Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus
James Levine

Production & Set Design: Franco Zeffirelli
Costume Design: Anna Anni
Principal Costumes: Sylvia Nolan
Lighting Design: Wayne Chouinard
Stage Director: Stephen Lawless
Video Director: Gary Halvorson

The latest Deutsche Grammophon DVD from The Met features two of the most popular opera stars of our day in one of Mozart's greatest masterpieces.

Bryn Terfel and Renée Fleming star in this sumptuous Franco Zeffirelli production of Mozart's Don Giovanni.

Bryn Terfel is one of the leading bass-baritones in the world today and, after having established his Mozart credentials singing the roles of Leporello and Figaro, he has in more recent times become the personification of opera's most famous anti-hero. By his side, Renée Fleming returns to The Met as the Donna Anna of one's dreams. Fleming captures not only the passion and dignity of this wronged woman, but sails through some of Mozart's fiendish writing with élan.

The cast includes Paul Groves and Ferruccio Furlanetto and rising stars Solveig Kringelborn (who some Sydneysiders may remember from her Mozart concerts here two years ago) and Hei-Kyung Hong.

Franco Zeffirelli's productions are famous for their spectacle and lavish attention to detail. This Don Giovanni is no exception and will thrill lovers of traditional stagings.

Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus
James Levine

Production: John Copley
Costume and Set Design: Beni Montresor
Lighting Design: Gil Wechsler
Video Director: Brian Large

Kathleen Battle and Luciano Pavarotti are a delightful romantic pair in this light- hearted rustic story of love in which all ends happily.

Donizetti's wonderful comedy L'Elisir d'Amore has always been one of his most popular operas and it is easy to hear why in this lovely Met production. Initially available on video and now released on DVD, this performance is sure to please all the admirers of the opera and of its two stars.

Kathleen Battle is perfectly cast as the proud minx Adina. She exhibits a wonderful flair for comedy and, of course, sings this delicious score as to the manor born. Luciano Pavarotti was surely destined to play Nemorino. His characterisation of the simple fellow who loves above his station is very funny, but also very touching. Vocally, the role also suits the Italian tenor perfectly; his sunny voice is guaranteed to melt the stoniest heart and his performance of the famous "Una furtiva lagrima" is a tremendous highlight.

Juan Pons and the veteran comic Enzo Dara are never out of the picture, both bringing their supporting characters vividly to life.  

The Copley production is a lively affair that lovingly recaptures village life and always compliments the story.

ARTISTS
Mirella Freni - Fedora
Ainhoa Arteta - Countess Olga Sukarov
Plácido Domingo - Loris Ipanov
Dwayne Croft - De Siriex
Jean-Yves Thibaudet - Boleslao Lazinski
& supporting cast
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus
Roberto Abbado

Production: Beppe De Tomasi · Set Design: Ferruccio Villagrossi
Costume Design: Pier Luciano Cavallotti · Lighting Design: Wayne Chouinard
A Metropolitan Opera Production
Video Director: Brian Large

In the MET production of Giordano's Fedora from 1997 long time MET and international favourite soprano Mirella Freni reconquered New York as a glamorous Russian princess involved with a dashing aristocratic spy (the wildly cheered Plácido Domingo, triumphing in a part Enrico Caruso created). Roberto Abbado conducts.

Beppe de Tomasi's production is wonderfully theatrical. It is well served by Ferruccio Villagrossi's appropriately period-specific designs, with their opulent representation of belle époque high society.

Mirella Freni did not disappoint either her audience or the critics, who were unanimous in their praise for her dramatic authority and the power, warmth and brilliance of her voice. Regal epithets were in the air, and the partnership of Freni and Domingo was described as "operatic royalty". Freni made her stage debut as Micaëla in Carmen in 1955. Here she is on the Met stage more than 40 years later, her incomparable, securely supported voice intact, a tribute to the care she has taken with it and her choice of repertoire over the years.

Placido Domingo has repeatedly declared the role of Loris Ipanov to be among his favourites. Loris has barely appeared on stage when he is asked to sing the most famous number in the score, the show-stopping aria "Amor ti vieta"; during the first run, the New York critic for the British Opera magazine found this and the similarly brief aria "Vedi, io piango" from later in the act "almost worth the price of admission in themselves."

The sparring partners, diplomat De Siriex and the flirtatious Countess Olga Sukarov, are played by the baritone Dwayne Croft and the Basque soprano Ainhoa Arteta. In their sequence of verbal jousting, Croft's suavely sung "La donna russa" is matched by Olga's frequently cut song comparing French men to champagne. By the third act they seem ready to settle their differences, after the revelation that Olga's Polish pianist protégé was a spy (although we knew all along that he was Jean-Yves Thibaudet, making a voiceless Met debut).

Fedora is the fifth project of the expanded collaboration between Deutsche Grammophon and The Metropolitan Opera, which represents a major step in the rapidly growing market of opera on DVD. The features of DGG's state-of-the art DVD-Video releases include superb picture quality and improved audio quality with two surround sound options: PCM Stereo PCM and DTS 5.1 + Dolby Digital 5.1 surround.