La Salustia — HDVDARTS

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi La Salustia opera after an anonymous adaptation of Apostolo Zeno's Alessandro Severo. Directed 2011 by Juliette Deschamps at the Teatro G.B. Pergolesi, Jesi, as part of the Fondazione Pergolesi Spontini Music Festival. Stars Vittorio Prato (Marziano), Serena Malfi (Salustia), Laura Polverell (Giulia), Florin Cezar Ouatu (Alessandro), Giacinta Nicotra (Albina), and Maria Hinojosa Montenegro (Claudio). Corrado Rovaris conducts the Accademia Barocca de I Virtuosi Italiani. Sets by Benito Leonori; costumes by Vanessa Sannino, lighting by Alessandro Carsetti. Directed for TV by Tiziano Manchini. Sung in Italian. Released 2013, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: NA

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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.