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BD Opera of Wagner's Parcifal from Baden-Barden

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Posted on July 15, 2012 at 19:41:24
John C. - Aussie
Audiophile

Posts: 4655
Location: Northern Tasmania
Joined: November 9, 1999
Contributor
  Since:
May 5, 2000

Wow this is a LONG opera and is a work I'm unfamiliar with. I'm not attempting it in the one sitting, that would be too much for me, but I'm well into Act 2 on the second disc so thought to comment.

It is a traditional production with very effective and bleak staging - no Eurotrash here,and the singing is glorious. BUT the action, what there is, is VERY slow so it does seem to drag on interminably. The close up shots of the singers show them perspiring profusely so the hot lights do not make their position very comfortable.

I'm guessing the discs have not been a raging commercial success as there are no comments at all at Amazon USA although there are a couple at Amazon UK.

The audio and video are absolutely stunning and the singing is brilliant but this Wagner opera is obviously not everybody's favourite. Very highly recommended.

John

Enjoying 12,000 mostly classical CDs via Sennheiser HD800 headphones & M2TECH Vaughan DAC -> HeadRoom BlockHead headphone amplifier fed from a Meridian (Sooloos) server system.
The main 7.1 MC electrostatic speaker system is for A/V at night.

 

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RE: BD Opera of Wagner's Parcifal from Baden-Barden, posted on July 17, 2012 at 22:32:39
Posts: 5259
Location: SF Bay Area
Joined: February 17, 2004
Contributor
  Since:
February 6, 2012
Parsifal is one of those operas where I can hardly survive the emotional toll it takes on me - it's just too much, so I restrict listening to it to special occasions.

I don't know why, but I'm uneasy about Nagano - and I say this despite some wonderful efforts he made on behalf of my wife's father. I guess it's partly that I'll never forgive him for participating in that Eurotrash (except that it's Japanese in this case) version of Rimsky-Korsakoff's "Le Coq d'or".

The Parsifal recording of choice around our house is the Levine Met DVD, but I'm sure from what you say that this new Nagano recording must be good too.

 

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