Verdi Messa da Requiem

Verdi Messa da Requiem. Recorded 2011 at the Teatro Farnese as part of the Verdi Festival Parma and published as the last release in the Tutto Verdi project. Yuri Temirkanov conducts the Orchestra e Coro del Teatro Regio di Parma (Chorus Master Martino Faggiani). Singers are Dimitra Theodossiou (soprano), Sonia Ganassi (mezzo-soprano), Francesco Meli (tenor), and Riccardo Zanellato (bass). Directed for TV by Tiziano Mancini. Includes a bonus, directed by Sergej Grguric, called Verdi's Backyard, about the Parma region (near Verdi's birthplace) that Verdi called home and where the famous Verdi Festival is located. Sung in Latin. 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.