Giulio Cesare — HDVDARTS

Handel Giulio Cesare (Julius Caesar) opera to libretto by Nicola Francesco Haym. Directed 2012 by Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurie at the Salzburg Whitsun Festival. Stars Cecilia Bartoli (Cleopatra), Andreas Scholl (Cesare), Philippe Jaroussky (Sesto), Anne Sofie von Otter (Cornelia), Christophe Dumaux (Tolomeo), Ruben Drole (Achilla), Jochen Kowalski (Nirena), and Peter Kálmán (Curio). Giovanni Antonini conducts Il Giardino Armonico. Sets by Christian Fenouillat; costumes by Agostino Cavalca; lighting by Christoph Forey, choreography by Beate Vollack; dramaturgy by Konrad Kuhn. Directed for TV by Olivier Simonnet. Sung in Italian. Released 2016, disc has dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: NA

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Here's news about high-definition video disc ("HDVD") recordings of opera, ballet, classical music, plays, fine-art documentaries, and paintings. In the journal below are independent (and hard-to-find critical) reports on hundreds of HDVDs. Pick the best titles for your excelsisphere.

Feb 25. We have just completed one of our most ambitious reviews: Einstein on the Beach opera, the surreal 4 and 1/2 hour cult legend. Kudos, encomiums, and accolades to Opus Arte for giving us this authoritative and weirdly fascinating recording, which we grade A+. Absorbing and learning Einstein is uniquely challenging. We try to help out by providing aids not included in the keepcase materials: an accurate libretto and a list of segments in the opera with correct Opus Arte time stamps. Good luck!

We have some other good grades with an A for the recent Met The Pearl Fishers (Les pêcheurs de perles) and a B- for an earlier The Pearl Fishers from Naples. Also, we recently gave an A- for the new Don Quixote from the Vienna State Ballet.