat, stovetop hat, and black sunglasses, he is the perfect droll antidote to the pathos of the ancient legend. Le Guide is well equipped with his beat-up old Ford station wagon for a hearse, squad of Blues Brothers-looking pallbearers, and funeral parlor with a bank-vault door leading to the land of shades. And even Eurydice and Orpheus get a chance to show their skill at physical comedy.
    We know this production was played live to audiences in Bologna because we see curtain calls at the end in a kind of sequel. But on the other hand, the HDVD version is not simply a recording of the live opera. The design of the HDVD show was inspired by the movies. It makes fasinating use of film devices like total camera mobility, obvious trick editing, rapid jump cuts, oversatuation and blooming of colors, artificial granularization, miss-focus, dual and negative images, slow motion and the like. Some of this maybe was done in post-production, but I also think the film was shot in multiple takes shot in parallel with the mounting of the live opera.
    The result is an intriguing version of Gluck's old opera that is in tune with today's tastes. The singing and acting by all three principals is excellent, the chorus is excellent, and the orchestra sounds fine. Because it ought to help bring younger audiences (weaned on films) to the traditional fine arts, this title deserves at least the grade of "B+."     Henry McFadyen Jr. April 2010]
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  6. La fille du pharaon ballet. Music by Cesare Pugni. Choreographed by Pierre Lacotte after Marius Petipa. Filmed at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow in 2003. Stars Svetlana Zakharova, Sergei Filin, Gennadiy Yanin, Maria Aleksandrova, Dimitri Gudanov, Inna Petrova, Anna Tsygankova, Anastasia Goryatcheva, Denis Medvedev, Yan Godovsky, Vladimir Moiseev, Anastasia Yatsenko, Ekaterina Shipulina, and Elena Andrienko. Alexander Sotnikov conducts the Orchestra of the Bolshoi Theatre. Staging, stage design, and costumes by Pierre Lacotte. Directed for video by Denis Caïozzi. This disc, unlike all other fine-art HDVDs released to this point, has no traditional menu. Instead the show starts directly. There is a brief message displayed at the beginning telling the viewer that the pop-up menu allows the viewer to change the audio setting and to select scenes. (A note on scene selection: getting to Acts II and III is a bit counterintuitive. After selecting "Scenes" from the pop-up menu, a secondary menu with all of Act I's scenes appears. To get to Acts II and II, the viewer must first go back to the original pop up menu, and suddenly Acts II and III become selectable.) There are no extras. Released in 2010, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. BelAir is a French company. The disc package and the liner notes are in French and English. But the Chapter titles are presented only in French. Here for your convenience are the Chapter titles in English: This disc is available now from Amazon in the USA, UK, Germany, France, and Canada.
     
    [Ballet is the most esoteric, fragile, and perishable of the fine arts. A ballet is peculiar to the choreographer creating it, enormously expensive to produce, seen live by few people, almost impossible to document on paper, and hard to record in media. HDVD will benefit ballet more than the other fine arts because high-definition cameras and high-fidelity sound for the first time offer an economical way for more people to enjoy ballet and for the dance movements to be documented adequately for posterity.
    Consider the fate of the ballet     La Fille du Pharaon. In 1862, La Fille du Pharaon was the first great success of choreographer Marius Petipa (who was also the lead male dancer and who went on to become the most important choreographer in history). Petipa revived it several times before his death in 1910. The ballet was never performed outside Russia. The last Russian revival was in 1926. After that, the Communists dropped it (I guess because Lord Wilson, the lead male role, was too much of a symbol of imperialistic capitalism). Knowledge about La Fille du Pharaon withered. Documents, sets, and costumes were mostly trashed or lost.
    When Pierre Lacotte started working on his 2000 reconstruction, there were few people alive who had seen     La Fille du Pharaon. The only visual records were sketches and black and white photos. Music scores were in archives, but it seems that no sound recording of the music was ever published. Lacotte found Marina Semionava, who was the last Aspicia when she danced it at age 17. But at about age 88, she could not remember the choreography.
    Eventually, Lacotte was able to sleuth out enough material to piece together a 1 hour and 40 minute version for the Bolshoi Ballet that probably does a decent job of portraying the main roles and at least gives a taste of the spectacular chorus action (the original ballet lasted more than 4 hours and had 400 parts). The truncated version opened in Moscow in 2000 and was recorded in 2003. The DVD was released in 2005 and the HDVD was released on May 25, 2010. Pepita's almost lost work has been rescued from oblivion! (We will never see the full version; nor should we want to. To us, "spectacular" means something like the opening ceremonies at the Summer Olympics.)
