Britten: Gloriana - DVD

ENGLISH

Britten: Gloriana (OA1124D) (2013)<br /> <br /> Susan Bullock (Queen Elizabeth I); Toby Spence (Robert Devereux, Earl Of Essex); Patricia Bardon (Frances, Countess Of Essex); Mark Stone (Mountjoy); Kate Royal (Penelope (Lady Rich) Sister to Essex); Jeremy Carpenter (Sir Robert Cecil); Clive Bayley (Captain of the Guard); Benjamin Bevan (Henry Cuffe); Orchestra & Chorus of the Royal Opera House; Paul Daniel<br /> <br /> Central to the Royal Opera's centenary celebrations marking the birth of Benjamin Britten was Richard Jones's witty and insightful new production of the royal operatic pageant that Britten wrote to honour the Coronation, exploring the late life, love and death of Queen Elizabeth the First. With powerfully characterised performances by Susan Bullock as Queen Elizabeth and Toby Spence as the dashing and treacherous Earl of Essex, Gloriana is revealed as at once a celebration and a tragedy. Filmed in High Definition and recorded in True Surround Sound. <br /> <br /> "[Director, Richard Jones] paints the picture with a delicate brush and an affectionate humour which also allows deeper emotion to shine through: his staging of the apotheosis in which reality dissolves into a hallucinatory newsreel is both moving and surprising. Paul Daniel conducts considerately, and there are notably strong contributions from the lower voices of Mark Stone (Mountjoy), Clive Bayley (Raleigh), Brindley Sherratt (Ballad Singer) and Jeremy Carpenter (Cecil)." (The Daily Telegraph)<br /> <br /> "The pleasure of the piece lies in the music’s unexpected flashes of beauty, in its ironical foreshadowings of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and above all in the community masque which Lucy Burge’s choreography and Ultz’s visual wit make both comic and touching. And what performances we get: Susan Bullock is an awe-inspiring Gloriana - imperious, perverse, tormented – while Toby Spence, as Essex, has regained all his pristine vocal lustre. Mark Stone’s Mountjoy, Clive Bayley’s Raleigh, and Andrew Tortise’s Spirit of the Masque are each outstanding. Covent Garden has now shown that Gloriana is, if not a great work, certainly one of the most intriguing in the canon." (The Independent)<br /> <br /> "The conductor’s reading was ravishingly shaped, though, and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House communicated colours with absolute stylishness." (www.classicalsource.com)