Benvenuto Cellini

Berlioz Benvenuto Cellini opera to a libretto by Léon de Wailly and Henri Auguste Barbier. Directed 2007 by Philipp Stölzl at the Großes Festspielhaus during the Salzburg Festival. Stars Burkhard Fritz (Benvenuto Cellini), Maija Kovalevska (Teresa), Laurent Naouri (Fieramosca), Brindley Sherratt (Giacomo Balducci), Mikhail Petrenko (Pope Clemens VII), Kate Aldrich (Ascanio), Xavier Mas (Francesco), Roberto Tagliavini (Bernardino), Adam Plachetka (Pompeo), and Sung-Keun Park (Innkeeper). Also features dancers Gabrio Gabrieli, Francesco Pedone, Marie Seeger, Tobias Wozniak, and acrobats Silke Adolph, Andy Arndt, and Thomas Dürrfeld. Valery Gergiev conducts the Wiener Philharmoniker and the Konzertvereinigung Wiener Staatsopernchor (Chorus Master Andreas Schüller). Stage design by Philipp Stölzl; costumes by Kathi Maurer; lighting by Duane Schuler; video projections by Stefan Kessner and Max Stolzenberg; dramatic advice by Ronny Dietrich; choreography by Mara Kurotschka; fencing direction by Alexander Ourth; video technique by Gunnar Lindner. Directed for TV by Andreas Morell. Produced by Bernhard Fleischer. Released 2011, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: NA

This was a huge production as you can see from this clip:

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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.