Customer Reviews

Meyerbeer - Les Huguenots / Bonynge, Sutherland, Thane, Australian Opera

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Come on, guys. This is just about as good as you're gonna get nowadays. Yes, the ol' girl is past her prime. Yes the tenor is squally. But when will you hear a better cast? Not in our lifetimes, I'll bet! (Though try the Opera D'Oro CD with Corelli and Sutherland.) The production values are pretty good. Orchestra is fine. Most of the cast hit most of the notes. Let's just admit that we don't have singers anymore who can perform "The Night of the Seven Stars." If you want to see this opera, this is it. Okay?

Yes, previous reviewers are correct, the great lady is past her prime. IT DOESN'T MATTER. She is still the best singer on the stage and her acting as well as her stage manners are exemplary. She gives some of the best demonstrations of how to acknowledge audience applause without breaking character.

This was a brilliant choice for a farewell performance. It showed off her voice, and though the historic Marguerite de Valois was a bride of 18 at the time of the St. Bartholomew's massacre, Ms Sutherland playing her as an older woman doesn't spoil the opera story-line. The next best singer was the page Urbain, who has lovely arias, which she sang competently and acted well. None of the other singers were upto snuff.

The staging and sets are lovely. The third act ballet (gypsies) was well done, but not well sung. It is a pity that the Australian opera did not, at least for this occasion, import talent to match Ms. Sutherland's. I suppose it made her stand out. Bravissima, La Stupenda, bless you and thank you for sharing your great gift with us all.

I would love to hear the earlier audio version with Ms. Sutherland in the same role and with a cast that can truly be described as the seven stars. The only problem is that you have to pay almost $10 per star! Someday, I shall own it.

I enjoyed this performance very much. I finally got to see what "Les Huguenots" is all about. Why this opera is not performed regularly is a mystery to me.

It seems to me that you have to listen to it on its own terms. Just like Wagner requires you to accept him on his terms. If you fight Wagner and expect him to be this or that, you will not enjoy him and he will bore you to death (I'm still not able to sit through "Parsifal"). The same is with this opera. If you accept the length and let it unfold, when Act 4 comes you will be gripped in the drama. The beauty of the scene with Raoul and Valentine will amaze you and hold you through the end of the opera.

Instead of another "Lucia di Lammermoor" let's have this performed. However you need a good tenor and the one on this performance is pretty good.

The video is a little dark at times and the homage to Joan Southerland is a bit long (over twenty minutes). I would have preferred more of the music and less homage. But I'm happy to have this video.

Get this video over the one with Richard Leach. That one is in German and the Nazi setting is distracting and gets in the way, especially if you are not familiar with Les Huguenots. If you want to get it as a second then OK as Leach is amazing.

I will tell you from the start, I know a good amount of things about the great masterpieces of opera: I have heard Wagner's Lohengrin, Tristan und Isolde, Der Ring des Nibelungen and Parsifal, Verdi's La Traviata and his four last works, Richard Strauss' Salome, Elektra and Rosenkavalier, Berg's Wozzek, as well as a bunch of other things. I can therefore say that I know what "Grand" opera is. And "Les Huguenots" is.

Meyerbeer has for long been disregarded as a great composer, and this because many other composers who now have a tremendous success (especially Schumann and Wagner) have made fun of him and ridiculised his musical skills. Today, peoples still find something bad to say of his music. Let me try to pop their balloons.

First, according to Meyerbeer bashers, his "melodic invention" is inferior to Bel-cantists, especially Verdi. His arias are, apparently, too short. I beg to differ. The only mistake Meyerbeer ever made in his arias was not to repeat himself. The arias in "Les huguenots" are, if you repeat their melodies like Verdi does in "Rigoletto", "La traviata" or "Il trovatore", are pretty much of similar length and expressivity. As an example, if you take, say, Raoul(the tenor)'s romance "Plus blanche que la blanche ermine" and make him repeat it completely, with other lyrics, we obtain an aria as long as "La donna e mobile", except with better orchestration. It is, however, comprehensible they may SEEM shorter, but their musical value is in no way inferior. If you want a longer aria, just play it's part of the dvd again; it'll do just like Verdi in his middle-period arias. And for those who say this composer couldn't create complex melodic episodes, just take the 16 minutes long love-duet that ends the fourth act of this opera!

Also, it would appear that Meyerbeer's operas are too pompous, give an exterior effect, and rely on "effects without causes", to quote Wagner. It supposedly threathens the building of the acts of his operas. Only a misunderstanding of the very essence of the "Historical grand opera" can lead to such beliefs. Meyerbeer's operas are deeply humane, showing how individuals at a given historical moment influence and see their lives be influenced (often tragically) by it. It is normal Meyerbeer includes "pompous" or "cause-less" episodes in his opera, to create a picture of society at that time, and thus put into relief the human drama that later unfolds before our eyes. The perfect example would be the finale of act 3, where women wish happy days to a newly married couple, while the bride must hide her pain about being married to someone else than the one she loves (don't worry, she's more strongly built than Lucia of Lammermoor).

Finally, some say such works could only appeal to the french middle-class "bourgeoisie" of the time, which had inferior musical tastes, only wanted big spectacles, etc. Well, it would then mean the territory of France extended at that time from Chicago to Moscow!

