Erich Wolfgang Korngold Violanta opera to a libretto by Hans Müller. Directed 2020 by Pier Luigi Pizzi at the Teatro Regio Torino. Stars Annemarie Kremer (Violanta), Michael Kupfer-Radecky (Simone Trovai), Norman Reinhardt (Alfonso), Peter Sonn (Giovanni Bracca), Soula Parassidis (Bice), Anna Maria Chiuri (Barbara), Joan Folqué (Matteo), Cristiano Olivieri (First Soldier), Gabriel Alexander Wernick (Second Soldier), Eugenia Braynova (First Maid), and Claudia De Pian (Second Maid). Pinchas Steinberg conducts the Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro Regio Torino (Chorus Master Andrea Secchi). Set and costume design by Pier Luigi Pizzi; lighting design by Andrea Anfossi. Directed for TV by Matteo Ricchetti; editing by Adriano Figari; sound recording by Rino Trasi. Sung in German. Released 2020, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: D
I happened by accident to see this recording streamed for free in the spring of 2020 on the website operavision.eu. Seeing it absolutely cold, I thought it was well-done and mildly interesting but too shallow and short to be published on disc unless it was part of a double-feature show. I didn’t know that Violanta entered the world in exactly that manner in 1916 in Munich when Violanta and Korngold’s other one-act opera, Der Ring des Polykrates, premiered together. Korngold was then age 19.
Gramophone critic Mike Ashman also happened to see this on operavision.eu. He thought enough of the work to get it featured in Gramophones section for “The Best Online Music” where he praised the opera for excellent orchestration and lush-looking staging by Pier Luigi Pizzi. Eric Myers chimed in also in the November 2020 Opera News (pages 44-45) where he praises this in it’s Blu-ray form for “music of refulgent beauty and seething tension, full of the kind of powerful, haunting melodies that marked Korngold’s entire output. “
Now I can buy this for $25 to $30. We don’t pay attention to prices on this website, but we do consider value. Recently Dynamic has published a number of short one-act operas standalone on Blu-ray discs at prices we expect for videos of operas that last 2 to 3 hours. H’m. I would consider this title a B level recording if the publisher was giving it away. With it’s regular retail price, I have to give this a D for questionable value, i.e., don’t buy this unless you have a special reason. If this were combined with another short opera, this could get you back into the B range. Somebody at Dynamic is applying too much torque and stripping threads.
Here’s a trailer from Dynamic:
OR
