Opera Chic at this point seldom gets excited by new releases -- the really good stuff, sadly -- and this is a sad testament to the recording industry's ability to crank out the seriously cool material as they did until the 1970s or even the early 1980s -- has a tendency to come almost exclusively from captured satellite radio feeds, TiVo'ed ORF2 or MEZZO or Arté telecasts, Rapidshare in-house digicaptures, etc.
But sometimes a new CD or DVD makes us go all, yummm, this sounds tasty.
In this case, here's the spanking (heh) new Simon Boccanegra DVD -- our Milanese maestro Daniele Gatti in his Staatsoper debut (this was back in 2002), our sweet dear hammy ham Thomas Hampson as Boccanegra, and Ferruccio "I Got Teh Powah" Furlanetto and his mighty tonsils (all three of them, big as Mount Fuji apples) star as Jacopo. Directed by Peter Stein.
Now, Opera Chic is ready to bet her new, cruelly-horizontal-striped Jasper Conran grosgrain single-breasted coat that this DVD cannot be nearly as insanely awesome as The Definitive Boccanegra, and Hampson is lovely but is not Leo Nucci.
But then, Boccanegra's greatness (la signora Mirella Freni considers it Verdi's most moving opera) is often very generous, and new productions can seriously rock -- as witnessed by our world-travelling Sarah B who just enjoyed it at the Opéra Bastille, lucky girl.
