Gheorghiu, Angela

Puccini - La Boheme (The Metropolitan Opera HD Live Series)

The Metropolitan Opera's acclaimed Live in High-Definition series, which projects live performances into theaters across the globe, has met with unprecedented critical and commercial success and has made opera convenient and affordable to millions of viewers worldwide. Now, EMI Classics is proud to collaborate with The Met to release 6 new DVDs made from these broadcast performances.

Puccini's immortal classic of love and loss, with Franco Zeffirelli's sumptuous, iconic production and Nicola Luisotti's expressive conducting. Angela Gheorghiu, the leading Puccini soprano of our time, reprises the role of Mimì, while tenor Ramón Vargas gives a sensitive reading of Rodolfo. All these forces combine for a truly definitive performance of this beloved opera!

Puccini - Tosca / Gheorghiu, Alagna, Raimondi, Muraro, Cangelosi, Pappano, Royal Opera (2000 film)

Benoit Jacquot's filmed Tosca treads a fine line between operatic staginess and cinematic contrivance. As per the libretto, each act takes place in a single setting, but with the singers here miming to a pre-recorded soundtrack. Jacquot freely reminds us of the conceit with cutaways to the recording session itself--revealing conductor, orchestra, and soloists at work--thus a bridge is made between the on-screen action and the music-making itself, and the inherent duality of any opera production is laid refreshingly bare. The same cannot be said for the director's decision to interpolate spoken dialogue over the music in key places--a distraction, not an enhancement.

Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna are glamorous and attractive enough to make the most of their Hollywood-style close-ups; their singing easily bears similar close scrutiny--as anyone who owns the CD soundtrack album will surely already know. If Alagna lacks a little power as Cavaradossi on record, his charismatic screen presence happily compensates; while Gheorghiu is both vocally and physically almost ideal as Tosca. Ruggero Raimondi's Scarpia completes an outstanding trio; and in the pit (or, rather, in the studio) conductor Antonio Pappano handles the drama of Puccini's score without missing a single nuance. Both musically and visually, then, this is a Tosca to treasure. --Mark Walker

Tosca: A Film by Benoit Jacquot, after the libretto of Puccini's Opera. With Angela Gheorghiu as Floria Tosca, Roberto Alagna as Mario Cavaradossi, Ruggiero Raimondi as Baron Scarpia. Conducted by Antonio Pappano with the Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. How often has it been said that opera can't be translated into film? That the camera lens accentuates an opera's artificiality and turns the protagonists into caricatures? Benoît Jacquot's masterfully inventive two-hour Tosca, will change the minds of the most diehard opera buffs and win over newcomers to the art. What's even more astounding is that this is Jacquot's first venture into opera. Yet, that may be just the point. What makes his film so compellingly audacious is that from the very start he juxtaposes black-and-white scenes of the conductor, Antonio Pappano, and the actor/singers in the recording studio with the staged opera in order to reveal the energy and work that goes into realizing a mighty work of lyrical art and ensemble acting. At other times, he uses soft-focus and grainy black-and-white and color footage of the Roman countryside, the Castel Sant' Angelo and the interiors of Baroque churches to illustrate what the actors are singing off-screen. These scenes add immeasurably to the opera's enthralling lyricism. Giacomo Puccini's music and Guiseppe Giacosa's libretto are mesmerizing and unforgettable, both enhanced by the director's focus on the drama between the three main protagonists: Floria Tosca (played by the Romanian soprano Angela Gheorghiu), her lover, the painter and political radical Mario Cavaradossi (played movingly by Roberto Alagna, Gheorghiu's off-screen husband) and the vilely magnetic Il Barone Scarpia, the fascistic Roman governor (Ruggero Raimondi). From the opening credits of red typeface on black ground, to the surprising black-and-white filming of the conductor guiding the cast with his baton through the opera's overture and first arias, to the first act in the church, the movie embraces Tosca as a drama of unbridled passions. Through the astute use of hovering overhead shots and swirling camera angles, the film projects and intensifies the emotional upheaval of the three protagonists--the possessively jealous Tosca, the tender and placating Cavaradossi who assures her she has no rivals, and the terrifying Scarpia, determined to capture the Italian fugitive Angelotti (Maurizio Murano). Jacquot demonstrates here how film can strengthen the opera's drama—the silence of the protagonists, their tortured faces, the intensity of their love, their hate, and their fear. In the second act, which takes place in the Palazzo Farnese, the dramatic interplay between Tosca and Scarpia is spellbinding. Scarpia, dining in a darkened room lit only by a roaring fire and candlelight, plots his seduction of Tosca while admiring his contorted face in the gleaming blade of the knife that he also uses to cut a bloody piece of meat. The knife is appropriately prophetic since it is the very blade with which Tosca will kill him later in the scene. Dressed in a dazzling red gown with a sweeping train, Tosca is a stunning contrast to the dark Scarpia. Her fiery sexuality understandably motivates Scarpia's temptation as it leads to his final (albeit well-deserved) doom. The finale on the rooftop of Castel Sant' Angelo has cumulative power, with Tosca leaping off the parapet into the black void after she realizes that Cavaradossi has been shot with real bullets, instead of the promised blanks. Jacquot has filmed the opera exactly as the libretto directs, ideally capturing its drama and lyricism. Even with Tosca's violent ending, Puccini's great art provides catharsis, a transporting emotional release that soars after the deeply felt power of the tragedy. Rachel Hunter

