Degas: La Petite Danseuse De Degas

A Very Classical Modern Ballet
This ballet is surprisingly classical in its choreography while the music is quite the opposite, but more about that later. Patrice Bart has once again expressed his love for the classical style in the way he choreographed this homage to Edgar Degas and his sculpture of "The Little Dancer"(a figure of a young dancer standing in fourth position with her hands behind her, as in the pose on the cover of this DVD). Every aspect of the dancing is classical, including the distribution of solos among both male and female(on pointe) dancers, as well as pas de deux, and larger group dances, and arrangements for the corps de ballet. To add to the classicism, the setting itself is the late 19th century world of Parisian ballet class, whose traditions and structure are well depicted in the settings, and nicely explained in the interviews, which are included as a bonus. So, in effect, this is a ballet about ballet! The level of the choreography is what we would expect of the Paris Opera Ballet:...

Visually Stunning
The story of Marie Van Goethem, the 14-year-old ballet dancer from the Paris Opera Ballet and the model for the famous sculpture "La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans" by Degas, has always interested me. Unfortunately though, very little is known about her life after she left the Opera House.

As a devoted fan of the Paris Opera Ballet, I was very excited to see this DVD release and add it to my vast collection of performances. The sets, lighting, costumes, dancers and choreography were absolutely gorgeous...like a painting in motion. The musical score is quite another story though and is barely tolerable. Picture an orchestra pit full of 5-year-old children banging away on musical instruments and that's about what the music sounds like. As a former dancer myself, I can't even imagine having to listen and rehearse to that music for hours on end...yikes. I've rated this 4 stars, but would have given it 5 had the music not been so grating.

If you are a fan of the...

A New Classic for the Paris Opera Ballet
La Petite Danseuse de Degas, with choreography by Patrice Bart and music by Denis Levaillant, is a stunning addition to the Paris Opera Ballet repertoire.
The story is of the girl who posed for the famous statue by Degas, La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans. The sets, though somewhat minimalist, are stunning; the costumes are beautiful and completely appropriate for this ballet. The formations that are made throughout the ballet, combined with the sets and costumes, display living Degas paintings. One of the scenes in the first act, a ballet class, is a model of one of the famous studios at the Paris Opera Ballet, where Degas painted. Seeing the dancers take a class in their costumes, which of course correspond to those of Degas' paintings, give me goosebumps.
The principal dancers are all stunning and portray their dramatic roles very well. Most notably, Clairemarie Osta, as the The Little Dancer, and Benjamin Pech, as The Man in Black, an ominous, omnipresent, complex, and...

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Michel Legrand and the Cinema

Fifty Years of Film music - conducted (as well as played and SUNG) by its composer. Great Bonus doc too!
French composer Michel Legrand is amazing! The guy writes film scores you know - "A Man and A Woman" may be his most identifiable, but there's "Brian's Song", "Summer of `42" and even Barbra Streisand's film Yentl! But he's also an accomplished JAZZ pianist! And he sings too - but more on that in a minute.

This DVD captures the full, nearly two-hour, concert he did in Paris in 2009. The 79 year-old genius conducted the concert with fifty years of his film music - from his first film scores with French "new wave" directors to the "populist films like the previously mentioned Yentl. There was a full orchestra plus a smaller jazz rhythm section and - at times - the musicians form a "big band". Throughout the performance Legrand conducts and often plays the piano part. On many of the upbeat numbers he improvises. And then - on songs like "Papa Can You Hear Me?" from Yentl he sings. Not well I might say, but the guy wrote the songs so bear with him. The vocals, luckily, are not...





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Bruckner: Symphony 8 in C Minor

Bruckner par excellence
Franz Welser-Möst's Cleveland Bruckner series continues with a majestic recording of the Eighth, captured in splendid sound and video in Severance Hall and based on the second (1887) Leopold Nowak edition. The latter is unusual in itself, as most modern performances use either the Robert Haas or the earlier Nowak edition with cuts and drastic changes in the orchestration. Thus, Welser-Möst's choice restores the score in all its glory of 90 minutes duration as close as possible to the composer's intentions. And a glorious performance it is! Welser-Möst is perhaps the greatest living Bruckner interpreter alongside Christian Thielemann. For Welser-Möst, Bruckner clearly is his heart and soul. When you sit down with this disk, be prepared to spend the next ninety minutes in rapt attention, as the Cleveland audience does. This is Bruckner par excellence, with ideal tempi, an uncanny attention to detail as well as to the multiple dynamic shades, the different layers of...

BUT: Buyer beware!!
Of course this music and the documentaries are excellent on all three programs: Bruckner's Eighth Symphony, Mahler's Fifth, and Beethoven's Fifth. But this is not a review, but a warning:

The labels are wrong on two of mine. Bruckner says Bruckner but is Beethoven, and the Beethoven says Beethoven but is Bruckner. This was to be a gift, but as usual, the parent company simply can't get much right.Amazon simply does not check their merchandise, even though it's the manufacturer's fault. Always use Marketplace sellers whenever you can. I'm so tired of writing hate mail to Amazon.

Never again!

A masterpiece
I don't know who to praise more, the brilliant Austrian conductor Franz Welser-Most, or the "always surprising" Cleveland Symphony.

Not to mention the composer, Anton Bruckner. His eighth symphony is a masterpiece: some people view it as the devout Bruckner having a conversation with God. That may or may not be true, but it is well worth listening in on the conversation.

The DVD is riveting, and it's one of the finest I own.

I would like to hear from the Bruckner experts, however --- what is their opinion of this performance as opposed to the one on the Karajan boxed set of the complete Bruckner symphonies?

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Berg: Lulu

Would You Really Want a Tame "Lulu"?
A respectably-costumed bourgeoise Sunday matinee 'Lulu'? Then this production by the Zurich Opera House is NOT for you! This is a lurid, tawdry, narratively fragmented, erotically supercharged 'Lulu', exactly what it should be, in short: defiantly "entartete Kunst"! After all, Max Beckmann and Georg Grosz didn't paint water-lilies, and "The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari" didn't rely on realistic sets. Alban Berg's unfinished opera "Lulu" is one of the icons of German Expressionism in music, alongside Berg's own earlier opera "Wozzeck", and despite the brutal depravity both works portray, both have become 'standards' in the repertoires of opera companies around the world. This popularity really isn't because proper middle/upper class opera audience relish seeing their psychological closets flung open, though that might contribute. It's the music, the astounding idiomatic musical energy of Berg's vocal lines and especially his orchestral interludes. Berg's version of "twelve-tone' serial...





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