Didone Abbandonata

Giuseppe Saverio Mercadante Didone Abbandonata opera to a libretto by Andrea Leone Tottola. Directed 2018 by Jürgen Flimm at the Tiroler Landestheater, Innsbruck, Austria as part of the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music. Stars Viktorija Miškūnaitė (Didone), Katrin Wundsam (Enea), Carlo Vincenzo Allemano (Jarba), Pietro Di Bianco (Osmida), Diego Godoy (Araspe), and Emilie Renard (Selene). Alessandro De Marchi conducts the Academia Montis Regalis. Features Chiara Cattani on fortepiano. Set design by Magdalena Gut; costume design by Kristina Bell; lighting design by Irene Selka; choreography by Tiziana Colombo. Directed for TV by Götz Filenius. Sung in Italian. Released 2019, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: NA

Richard Wigmore, writing in the August 2019 Gramophone (page 90) points out, and ArkivMusic agrees, that this is the only recording of this opera available now in any format. With something this obscure, you wouldn’t expect world famous singers. But, per Wigmore, if you are a bel canto fan with everything, you may want to look into this. There is much in the singing and orchestra performance, he says, to enjoy if you can tolerate the industrial-grunge designs and updating.

Here's the official trailer:

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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.