Katharina Peetz

The great soldier Orlando is lovesick and shows little intention of resuming his former glorious and heroic deeds. When Orlando enters, he is a man clearly torn between his love of fame and his love for Angelica. "Orlando teaches all of us that love is often responsible for our loss of reason," runs a line from Act 3 of the opera. It is a modest moral, and perhaps one not demanding of the dramatic finesse and musical diversity that Handel serves up in Orlando - for the opera's complex of problems is rather more complicated than that. Beneath the fabric of this masterfully woven constellation of characters and values is a score of such independence and vivacity as to give Orlando a special position among Handel's works - indeed among opera literature in general.

Live performance at Opernhaus Zürich in 2006. Nello Santi conducting Orchester der Oper Zürich and Chor der Oper Zürich. Directed for the stage by Gilbert Deflo.

The Martin Kušej production of Richard Strauss's "Elektra", filmed live at the Opernhaus Zurich on 30 November and 4 December 2005. Eva Johansson stars as Elektra, with Marjana Lipovšek as Klytämnestra, Melanie Diener as Chrysothemis, Rudolf Schashing as Aegisth, and Alfred Muff as Orest. Christoph von Dohnányi conducts.

This DVD of a live 2005 performance from the Zürich Opera under the musical direction of Franz Welser-Möst has many things to recommend it -- the young tenor Piotr Beczala as Alfredo, the marvelous Thomas Hampson as Giorgio Germont, the playing of the Zurich Opera orchestra, the simple but effective sets by by Erich Wonder, the uncluttered stage direction by Jürgen Flimm. It also has some flaws: strangely variable volume level of the recorded sound sometimes coming on so loud as to make one reach for the volume control, and the uneven performance of the Violetta, Eva Mei who, for all her merits, gives a dramatically effective performance marred by occasional difficulties with vocal production. Still, overall I felt this was a moving production, one that I would recommend, although perhaps not as an only DVD of one of Verdi's most popular operas.

Since its premiere on 2 June 1937 in Zurich, Alban Berg's second opera "Lulu" has the reputation of being surrounded by scandals. On the one hand, this is due to the dubious character of the subject, the man-eating femme fatale, which Berg had taken from Frank Wedekind's two Lulu tragedies – "The Earth Spirit" and "Pandora's Box" – and combined into one opera libretto. On the other hand, Berg's window had (for personal reasons) repeatedly refused to have the opera completed, which was unfinished when Berg died. This video is of the unfinished two-act torso of "Lulu."