Product Details

• Actors: Angelika Kirchschlager, Gordon Gietz, Rodney Gilfry, Dale Duesing
• Directors: Trevor Nunn
• Format: Classical, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (DTS 5.1), English (Stereo)
• Subtitles: English, German, French, Spanish, Italian
• Region: All Regions
• Aspect Ratio: 1.77:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Opus Arte
• DVD Release Date: March 30, 2010
• Run Time: 223 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0033A9IQQ
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #79,839 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

MyReviewer.com, Alan Titherington, February 19, 2010

Audio & Visual

All very fine indeed, with the DTS sound almost blowing up the speakers in some places. The diction of the singers is exemplary, but there are times when the musical lines become so complex that subtitles are a necessity (notably the fight in the cocktail bar).

The sets are quite drab, but when there are bright colours they stand out confidentally and Mark Henderson's lighting is captured impressively...

Conclusion

...there are some incredibly beautiful and affecting sections of music, most notably when the libretto quotes the poetry so prevalent in the original story, no more so than at the end, when Stingo picks up the book of Emily Dickinson from Sophie's dead hand and reads the poem `Ample make this bed'. Following this are words and musc which you have waited a long time to hear, when the older Stingo asks "At Auschwitz, tell me, 'Where was God?' The response: 'Where was man?'". Here, Maw allows us to imagine the horror and salvation of the last three and a half hours without dictating our emotions, and it's almost worth the wait.

There is absolutely nothing to complain about with the performances.

Rattle conducts the work as if he really does believe, albeit a little misguidedly, that this is one of the best British operas of the last few decades and the orchestral playing is phenomenal throughout.

On stage, the singing and acting is fantastic, with Angelika Kirchschlager making the role her own. Not being a first-language English speaker, her accent is suitably `Polish' and yet her diction is superb (as is everyone's). She even manages to make a lot of sense of Maw's sometimes quite jagged musical lines, and in fact, all the main characters actually make much of the stilted dialogue come to life, which is somttimes a difficult thing to do when lifted almost verbatim from the page.

Maw has unfortunately left out a lot of the depth these people deserve, and so Nathan Landau is a very `black and white' paranoid schizophrenic, yet even with this yoke, Rod Gilfrey is capable of being wonderfully menacing and gushingly romantic within moments.

The `central' character of Stingo is, as I mentioned, sung by two people. The younger, Gordon Gietz, sings with a great Southern twang, exuding the innocence he would like to get rid of as soon as possible, and has a fine, lightish, tenor voice. The elder (`The Narrator') Stingo is performed by the baritone Dale Duesing (so Stingo's voice has obviously broken over the years) and it is he who is on stage for the longest, or so it seems. His character has to go through the emotions of every other character on stage, and this can sometimes lead to a bit of hamming-up, but this is Peter Hall's fault. Duesing's voice is strong and lasts the considerable distance, leaving the final statement to create the almost unbearable emotional punch you have been waiting for (bar Kirchsclager's animal-like scream after sacrificing her daughter to the gas chambers).

Since this first production, the opera has travelled to Europe and the States (in different productions and with different music directors). Maw himself shortened the work considerably for future performances, and some of the conductors even added a few more cuts. I think it's great Opus Arte have had the guts to release the whole thing, as it shows, if nothing else, the importance of contemporary opera in modern culture, and that the company of the Royal Opera have few equals around the globe.

Product Description

In 2002, Nicholas Maw's opera Sophie's Choice, based on the novel by William Styron, was given its premiere at the Royal Opera House. The subject had struck Maw when he had first watched the film several years previously, and he immediately felt it would be 'the most extraordinary basis for an opera'. Commissioned by the Royal Opera House and BBC Radio 3, Maw embarked on an adaptation of Styron's book, which took six years to complete. Conducted by Simon Rattle, a long-term enthusiast of Nicholas Maw's music, and with a wonderful cast led by Angelika Kirchschlager, Rod Gilfry, Dale Duesing and Gordon Gietz, the work won international acclaim and was later restaged in Washington, Berlin and Vienna. The Royal Opera House celebrates the work of this British composer, who died in 2009, with the release on DVD of the BBC transmission, as broadcast live in December 2002.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Important Contribution, April 14, 2010

