Word: conductors
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...barreling along in Act II of Berlioz's The Trojans. Troy is in flames. The Greeks are rampaging. As conductor John Eliot Gardiner whips the orchestra to a boil, the prophetess Cassandra (Anna Caterina Antonacci) soars into an aria of despair and defiance, urging the other Trojan women to kill themselves. But hold on. Let's take a moment to hear how director Yannis Kokkos sees this scene. (Cassandra's "vision of fatality," he says, achieves for Troy "a kind of revenge by immolation.") Next, let's cut to Gardiner. (Conducting this music, he says, is "so deeply moving because...
...opera the DVD way--in this case, on a three-disc set released by BBC/Opus Arte. And we haven't even mentioned the surround sound, the subtitles in your choice of four languages, the plot synopses--all only a click or two away on your remote. No wonder conductor James Levine says that of all recording technologies, "this medium is, up to now, the best. DVD gives a really amazing, thrilling and altogether remarkable result...
...always in the music business, star power is what drives the most successful DVDs, especially if the star, like Bernstein, happens to be dead. DVDs of such departed figures as singer Maria Callas and conductor Herbert von Karajan are top draws, not only because of their charisma but also because their performances have taken on a historic importance. Callas' farewell appearance on the opera stage, in Tosca,at London's Covent Garden in 1965, is the centerpiece of Maria Callas: Living and Dying for Art and Love,which is selling briskly at $24.99 after its release on the TDK label...
With more elusive personalities like cellist Jacqueline du Pré, whose career was cut short by multiple sclerosis in 1973, when she was 28, and Carlos Kleiber, the notoriously reclusive conductor who died last year, the interviews and documentaries that usually make up the bonus material on DVDs are scarce if not nonexistent. The producers are reduced to offering such extras as "photo galleries." No matter; the releases sell anyway. The performers' names and mystique are enough. Almost two decades after Du Pré's death in 1987, a DVD titled Jacqueline du Pré in Portraitis one of the best-selling offerings...
...diplomatic, I'll tell you the most fun sections are percussion, lower brass and bass players. They all seem to have good senses of humor and love life. They're sitting in the back of the orchestra, they check out the conductor, the audience. They usually have lots of time to make jokes...