Monteverdi Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria opera to libretto by Giacomo Badoaro. Directed 2021 by Robert Carsen at the Maggio Musicale Teatro della Pergola. Stars Charles Workman (Ulisse), Anicio Zorzi Giustiniani (Telemaco), Delphine Galou (Penelope), John Daszak (Iro), Francesco Milanese (Il Tempo), Marina De Liso (Guinone), Eleonora Bellocci (La Fortuna), Gianluca Margheri (Giove), Guido Loconsolo (Nettuno), Arianna Vendittelli (Minerva), Konstantin Derri (Amore), Andrea Patucelli (Antinoo), Pierre-Antoine Chaumien (Anfinomo / L’Humana fragilità), James Hall (Pisandro), Miriam Albano ( Melanto / L’Humana fragilità); Hugo Hymas (Eurimaco); Mark Milhofer (Eumete / L’Humana fragilità), and Natascha Petrinsky (Ericlea). Ottavio Dantone conducts the Accademia Bizantina. Assistant direction by Jean-Michel Criqui; set design by Radu Boruzescu; assistant set design by Catalina Delta; lighting design by Robert Carsen and Peter van Praet; costume design by Luis Carvalho; assistant costume design by Edoardo Russo; playwright was Ian Burton. Directed for TV by Tiziano Mancini; video produced by Metis; sound recording, editing, and post-production by MASClassica Audio Recording, Claudio Speranzni and Antonio Martino. Sung in Italian. Released 2022, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: NA
Alexandra Coghian waxes ecstatic over this at page 93 of the July 2022 Gramophone, and the disc is named July Video of the Month. This was another performance in an empty theater during the time of Covid. Still, Alexandra finds a “nobility to Workman’s hero that finds answer in Galou’s staunch queen”. And she goes on to calls the final scene “breathless in its musical reinventions — taking us from numbness to a rapturous, erotic ending in a thrilling tumble of musical action.” Wow.
Here’s a trailer from Dynamic:
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