Metropolitan Opera Gala - James Levine's 25th Anniversary

Verdi - La Traviata / Gheorghiu, Lopardo, Nucci, Solti, Covent Garden (Special Edition with Highlights CD)

Angela Gheorghiu is the definitive Violetta of her generation, the standard-setter against whom all other exponents of this role must be judged for the foreseeable future. Her affinity for Verdi's fragile, gentle-hearted courtesan is rooted in a fine balance of acting and singing skills. She looks right, her body language is eloquent without overstatement, and her voice is limpid, expressive, open to a variety of subtle shadings and used gracefully and intelligently. For this, her first Traviata, Covent Garden put together a production in 1994 that is solid and straightforward but otherwise unspectacular--a fairly subdued background against which her performance stands out all the more clearly. Though lacking the vocal splendor and personal magnetism of Placido Domingo, Frank Lopardo gives a sensitive performance as Alfredo, and Sir Georg Solti paces and accents this performance with a thoughtful subtlety that is relatively rare in his work. The result is deeply satisfying. --Joe McLellan

Verdi - La Traviata / Richard Eyre, Solti, Gheorghiu, Lopardo, Nucci, ROH Covent Garden

Angela Gheorghiu is the definitive Violetta of her generation, the standard-setter against whom all other exponents of this role must be judged for the foreseeable future. Her affinity for Verdi's fragile, gentle-hearted courtesan is rooted in a fine balance of acting and singing skills. She looks right, her body language is eloquent without overstatement, and her voice is limpid, expressive, open to a variety of subtle shadings and used gracefully and intelligently. For this, her first Traviata, Covent Garden put together a production in 1994 that is solid and straightforward but otherwise unspectacular--a fairly subdued background against which her performance stands out all the more clearly. Though lacking the vocal splendor and personal magnetism of Placido Domingo, Frank Lopardo gives a sensitive performance as Alfredo, and Sir Georg Solti paces and accents this performance with a thoughtful subtlety that is relatively rare in his work. The result is deeply satisfying. --Joe McLellan

Donizetti - L'Elisir d'Amore (The Elixir of Love) / Pido, Alagna, Gheorghiu, Opera National de Lyon

With dazzling star turns by the real-life husband-and-wife team of soprano Angela Gheorghiu and tenor Roberto Alagna, this 1996 production of Donizetti's frothy romantic comedy L'Elisir d'amore ("The Elixir of Love") is a must for any opera fan. Their many detractors seem merely jealous of their stupendous success, because--at least on the evidence of this performance--Gheorghiu and Alagna have the voices, the acting skill, and (last but not least) the looks to sustain their international superstardom. Ably supporting the star couple are Roberto Scaltriti, Simone Alaimo, and Elena Dan; Frank Dunlop's clever production overcomes its needless updating to the 1920s with colorful sets and costumes. In the pit and giving Donizetti's score an agile reading are conductor Evelino Pido and the Lyon National Opera Orchestra and Chorus.

A especially welcome DVD bonus treat is the 52-minute film "Love Potion," which goes behind the scenes of the production. Fans of Gheorghiu and Alagna will particularly relish their favorites as they engagingly talk about their parts in the opera... in English, French, and Italian. --Kevin Filipski

Classics on a Summer's Evening / Sinopoli, Gheorghiu, Alagna

This is an outdoor concert for an enormous audience, staged in a large, architecturally striking public square in Dresden in July 1999, and featuring the most glamorous, young husband and wife currently active on the international operatic scene, soprano Angela Gheorghiu and tenor Roberto Alagna. Before his untimely death at age 54, Giuseppe Sinopoli was considered one of Europe's finest opera conductors, and in the Dresden orchestra and chorus he has performers who match his creative energy.

