05 October 2010

Los Angeles Opera's Recovered Voices: the DVDs

At least two of Los Angeles Opera's recent productions from their exciting Recovered Voices series, which features composers silenced by Nazi Germany, are being released on DVD: one disc* features two one-act operas, Zemlinsky's Der Zwerg (The Dwarf) and Ullmann's Der Zerbrochene Krug (The Broken Jug), and the other features Braunfels's Die Vogel, based on The Birds by Aristophanes. James Conlon, the guiding force behind the series, conducts both.

I didn't see any mention of the DVDs in my admittedly cursory look through the LA Opera's website, and these don't seem to be scheduled for release in the United States anytime soon, or at least I couldn't find them on either Amazon.com or ArkivMusic.com, but the links above will bring you to the British site MDT, which is extremely reliable in my experience and usually has lower prices anyway, and the discs are not region-coded, so they will play on US equipment. I especially regretted not getting down to LA to see the Braunfels, so I'm excited these are forthcoming.

* Check out the blurb on the product page from the Bay Area's own Opera Tattler!

2 comments:

John Marcher said...

You didn't miss much with regards to Die Vogel, but I would love to see Der Zwerg again on DVD.

I don't see a product page on the OT's site.

Patrick J. Vaz said...

JM: I kind of have a thing for Die Vogel, so I'm quite thrilled to have the DVD available.

The product page isn't on OT's site -- by "product page" I meant the DVD page on MDT. Click on the first link and scroll down to the italicized testimonials.