Classical Music Mayhem!!

Was that a joke? If not then you're not helping your arguement.

Nope. I loved DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in "William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet". They stayed true to the text but put it in modern context and I thought it was extremely effective.

On that occasion the update works brilliantly, probably because the whole thing is so stylised- it takes real talent and vision to pull something like that off successfully though.

Now watching Handel's Theodora:


Amazon

(And Sorin, even though I'm only 10 minutes into it I think the staging is brilliant.)

The whole production is virtually flawless.

Now watching Giulio Cesare by Handel


Amazon Link

Ah I was wondering which one you would buy. What do you make of it?

Tell me that's not Caesar dressed in a bomber's jacket...

When you hear the music in Giulio Cesare you won't even notice what they are wearing!

Seriously, all you can think of is the way they're dressed? At least he's not carrying around a 9mm and an M16!

See, the issue with Netflix is that they will sometimes ship discs from different centers. This of course leads to delays in receiving sets. Yesterday when I checked the mail and saw Giulio Cesare I was quite excited. Started to watch it, got to the end of the first DVD and got ready to switch over only to find out that the other disc I had received was not Disc 2 of Giulio Cesare, but the new Futurama movie! (Which was what was next in my queue). So now I must wait for Disc 2 to arrive before finishing it up.

However, here's what I like so far. I love the staging again. I find myself quite enjoying the sparse minimalism of this type of staging, and the modern dress doesn't bother me a bit, since that's just a backdrop for the music.

Here's what I can say to this point. For the most part the singing is excellent (I do think that Ptolemy is the weakest link here). The star roles are absolutely fabulous, as is the orchestration. I don't have any issues with the "modern" interpretation (in fact, it's hardly modern at all--just the clothes), and in fact like it.

The plotline and story here are actually very cohesive, which isn't always the case with Handel's librettists. I also think the lyrics are quite good, another issue that Handel has with his librettists. The music of course is excellent, and it's quite easy to see why this was one of the most popular operas of it's time.

I'll definitely consider it if the music is good, but with opera the stagework is extremely important and it would perturb me to no end to see Caesar running about in WWII garments - he was a Roman for pity's sake! Nevertheless, I'll make a note of this if I decide to make a go of this piece... Thanks for the interesting review, Smiley.

Not good at all, very poorly performed.

Not terribly surprising; I usually find Koopman's work to be very lack-lustre.

Me too, I find both his playing and conducting very poor. His music is very "dry", exactly opposite to people such as Savall, who are very "rich" in their tone.