La Cenerentola — HDVDARTS

Rossini La Cenerentola to libretto by Jacopo Ferretti. Directed 2009 by Sharon Thomas at the Met. Stars Elīna Garanča (Cenerentola), Lawrence Brownlee (Don Ramiro), Simon Alberghini (Dandini), Alessandro Corbelli (Don Magnifico), Rachelle Durkin (Clorinda), Patricia Risley (Tisbe), and John Relyea (Alidoro). Maurizio Benini conducts the Met Orchestra and Chorus (Chorus Master Donald Palumbo). Staging produced by Cesare Lievi; sets and costumes by Maurizio Balò; lighting by Gigi Saccomandi; choreography by Daniela Schiavone. Directed for TV by Gary Halvorson; music producer was Jay David Saks. Supervising Producers were Mia Bongiovanni and Elena Park; Producers were Louisa Briccetti and Victoria Warivonchik. Sung in Italian. Released 2013, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: NA

Buy on Amazon

What's New

Here's news about high-definition video disc ("HDVD") recordings of opera, ballet, classical music, plays, fine-art documentaries, and paintings. In the journal below are independent (and hard-to-find critical) reports on hundreds of HDVDs. Pick the best titles for your excelsisphere.

Feb 25. We have just completed one of our most ambitious reviews: Einstein on the Beach opera, the surreal 4 and 1/2 hour cult legend. Kudos, encomiums, and accolades to Opus Arte for giving us this authoritative and weirdly fascinating recording, which we grade A+. Absorbing and learning Einstein is uniquely challenging. We try to help out by providing aids not included in the keepcase materials: an accurate libretto and a list of segments in the opera with correct Opus Arte time stamps. Good luck!

We have some other good grades with an A for the recent Met The Pearl Fishers (Les pêcheurs de perles) and a B- for an earlier The Pearl Fishers from Naples. Also, we recently gave an A- for the new Don Quixote from the Vienna State Ballet.