Così fan tutte — HDVDARTS

Mozart Così fan tutte opera to libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. Directed 2013 by Sven-Eric Bechtolf at the Salzburg Festival. Stars Malin Hartelius (Fiordiligi), Luca Pisaroni (Guglielmo), Marie-Claude Chappuls (Dorabella), Martin Mitterrutzner (Ferrando), Martina Janková (Despina), and Gerald Finley (Don Alfonso). Christoph Eschenbach conducts the Wiener Philharmoniker and the Konzertvereinigung Wiener Staatsopernchor (Chorus Master Ernst Raffelsberger). Set design by Rolf Glittenberg; costume design by Marianne Glittenberg; lighting design by Jurgen Hoffman. Directed for video by Tiziano Mancini. Sung in Italian. Released 2015, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: NA

This is up against stout competition, but the forces are worthy.

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.