    So how does     La Fille du Pharaon come across in HDVD? Cesare Pugni was the most prolific ballet composer in history, and he composed much other music as well. But he is today mostly ignored. For example, ArkivMusic offers not a single music recording devoted to Pugni. (Bits of his music can be heard on videos of ballets and compilations of ballet music.) But for someone who isn't even on the radar, Pugni's music is surprising good! For this libretto, a string of pearls is fine; there's no need for architecture or psychological depth. Pugni ceaselessly comes up with new melodies and orchestral combinations that are never boring. He's clearly on a level above, say, the compilations of Lanchbery that we know from La fille mal guarée and Tales of Beatrice Potter. I think Pugni is competitive in this music with most or all of Adams in Giselle and also with some of Mendelssohn and Tschaikovsky. And for sure, his music is completely adequate for and well coordinated to what's happening on the stage in La Fille du Pharaon.
    A few reviewers have complained that the choreography is not exciting or original. Such comments may have some validity when you consider all the romantic, classical, and modern dancing what we now know. But this view is also misguided. The dancing we see in     La Fille du Pharaon is not mature Petipa. Rather, these are images from the dawn of grand ballet. But if you have seen much of Petipa's more famous works, you will find in this production green shoots of all that is to come later. My favorite scene however, is one where Pepita may have been exceptionally creative. I refer to Chapters 17 and 18 after Aspicia escapes her father's order of unwanted marriage by leaping to her death in the waters. She descends into the courtyard of the God of the Nile (who looks a lot like Neptune). There the desert palate of ochre, red, and gold turns to shades of blue, green, and teal. To melancholy tones of harp, flute, and clarinette, Aspicia dances with the Gods of the great rivers---all in limpid show motion---until the God of the Nile is so touched by her beauty that he restores her to life and sends her back the realm of air.
    The star dancers are young, beautiful, able, and enjoyable to watch. No anorexic near-40s in this show. The female corps doesn't have the precision and polish of, say, the women of the Paris Opera Ballet. But never mind, they make up for it in sass and glamor. I especially liked, in Chapter 19, the temple virgins, or maybe prostitutes, in their skimpy dresses, sexy underwear, and blue hair, all pouting while holding incense lamps. (Sorry guys, this is actually a nice show for the whole family. The blue hair is the only off-color aspect of it, and there is even a cute number where a large corps of children and youths from the Bolsoi school get to show everybody what they have learned.)
    This production has many set and costume changes. The sets all looked fine or quite impressive except for one (Chapter 3) with bad seams and an obvious ragged scrim. Mixing tutus and hieroglyphics must have been a nightmare for the costume shop. At first I thought the costumes were a bit gaudy, but I soon got over that and came to admire the huge range of rags you see. After Aspicia arrives, the God of the Nile even gives her a nymph costume and orders her to go behind a rock and change out of her tutu!
    The Orchestra of the Bolshoi Ballet plays fluently and is well-recorded. The surround sound is vivid. I usually don't pay much attention to the bass drum. Pugni uses the big drum a lot and gives my sub-woofer a workout. But in softer passages, I'm not sure I can hear the drum, but I can feel it in the air! In this recording I can also often clearly hear the sounds of the dancers' feet clattering on the floor. Then I realize that these girls who appear to be floating on air are really landing hard. This adds a surprising touch of realism to the video, and gives me new insight into what it's like to out there on the stage.
    Finally, I have to give a special plug for Denis Caïozzi, the video director. The lighting in the Bolshoi was excellent, and Caïozzi's folks got brilliant, crisp images in high-definition that look wonderful, especially for work done in 2003. The shooting plan was excellent and resulted in a good balance of long-range, mid-range, and near shots. The crews also stayed away from too much extreme close-up work, which probably would have been spoiled by heavy makeup on some of the performers. Most impressive of all, I see almost no motion artefacts in this fast-moving film, even in the dimly-lit scenes.