Having said what I felt necessary about Meyerbeer, I will give a few words about the production of this dvd. All sets are beautiful, but the singing is a mixed bag. John Pringle (Baritone) and Amanda Thane (Dramatic soprano) give very good performances. Anson Austin, the leading tenor, is in no way a Placido Domingo, but for a role as difficult as his, he manages pretty well. Clifford Grant (Bass) barfs his words more than he speaks them, but the singing itself is all right, though it may take time to get used to it. John Wegner (Bass I think) has a far too light voice for his role, I think, but he doesn't sing as long as some other main characters. Joan Sutherland (Coloratura soprano) is quite shaky (it is, after all, her last role), but still listenable. All of them (even Joan Sutherland) have good acting on their side, and only Grant, Sutherland and Thane have slight troubles at times with french diction. Subtitles are only in english, and the translating is quite passable. Good stereo sound, good conducting, good acoustics. The first scene of the fifth act was omitted, and what remains of it is considered as part of the fourth act.

To conclude, if you like operas with vivid and energetic orchestration, powerful chorus pieces, elegant yet expressive melodies, human dramas, grandiose finales and merry cathartic fun, this opera should be your next buy. Meyerbeer was the most successful composer of his time. We must now preserve his works, instead of denigrating them, for they are as important to french opera as Wagner's lyric dramas to germans and Verdi's last four operas to italians, and can be justly qualified as true musical powerhouses.

I agree with other reviewers that Sutherland is past her prime, but even past her prime she was still excellent. This is an opera that requires 7 top singers, and this DVD has very good singers in all 7 of these roles.

A grand farewell performance of Dame Joan Sutherland with
such very competent supporting cast. The opera's story shows
much relevance in our bickering world today. This is Meyerbeer's
masterpiece and Maestro Bonynge conducts it with great aplomb.
Buy it--it's gloriously beautiful!

The great coloratura of our time's swan song. She was well passed sixty and was shaking all the time, the coloratura and voice a mere shadow of its legendary power and awesome technique that gave her the title "Voice of the Century". She indeed was a glorious singer during the 50's 60's and 70's. Unfortunately she retired about a decade too late, and may have left some bad performances that may discredit her. This performance is legendary that it was her last. My advice, if you a big fan of the great dame, and have many recordings and tapes of her during the 60's and 70's, buy this as a momento of the great diva's life. But if you're a person who is NOT familiar with Sutherland's phenomenal career, DO NOT BUY THIS, instead, purchase the Bell Telephone VHS. Thank you

I'm getting pretty sick of all these people trashing Huguenots. I admit, Les Huguenots isn't Star Wars or even Tristan und Isolde but it is still truly a great undervalued opera. Before Wagner and Verdi transformed and magnified the opera, Meyerbeer, a Jew, was THE big opera composer. Wagner, in fact, was highly jealous of Meyerbeer's success, attacking him savagely in his infamous treatise, "Judaism in Music". Historically, Huguenots is a fascinating and all-to-rarely seen work, somewhere between the glittering bel canto of Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini, the french opera comique of Auber and Boieldieu, and the "Grand Opera" of Verdi, Wagner, and their successors. It is truly a "grand" work, its length being considerable and its subject matter and scope being equally enormous. In fact, it opens with the delightful Roccoco charm of "La Dame blanche", and ends with a French dramatic grandeur that reminds me of "Les Miserables". That said, it also contains some of the most delightful and glittering (not to mention difficult) music ever written. Musically (although perhaps not dramatically) Act II deserves particular attention, with Sutherland's breathtaking coluratura. Les Huguenots will be valued by any fans of Sutherland, French Romantic or Roccoco opera, or anyone intersted witnessing a wonderful but neglected musical (not to mention historical) document.

Dame Joan obviously could not be compared to her prime at her farewell performance. However, that was a very good decision to say farewell to all her fans in this glorious and very seldom performed opera.She still had a very good stage presence and did not have to "die or go mad " at the end.The final farewell scene was impressive, I don't think any opera singer ever had such a sumptious farewell occasion. It showed how her fans loved her and would missed her.That was in sharp contrast to how Pavarotti bid farewell to her fans in New York.Both occsions would be well talked about and remembered.I wished they have taped the OONY concert performance of the same opera at Carnegie Hall last year.That was a memorable performance.

Ladies and Gentlemen -- Unless you want a memento of Dame Joan Sutherland's last performance, I agree with another reviewer who said DO NOT BUY THIS DVD. The opera is boring and senseless, the production and direction is acceptable at best, and the singing -- well, lets just say it leaves much to be desired except for Amanda Thane. Clifford Grant was painful to listen to most of the time and while Anson Austin (tenor lead) has most the notes, he has no clue how to sing convincingly. Dame Joan was shaky and only appears in Acts 2 & 3 of this 5 act opera. Acts 4 & 5 are mislabeled as only Act 4 on the DVD insert. If you want to see La Stupenda in something worthwhile, try the Norma or Anna Bolena with the Canadian Opera Company or her Lucia from the Met. MAYBE, the only redeeming thing on this DVD is the 28 min. credit cue point at the end when she is on stage AFTER the performance is over.