Product Details

• Actors: Renee Fleming, Anne Sofie von Otter, Gerald Finley, Dietrich Henschel, Barry Banks
• Format: Classical, Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: French (Mono)
• Subtitles: German, English, Italian, Spanish, French
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Tdk DVD Video
• DVD Release Date: October 18, 2005
• Run Time: 148 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000B6N6F4
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #142,489 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

RICHARD STRAUSS:CAPRICCIO - DVD Movie

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Such a pleasure...., December 3, 2005

By 

I. Martinez-Ybor "Ignacio Martínez-Ybor" (Miami, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Strauss: Capriccio (DVD)

Cappriccio may well be the perfect opera for DVD. It is not as rare to find in the opera house as it used to be but it still has a way of getting lost in empty spaces unless one is sitting close. So, it is a pleasure to have a performance as good as this, subtitled, with excellent sound, to watch comfortably at home. And what a beautiful, witty "conversation with music" it truly is.

The singers are all excellent with fresh, well focused voices, playing well with and against each other as this paramount ensemble opera demands. Standouts for me were von Otter, a superb musician in top form, as an elegant, decadent, slightly wacky Clarion; Hawlata, as LaRoche, authoritative, sonorous, indeed stentorian and, in the end, humane, as he should be; Reiner Tröst, one of the most beautiful lyric tenor voices around, bringing much poetry and ardor to Flammand, the musician. Renée Fleming is in glorious voice but occassionally, though not very often, brings a strange "pop music" color to the voice quite alien to Strauss. It's an artistic choice I find distracting and baffling and wish she would not take. Her Countess is more country-club than aristocratic, but the vocal splendor makes this sound like quibbling. Indeed, everyone is fine, very musical, and warmly supported and encouraged from the pit. The opening sextet is played ravishingly.

The opera is staged in 1942, otherwise, like in the libretto, at the Countess' chateau outside Paris. It works well and does no violence to the spirit or letter of the work (other than some reference to horses and coaches). However, the DVD producer has grafted some shots to what otherwise seems to be a live Palais Garnier performance, to "open-up" the work, and to me these don't work well at all. Thus during the opening string sextet we see Fleming walking around the Grand Foyer of the Garnier and sitting herself in the auditorium as if she were dropping in on a rehearsal in her chateau's theatre where the characters are gathering. The idea is clever but it proves discontinuous with the performance of the opera itself. Similarly, the great "mondschein" interlude with its ecstatic horn melody later passing on to the strings is visually marred by shots of the Countess and her brother at a box, poet and composer at an opposite box, nodding at each other while waiting for the Final Scene of the opera the latter two have composed for the Countess to begin. Well, to me this is a tasteless distraction, a disastrous lapse: the music is some of the most beautiful and eloquent Strauss ever wrote, it needs nothing but itself. Shots of the orchestra playing it would have sufficed. Other than this gaucherie and the earlier miscalculation, the production is quite witty, energetic and alive.

The overall spirit, drive, and verve of the musical realization and the production, with the added treat of the Palais Garnier setting make any quibbles I may have something to note but dispense with in deciding to acquire this splendid performance. It will give much joy. Repeatedly.

27 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Uneven Capriccio, November 20, 2005

By 

B. Farconi (Rockville, MD) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Strauss: Capriccio (DVD)

I liked the production of the opera, the sets within sets and the mirrors, the very final scene when the sets were lifted up was very ingenious, but the singing was not as uniformly good. Finley and von Otter very outstanding, and Hawlata is always a pleasure to hear, but the delivery of the main star was not the best. Fleming is acclaimed for her Strauss but I was surprised at the liberties she takes with the music line, to the point where I found it irritating. This is a second opera on film after Manon where I found her delivery spoiled the enjoyment of the opera for me. There is another Capriccio DVD available with Te Kanawa and Troyanos which is much better production overall, this one should be noted mostly for the beautiful sets and costumes.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Carsen's brilliant Capriccio, May 30, 2008

By 

Robert L. A. Clark (Manhattan, KS USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Strauss: Capriccio (DVD)

I was lucky enough to see this production in Paris in July 2004. I had already seen Carsen's brilliant 'Hoffmann' at Bastille with Dessay and was not disappointed by his 'Capriccio'. Though some may find his approach 'minimalist' or 'distracting', for me there is a very profound exploration of theater in/as performance but also as metaphor. The usual boundaries between onstage-backstage-house, performer-stagehand-viewer dissolve away, allowing Carsen to capture the theatrical event in all its complexity. 'Capriccio' is the perfect vehicle for this type of exploration, with its tension between words and music AND (what often gets left out of the equation) the theatrical art that allows both to come to life. It is no accident, I think, that one of the strongest and indeed central performances in this production of strong performances is given by Franz Hawlata as the theater director. I also do not want to forget the brief appearance of the great Robert Tear as M. Taupe, the prompter.

By foregrounding Carsen, whose wonderful work does not seem to be appreciated by some of the other reviewers, I do not wish to deemphasize the strength of the performances here. The cast is musically and dramatically superb, and through their ensemble work 'Capriccio' becomes the 'conversation piece' that Strauss imagined. When I saw it in the theater, I thought that von Otter's stupendous talent was somewhat wasted, but the DVD has completely changed my mind about that. I found myself regretting every time the camera left her.

Generally speaking, the filmed version here does a good job of capturing the performance. The film director follows Carsen's lead of expanding the playing spaces to embrace not just the backstage areas and the parlor behind the stage, but the house and public spaces as well, which are beautifully filmed. One particularly powerful moment that is not as effective as it was in the theater comes in the final scene, when Fleming steps over the fake footlights, a good example of Carsen's technique of breaking the frame. This was nothing short of breathtaking in the theater, at least for this viewer. My only complaint about the DVD is that Fleming's voice is not always well captured as she moves about the stage, at times becoming almost inaudible when she sings upstage or toward the wings. But this is a minor quibble compared to the many riches of this marvelous DVD. I would not necessarily enjoy this approach to every opera, but I strongly recommend Carsen's `Capriccio' to anyone who likes Strauss and a thinking approach to opera as theater.