More more more opera!
Over the weekend, Deutsche Oper (Berlin) is bucking the trend and not having Parsifal like most others.* It's been doing a series of recordings from the 80s or earlier, and this weekend it's got the opening performance in its then new building, which was a Don Giovanni.
Yes, it's historic, but the b/w picture doesn't look good, the sound's not great, and the production isn't going to be particularly good either (and, from a comment, is in German rather than Italian!)
But it's worth looking at just for the opening seconds - right behind the conductor as he starts the overture of the first opera in a brand new (and very good) opera house is a young girl, looking very like she's picking her nose...
Update: No, it's not really worth watching past then. If I could be bothered, I'd see if they were using the translation that's in the 1974 Dover Publications full orchestral score - the basis of that's a 1941 German score! The one-sided nature of American copyright laws meant the source material was in the public domain there, but not in Europe, so it was only when Amazon started letting US sellers ship to the UK that I got a copy.
* Part of it is set on Good Friday, and Wagner later claimed - probably wrongly - that he thought of writing it on a Good Friday.
Yes, it's historic, but the b/w picture doesn't look good, the sound's not great, and the production isn't going to be particularly good either (and, from a comment, is in German rather than Italian!)
But it's worth looking at just for the opening seconds - right behind the conductor as he starts the overture of the first opera in a brand new (and very good) opera house is a young girl, looking very like she's picking her nose...
Update: No, it's not really worth watching past then. If I could be bothered, I'd see if they were using the translation that's in the 1974 Dover Publications full orchestral score - the basis of that's a 1941 German score! The one-sided nature of American copyright laws meant the source material was in the public domain there, but not in Europe, so it was only when Amazon started letting US sellers ship to the UK that I got a copy.
* Part of it is set on Good Friday, and Wagner later claimed - probably wrongly - that he thought of writing it on a Good Friday.