Die Entfuehrung Aus Dem Serail [Blu-ray]

Extraordinary version of an underrated Mozart opera
There's an in-built difficulty in Mozart's earliest 'mature' comic opera that every modern opera stage director must consider a challenge - the long passages of unaccompanied spoken dialogue and recitative that are scattered throughout. Yes, the actual drama of Die Entführung Aus Dem Serail is a bit silly too and the libretto isn't the most sophisticated, but even if you manage to make the plot work dramatically (having good singers can help gloss over the inconsistencies which is certainly the case here), you're still left with those lulls between Mozart's beautiful musical passages that can potentially kill the opera dead in its tracks. This production by Christof Loy at the Liceu in Barcelona, aided and abetted by an outstanding cast and an exhilarating performance of the score from the Liceu orchestra under Ivor Bolton, crucially takes account of those weaknesses, and if the result is still not entirely convincing, it's nonetheless still one of the best versions of this...

An outstanding version of Mozart's early 'singspiel' - a distinctly different art-form from his later operas
Mozart wrote this work at the age of 25 having just left the service of the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg and at the start of his freelance career as a musician. The work's commission was to be for the Emperor's own National Singspiel company as opposed to a commission for an opera, an important distinction as this turns the work into more of a play with singing than an opera (essentially a sung play).

This performance of Mozart's Singspiel, most importantly therefore, includes the whole of the dialogue. It is only by doing this of course that the work is able to make proper dramatic sense. Too often the dialogue is heavily cut. Consequently, in those cases, the whole concept of a Singspiel with its emphasis on the spoken word, as opposed to opera where the emphasis is on the sung word, is lost. No such errors are made here and this production generates great dramatic impact.

Of course, simply restoring the dialogue and failing to act it would also fail. In this...

Loy's second production of same opera on DVD with Damrau, who outdid herself!
There was a 2004 German production of this difficult to stage singspiel:
Konstanze - Diana Damrau
Blonde - Kerstin Avemo
Belmonte - Daniel Kirch
Pedrill - Peter Marsh
Osmin - Jaco Huijpen
Bassa Selim - Christoph Quest
With the exception of Damrau and Quest, the other protagonists are all new in this 2010 Liceu production. Belmonte was Christoph Strehl, and Blonde of Olga Pereyatko, Pedrillo of Norbet Ernst and with Franz Josef Selig as Osmin.
The character of Bassa Selim is a speaking role without singing, and Quest and Damrau acted with impeccable skill, while Damrau tackles the fiendishly demanding arias of konstanze at the same time.
The 2004 performance was on Youtube for some years already, and I first caught glimpse of Damrau's performance of the extended version 'Marten aller Arten' on Youtube and was totally bowed over by her superlative performance then. I got the DVD right away in order not to miss such 'great stuff'.
In...

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