FARAO — New Titles/Journal

Des Königs Zauberflöteopera produced as a motion picture film of live theater performances. Based on Die Zauberflöte opera with music by Mozart and a libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder, with additional dialogue by Klaus Jörg Schönmetzler. Directed by Enoch zu Guttenberg at the Prinzregententheater München in 2013. Video made at the 2013 performances was made into the Des Königs Zauberflöte movie, which was shown in theaters in 2016; the Blu-ray was released in 2017. Grade: NA

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.