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Director: Tiziano Mancini
Conductor: Marcello Viotti
Stars: Giuseppe Gipali, Ana María Sánchez, Vladimir Stoyanov, Federico Sacchi.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2354171/
Premiere 1877
Time: 11th century.
Place: Lahore, a city of Pakistan.
Filmed at Teatro la Fenice di Venezia
This came to my attention when IMDb had misspelled Vladimir's name (Vladmir is underlined by spellcheck; name change/merge went through today; I wanted to cheer and send them praise, but they just did their job properly without intercession - how sad I wanted to celebrate that improvement). The cover is pretty and interesting, and the Amazon reviews conflicted with the YouTube clip I found, so...
The story seems to make passing between death and life an easy switch, assisted by a god of course. The strange part is that Alim seems to retain his memory of both during his return trip (or maybe I missed something).
I like the 3rd act ballet (toward the end of disc1). The music is a bit slow, but they have enough stuff going on to liven things up. Besides, you can stare at the painted topless dancer to try to determine if she's really topless and painted, or if there's some very thin fabric covering her.
The female lead is too heavy and too old, but has a nice voice, and is matched with a tenor who's almost as wide.
Again baritone Vladimir Stoyanov pulls my attention back to the screen with his aria. He's nothing to look at, and I wouldn't recognize his voice among other baritones. I wonder why he consistently pleases?
Learned today that Fenice is Phoenix, and this opera house has burned down 3 times.
FeniceOpera, cond. Viotti; 7
