Verdi: Les Vepres Siciliennes (DVD)

Description

Presented in its Covent Garden premiere in Autumn 2013, this staging of Verdi's Les Vepres Siciliennes - directed by StefanHerheim and conducted by the Royal Opera's Music Director, Verdi specialist Sir Antonio Pappano - went on to win theprestigious Olivier Award for Best New Opera Production. The Sunday Times hailed it "the best the Verdi year in Britain has tooffer," praising the standout event of the Verdi bicentenary celebrations. Herheim, whose reputation was cemented with his production of Parsifal at Bayreuth in 2008, is a director with a flair forspectacle - and a sense of irony - who rarely takes an operatic scenario at face value. Rather than telling a story of 13th-century conflict between the Sicilians and their French oppressors, his production, transposed to the mid-19th century, provides a commentary on the extravagant world of Parisian opera with its politics, exploitation and betrayals.