Rigoletto — HDVDARTS

Verdi Rigoletto opera to libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. Directed 2021 by Oliver Mears at the Royal Opera House. Stars Carlos Álvarez (Rigoletto), Liparit Avetisyan (Duke), Lisette Oropesa (Gilda), Brindley Sherratt (Sparafucile), Ramona Zaharia (Maddalena), Kseniia Nikolaieva (Giovanna), Eric Greene (Monterone), Dominic Sedgwick (Marullo), Egor Zhuravskii (Borsa). Antonio Pappano conducts the Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House (Chorus Master William Spaulding). Set design by Simon Lima Holdsworth; costume design by Ilona Karas; lighting design by Fabiana Piccioli; movement direction by Anna Morrissey. Directed for TV by Peter Jones. Sung in Italian. Released 2022, disc features 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: NA

This new production from the Royal Opera House got mostly rave reviews from critics who saw it live. For example, Tim Ashley, writing in The Guardian, says “Álvarez is utterly compelling as Rigoletto. Oropesa makes a matchless Gilda, singing with an extraordinary beauty of tone and understated depth of feeling: this really is one of the truly great performances.” So this would probably be a good choice even though we already have several top-drawer HDVDs of Rigoletto.

Here are some trailers:

Buy on Amazon

‎ OR

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.