Armida — HDVDARTS

Rossini Armida opera to libretto by Giovanni Schmidt. Directed 2015 by Mariame Clément at the Vaanderen Opera House. Stars Carmen Romeu (Armida), Enea Scala (Rinaldo), Robert McPherson (Gernando/Ubaldo), Dario Schmunck (Goffredo/Carlo), Leonard Bernad (Idraote/Astarotte), and Adam Smith (Eustazio). Alberto Zedda conducts the Vaanderen Opera House Symphony Orchestra and Opera Chorus (Chorus Master Jan Schweiger). Set and costume design by Julia Hansen; lighting by Bernd Purkrabek. Directed for TV by Jan Bosteels. Released 2017, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: NA

Richard Osborne, writing in the April 2017 Gramophone at page 115 praises the singers, but lambasts the "silly" and "insipid" production with weak sets and costumes.

Here's an official YouTube clip:

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.