Nabucco

Nabucco has some of Verdi's most beautiful music(Dio Di Guida, the big confrontation between Nabucco and Abigaille and of course Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves), and while plot-wise it's not as strong as Macbeth it is one of the better early Verdi operas and his first great one. There are some great Nabucco DVDs out there, the best being the 1985 La Scala, 2002 Met and 2004 Genova ones. The only real misfire was the production with Maestri, Burchuladze and Gruber, the conducting and the performances of Nabucco and Zaccaria were fine but everything else wasn't.

This production gets a mixed reaction from me. The best asset is Walter Donati's Nabucco, possessing a firm and powerful voice of such clarity, phrased beautifully, and he is very moving and commanding in the role. Most of the performances actually are quite good, Alessandro Teliga is a noble Zaccaria, Peter Daaliysky is a sonorously sung High priest and Malgorzata Walweska a heartfelt Fenena. The orchestral playing has good energy and beautiful well-balanced tone and accommodate the singers more than adequately, the chorus' renditions of their music are hauntingly beautiful and the conducting is solid. The stage direction has the right amount of intensity and pathos, though there are productions of Nabucco that are a little more compelling in these regards. The camera work and picture quality are acceptable enough, though straightforward.

However, Michail Agafonov has a rather strained sound in the role of Ismaele and his acting is stolid, while Galina Kalinina has a squally tone which makes it suggestive that her voice is too small for the voice-killer role of Abigaille, not only this but she simplifies the passage-work to such an extent that she's only singing less than three-quarters of the notes. The costumes and sets are drab, while there are some cuts that make you go why?, such as the overture. And in terms of sound quality the idea to mike the singers didn't work because some of the cast have strong enough voices to carry despite it being an open air venue(a beautiful one by the way) and there has a tendency to have an annoying reverb effect which gives some an unnatural sound sometimes. If you are new to the opera, it is better to read a plot synopsis first as there are no subtitles, and I saw absolutely no need for the German voice-over which succeeded only by distracting from everything going on in the production.

Overall, not terrible but not good either, if anything this is an example of a production that evoked a mixed response from me(and usually I am much more decisive about my ratings and views). 5/10 Bethany Cox