The program seems to have been selected, quite successfully, with two criteria in mind: mass popularity and opportunities to display technical brilliance. Gheorghiu and Alagna join their voices in love duets from Verdi's Otello and Puccini's Madame Butterfly that will appeal especially to the many fans who have been attracted to them as a couple. But each also sings impressive solos in some of opera's top-40 numbers, notably the "Flower Song" from Carmen and "E lucevan le stelle" from Tosca for Alagna, and "Un bel di" from Madame Butterfly and "Pace, pace, mio Dio" from La forza del Destino for Gheorghiu. The chorus and orchestra take the spotlight powerfully in showpieces from La traviata, Il trovatore, Carmen, and Aida, among other selections. The only problem, a small one, is the self-consciously chic dance numbers to selections from Carmen and Aida. --Joe McLellan

Donizett - L'Elisir d'Amore / Alagna, Gheorghiu, Scaltriti, Alaimo, Pido, Lyon Opera (Special Edition with Highlights CD)

With dazzling star turns by the real-life husband-and-wife team of soprano Angela Gheorghiu and tenor Roberto Alagna, this 1996 production of Donizetti's frothy romantic comedy L'Elisir d'amore ("The Elixir of Love") is a must for any opera fan. Their many detractors seem merely jealous of their stupendous success, because--at least on the evidence of this performance--Gheorghiu and Alagna have the voices, the acting skill, and (last but not least) the looks to sustain their international superstardom. Ably supporting the star couple are Roberto Scaltriti, Simone Alaimo, and Elena Dan; Frank Dunlop's clever production overcomes its needless updating to the 1920s with colorful sets and costumes. In the pit and giving Donizetti's score an agile reading are conductor Evelino Pido and the Lyon National Opera Orchestra and Chorus.

A especially welcome DVD bonus treat is the 52-minute film "Love Potion," which goes behind the scenes of the production. Fans of Gheorghiu and Alagna will particularly relish their favorites as they engagingly talk about their parts in the opera... in English, French, and Italian. --Kevin Filipski

Verdi - Requiem / Angela Gheorghiu, Roberto Alagna, Daniela Barcellona, Julian Konstantinov, Claudio Abbado, Berlin Philharmonic

For its sheer power and its precise balance of the two visions (epic and personal) embodied in Verdi's masterpiece, this is the Requiem to have. It would be hard to quarrel with anyone who chooses Leontyne Price in the 1967 Herbert von Karajan recording over Angela Gheorghiu, or Luciano Pavarotti over Roberto Alagna; the differences are slight and a matter of personal taste. But this is the most intensely dramatic of Verdi's works, including no less a climax than the flaming end of the world, and Claudio Abbado treats the composer's vision even more powerfully than von Karajan, with a magnificent orchestra and chorus at his disposal.

Von Karajan's soloists--all world-class and all in their best years--would be hard to surpass, but Abbado's are also excellent, and they sing with good tone and the kind of dramatic intensity demanded by Abbado--and Verdi. EMI's 16-page booklet sets a standard for the industry. --Joe McLellan

Angela Gheorghiu - Live from Covent Garden

Angela Gheorghiu first captured international attention in 1994 and rose rapidly to first-class star status. This 2001 recital, from the same opera house where her La traviata set the audience and critics on fire, shows the qualities that have made her one of the most acclaimed opera singers working today.

Gheorghiu's best-known roles are in the romantic and verismo operas of the 19th and early 20th centuries, sampled here in beautifully interpreted arias of Massenet, Charpentier, Puccini, and Cilea. In this music, her identification with the role is total, her voice tonally opulent, emotionally expressive, and exquisitely controlled. When her selections venture outside that rather restricted category, the results are equally impressive. A charming novelty is the folk-flavored aria by Romanian composer Tiberiu Brediceanu. Gheorghiu's 18th-century arias give Handel and Mozart a refreshing energy, and she is captivating in "I could have danced all night." The disc is in widescreen anamorphic format with DTS, Dolby Digital 5.0, and PCM stereo sound, and EMI's booklet is a model of what all DVD releases should offer but seldom do. --Joe McLellan