    In summary, this HDVD of     La Fille du Pharaon is an altogether beautiful recording of fine performance of a production that is important to anyone with more than a casual interest in ballet. If you fit into the last sentence, this is an A+ title. On the other hand, La Fille du Pharaon is not one of the familiar ballets. It might not be of interest to many viewers, so I give it the grade of A on our Alphalist. Henry C McFadyen Jr June 2010. ]
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  7. Swan Lake ballet. Music by Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky. Book by V. P. Begitchev and Vasily Geltzer. Choreographed and directed by Heintz Spoerli (after Marius Petipa) at the Zurich Opera House in 2009. Stars Polina Semionova, Stanislav Jermakov, Arsen Mehrabyan, Karin Pellmont, Galina Mihaylova, Arman Grigoryan, Véronique Tamaccio, Sarah-Jane Brodbeck, Maria Seletskaja, Vittoria Valerio, Aliya Tanykpayeva, Jiayong Sun, Vahe Martirosyan, Yen Han, Iker Murillo, Oleksandr Kirichenko, Sergiy Kirichenkoo, Daniel Mulligan, and Yuriy Volk. Vladimir Fedoseyev conducts the Zurich Opera Orchestra. Sets by Erich Wonder; costumes by Florence von Gerkan; lighting by Martin Gebhardt; directed for TV and video by Andy Sommer. Released in 2010, this disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. It is available now from Amazon in USA, UK, Germany, France, and Canada.

    [At this writing, we already have Swan Lake in HDVDs from the Paris Opera Ballet, the Mariinsky Ballet, and the Royal Ballet. So it took courage for the Zurich Opera Ballet (local market of about 2,000,000 people) to make and try to sell an HDVD against this kind of competition, especially when dancemaker Heintz Spoerli himself states that the Zurich Opera Company is almost too small to stage Swan Lake. This courage has been rewarded, because subject disc is the best Swan Lake that exists now as runner up to the Paris Opera Ballet HDVD (which is the best ballet video ever made).
    Spoerli pulled this off with two moves. First he imported Prima Ballerina Polina Semionova to dance Odette/Odile. Second, he ruthlessly cut away at the book, music, and choreography of     Swan Lake until he shaped a contemporary work (as lean as Semionova) that could be covered by his young troupe. Everybody in the company had a role, every role was vital, and you can sense do-or-die bravado in the performance. For the rest of this thumbnail, I'll refer to this production as "Swan Lite."
    What had do be cut to get to Swan Lite? Here's the list: 12 swans (20 on the Zurich stage v. 32 in most productions), all character dancers (no jester, etc.), the tutor (played in Zurich as alter ego of Rothbart), 2 princesses from foreign lands (4 instead of 6), the owl suit, most ethnic costumes, the crossbows and other props (except lots of chairs), all mime scenes, Siegfried's oath to love Odette, and about 15 minutes of music (125 minutes v. 140 minutes in the Paris Opera Ballet performance). This show moves fast, and you are invited to concentrate on enjoying the dancing and to not worry about whether there will be a happy or sad ending. Spoerli assumes you generally know the plot, and he doesn't sweat the details. (Don't worry---I'm not going to get into Spoerli's ending.)
    At first, I resisted the Swan Lite approach, but I soon found that it was refreshing. Semionova, a movie-star-beautiful woman, is the best Odette/Odile on any of our HDVDs. The men stars are adequate for the Swan Lite approach. It's fun to see so many young dancers get a chance to appear in this Holy Grail ballet. But Yen Han, one of the Zurich senior ballerinas, is the one who may knock you over with her Russian dance (Chapter 32). This dance by Han is alone worth the price of the HDVD.
    We now take excellent sound for granted in our HDVDs, and almost all of the ballet and opera orchestras sound good. But the Zurich Opera Orchestra seems to be especially pungent and provocative on this disc. The recording is very close and every instrument is heard with impressive clarity and detail. I think Fedoseyev slows much of the music down a bit, which may make things a bit easier on the dancers and gives us more time to savor the score. On the other hand, the lighting was dark for this production. However successful this may have been to the live audience, it made for tough shooting with the high-definition cameras. As a result, some of the video images are poor and there are motion artifacts that could have been avoided with brighter lighting.
    To sum up, if you have no HDVD of     Swan Lake, get the real-deal Paris Opera Ballet version. For a shorter modern alternative, try the Zurich disc. If you insist that Rothbart be a magician who turns himself into an owl, you will probably like the Mariinsky show. Avoid the Royal Opera version, which is now woefully dated and shabby looking. Henry McFadyen July 2010.]