Joseph Haydn: Orlando paladino [Blu-ray]

Haydn Meets Harry Potter?
"Orlando Paladino" is said to have been the most 'popular' of the 20 operas composed by Joseph Haydn, but that success didn't survive the 19th C. Despite the evergreen popularity of the Big Five operas of Mozart, despite the thriving revival of operas by Rameau, Gluck, Paisello and other composers of Haydn's epoch, performances and even studio recordings of Haydn's operatic output have remained scarce and scarcely noticed. One has to wonder why. It's certainly not a shortcoming in the music, which has all the color and inventiveness of Haydn's symphonies and oratorios. Usually the blame is laid on the plots, the stage action. Haydn's operas are said to be far-fetched and lacking in drama. But even if that were so, wouldn't the successful revival of Handel's farther-fetched and dramatically stagnant operas suggest that another explanation is needed?

Possibly it's Haydn's "image" problem. Perhaps people imagine him as Papa, a servile old formalist in a wig and livery, bending...

Extraordinary
First , and most important, Rene Jacobs and the Frieburger Orchestra play superbly and all the singing is excellent or even better in the finest tradition. Now for some details.
Two hundred years after his death Haydn's most popular opera during his lifetime is unearthed as a treasure . Musically it stands on its own, but why buy a cd when this dvd has imaginative acting that attracts the eye, engages the mind, and makes us laugh out loud? For Orlando Paladino, a comic opera, stage directors Nigel Lowery and Amir Hasseinpour use Monty Pythonesque humor that propel it into the 21st century.. Virtually the first Haydn opera to come out on dvd (here with highest engineering quality), this live performance recording is one to watch many times and a terrific start to hours of enjoyable discussion. More reviews are sure to follow--see for yourself what is going to be talked about.

A not-so-funny Orlando.
What a disappointment from the Staatsopern of Berlin! We have seen some "controversial" Ring-cycle there, but nothing ever this primitive stageing. This is the first Haydn opera available on DVD, with a good cast and a very respectable orchestra, and it came on the level of a kiddie-show.

The British director and his Iranian choreographer pushed the singers to make the opera "heroic-comic"; unfortunately the whole thing became a Punch-and-Judy show, and was not a bit funny or "comic" no matter how hard they tried. You could not help feeling sorry for the brilliant soprano Marlis Petersen and some others of the cast for being degraded to this level of primitiveness. They visually felt uncomfortable, and we could not hear any laughs either from the Staatsopern audience during the whole "funny" forced-acting [it was a live performance recorded].

Together with a number of unexplainable, cartoonlike extras, the singers aimlessly kept running around the revolving...

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