Enrico di Borgogna

Donizetti Enrico di Borgogna (Henry of Burgundy) opera to a libretto by Bartolomeo Merelli. Directed 2018 by Silvia Paoli at the Teatro Sociale in Bergamo, Italy as part of the Donizetti Opera Festival. Stars Anna Bonitatibus (Enrico), Sonia Ganassi (Elisa), Levy Sekgapane (Guido), Francesco Castoro (Pietro), Luca Tittoto (Gilberto), Lorenzo Barbieri (Brunone), Federica Vitali (Geltrude), and Matteo Mezzaro (Nicola). Alessandro De Marchi conducts the Academia Montis Regalis and the Coro Donizetti Opera (Chorus Master Fabio Tartari). Set design by Andrea Belli; costume design by Valeria Donata Bettella; lighting design by Fiammetta Baldiserri; assistant direction by Tecla Gucci. Directed for TV by Adriano Figari and Matteo Ricchetti; sound recording by Rino Trasi and Giuseppe Famularo. Sung in Italian. Released 2019, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: NA

We had been wondering what this is all about. Thanks to Mark Pullinger for telling us in the April 2020 Gramophone at page 110. Seems the director was about to stage the heroic opera Enrico d’ Borgogna when the two most important singers fail to show up. Confusion backstage mounts as the impresario gives the costume girl a score for the lead role. The stage rotates and all that is heroic turns into all that is slapstick, and yes, that is a brown bear you see running around in the trailer below. Amid the pandemonium you hear a lot of bel canto artillery, which Pullinger liked a lot, before the impresario tries to leave town without paying the performers.

Here’s a clip from Dynamic:

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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.