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| DVD Information |  | Donizetti - Roberto Devereux / Rudel, Sills, Alexander, New York City Opera | | | | UPC: 089948420491 | | Musicals & Performing Arts : Classical | | Amazon.com
Roberto Devereux, the last and probably the greatest opera Gaetano Donizetti composed for the San Carlo Opera House in Naples, is based on the intense, tangled relationship between Queen Elizabeth I and the Earl of Essex, who was beheaded for treason in 1601. The role of the queen is one of the strongest in the bel canto soprano repertoire. In this video (essentially a New York City Opera production transplanted to the Filene Center at Wolf Trap performing arts center outside Washington, D.C.), Beverly Sills gives one of the great performances of her career. She had been singing the role in New York for several years, to great critical acclaim, and had made it her own, though her voice was beginning to lose some of its freshness when this performance was filmed in 1974. In discussing the soprano stars of bel canto opera, we find a 180-degree polarity--at one extreme, the dramatic potency and vocal problems of Maria Callas; at the other, the vocal agility and smoothness of the dramatically unconvincing Joan Sutherland. Midway between these extremes is Sills, who acted almost as well as Callas, sang almost as beautifully as Sutherland, and balanced the two sides of her art more effectively than either.
John Alexander is solid in the title role. Susanne Marsee is relatively problem-free once she gets warmed up, and the supporting cast performs capably. Julius Rudel conducts with a good sense of style and proper balance between voices and orchestra. --Joe McLellan
From the Back Cover
In the summer of 1974, The Greater Washington Educational Telecommunications Association began videotaping a number of live operatic and concert performances at the Filene Center in Wolf Trap Farm Park for the Performing Arts in Vienna, Virginia, for telecast in an innovative new series entitled In Performance at Wolf Trap. The series met with overwhelming success, and set the stage for the many live performance telecasts which have since followed.
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