By 

Bartalk - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Maw: Sophie's Choice (DVD)

Maw's Sophie's Choice is an important contribution to the history of modern opera. Terrific performances by the cast and expertly conducted by Simon Rattle. Maw's style is as individual as the story itself. At times, in the land of Berg and Wozzeck, or Britten and Peter Grimes or even Richard Strauss' grand romantic use of the orchestra, Maw's technical facility has never been more brilliantly exposed.
Apparently, the person who wrote the review saying there was "no melody" doesn't have the foggiest idea of the powerful musical content in this work. Actually, there is over three hours of melody in the opera, one after the other, interwoven in an incredibly intricate fashion. Sometimes very complex, sometimes as simple as the profoundly beautiful Dickinson settings of "Because I Could Not Stop For Death"and "Ample Make This Bed". The libretto, written by Maw, comes directly from Styron's novel and much of the vocal writing alternates from a quasi "recitative" style (which dictates the pace of action) to incredibly lyrical, dramatic high points throughout the opera.
This work is not for the musically timid and will take the average listener more than one hearing to begin to comprehend its content.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Moving literary adadptation, May 24, 2010

By 

Daniel R. Coombs "Contemporary clarinet guy" (Mesa, AZ United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Maw: Sophie's Choice (DVD)

Opera has long been a very effective vehicle for transferring classic literature into a poignant musical experience. Recent indelible examples include " McTeague " by William Bolcom, " Emmeline " by Tobias Picker, " A Streetcar Named Desire " by Andre Previn and " Willie Stark " (after "All the King's Men" by Robert Penn Warren) by Carlisle Floyd. Immediately add to this list of "must see" contemporary operas, Nicholas Maw's opera "Sophie's Choice" , an opera inspired by William Styron's acclaimed novel. (Actually, Maw's initial inspiration resulted his rental of the film version with Merryl Streep!) Nicholas Maw was born in England in 1935 and just passed away in 2009. In the 1980s, he began dividing his time between Britain and the United States, becoming a longtime resident of the Washington, D.C., area. Maw's major compositions include an evening-long concert work called Odyssey , and a Violin Concerto written in 1993 for violinist Joshua Bell. He has also written two other operas, both comedies, called One-Man Show and The Rising of the Moon . Maw contacted the author himself and asked Styron if he might be interested in writing the opera's libretto. Styron declined, but suggested that the composer write the libretto himself -- and that's exactly what Maw did. The opera was eventually composed on a commission from the BBC and London's Royal Opera House, which presented the premiere in 2002. A recent release of the Royal Opera House production, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, is certainly well worth seeing at home with a nice sound system (Opus Arte DVD 1024)! Like most of Maw's later compositions, the language is tonal and the emotional impact is strong. The cast here is the same as that from its American premiere with the Washington National Opera and features Angelika Kirchschlager as Sophie, Rod Gilfry as Nathan Landau, and Gordon Gietz as Stingo. (Gilfry in particular has made a career on contemporary opera and excels at portraying a charismatic, brooding male who is inwardly quite troubled - see his Stanley Kowalksi in Previn's "Streetcar"!) In this opera setting, strong compliments also go to the always fascinating Dale Duesing who sings the narrator (an older Stingo) For any admirer of the movie or the original novel, who might be wondering, the opera truly lives up to the searing emotional impact of both, packing music and drama you won't soon forget. Sophie has an almost ironic predilection for the poetry of Emily Dickenson. The closing scene in which Stingo discovers that Sophie has died while reading Dickenson as the narrator answers the famous question about Auschwitz ("Where was God?.... Where was Man?") will almost certainly choke one up and did bring tears to my wife. Production values are top notch and this piece and this DVD are an essentail addition to any collection of operas written over the past thirty years by wonderful composers any where.

1.0 out of 5 stars Not a Review but a question, September 5, 2011

By 

frssalome "frssalome" (CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Maw: Sophie's Choice (DVD)

Did anyone else have a problem playing this DVD? I tried to play it on 2 different (Samsung) blu-ray players and the picture was jerky and no sound. It played fine on my newphew's xbox. I did pick the "stereo" option. Maybe it was only me but it's something to be aware of.