On 30 March 2016, I had a fantastic meeting with Serge Dorny, the general director of Opéra de Lyon.
The purpose of the meeting was to see about issuing a DVD from the 2015 Lyon production of Die Gezeichneten, as it is way past time that the 2005 Salzburg DVD — the only DVD available of this opera to date — be replaced for both musical and dramatic reasons...
Frankly I was rather apprehensive before going into the meeting, as I had NO idea what to expect, especially given potential rights issues that always arise whenever public entities and public $$ (or rather €€ here) are concerned.
As I had mentioned in a previous post, France Musique was to record the Lyon performance on 20 March 2015 for a delayed radio broadcast on 4 April 2015, except Radio France was on strike from 19 March through 15 April that year… Fortunately a video recording was made, but it was unclear to me just who had made it and more importantly, to whom the rights belonged.
Imagine my surprise then, that no sooner than Mr. Dorny had shown me into his office on 30 March 2016 — more than a year after the Lyon premiere — he made me a gift of not one but two (2!) private DVD copies of their 2015 production!!!!
Apparently Lyon owns the video recording outright, which is to be shown online gratis at The Opera Platform at some point. After which Lyon is more than willing to issue the DVD on the Bel Air Classiques label, a most exciting prospect that the FFS is delighted to support, financially and otherwise.
What's more, on 8 May 2016 — when I was barely over jet-lag after five weeks in Europe — I arranged a private avant-première of the Lyon DVD in San Diego for a handful of special friends, among them David Bennett (the new general director of San Diego Opera), a local couple/long-time benefactors of SD Opera, as well as the Secretary of the FFS (who also happens to be my German next-door neighbor!) and her (also German) husband.
AND, despite the fact that the private Lyon DVD only comes with French subtitles, already during the brief pause immediately after Act I, both Mr. Bennett and the SD Opera benefactors began talking about which theater in San Diego would have an orchestra pit that's big enough for this particular opera!
What's more, even though the Lyon staging is 'contemporary' — at considerable variance from Schreker's own precise directions which put the setting in 16th century Genoa — we all agreed that this particular production "actually works". Very high praise indeed, as too often 'modern' stagings have little (if anything) to do with the composer's original intentions...
Last but not least, the final commercial version of the Lyon DVD will obviously provide subtitles as well as liner notes in a number of languages. But since Schreker is by no means unknown in… Chinese-speaking countries (thanks to my previous efforts since 2009), the FFS has every intention of making Chinese also one of the language options on the upcoming Lyon DVD!
~~ECC
The purpose of the meeting was to see about issuing a DVD from the 2015 Lyon production of Die Gezeichneten, as it is way past time that the 2005 Salzburg DVD — the only DVD available of this opera to date — be replaced for both musical and dramatic reasons...
Frankly I was rather apprehensive before going into the meeting, as I had NO idea what to expect, especially given potential rights issues that always arise whenever public entities and public $$ (or rather €€ here) are concerned.
As I had mentioned in a previous post, France Musique was to record the Lyon performance on 20 March 2015 for a delayed radio broadcast on 4 April 2015, except Radio France was on strike from 19 March through 15 April that year… Fortunately a video recording was made, but it was unclear to me just who had made it and more importantly, to whom the rights belonged.
Imagine my surprise then, that no sooner than Mr. Dorny had shown me into his office on 30 March 2016 — more than a year after the Lyon premiere — he made me a gift of not one but two (2!) private DVD copies of their 2015 production!!!!
Apparently Lyon owns the video recording outright, which is to be shown online gratis at The Opera Platform at some point. After which Lyon is more than willing to issue the DVD on the Bel Air Classiques label, a most exciting prospect that the FFS is delighted to support, financially and otherwise.
What's more, on 8 May 2016 — when I was barely over jet-lag after five weeks in Europe — I arranged a private avant-première of the Lyon DVD in San Diego for a handful of special friends, among them David Bennett (the new general director of San Diego Opera), a local couple/long-time benefactors of SD Opera, as well as the Secretary of the FFS (who also happens to be my German next-door neighbor!) and her (also German) husband.
AND, despite the fact that the private Lyon DVD only comes with French subtitles, already during the brief pause immediately after Act I, both Mr. Bennett and the SD Opera benefactors began talking about which theater in San Diego would have an orchestra pit that's big enough for this particular opera!
What's more, even though the Lyon staging is 'contemporary' — at considerable variance from Schreker's own precise directions which put the setting in 16th century Genoa — we all agreed that this particular production "actually works". Very high praise indeed, as too often 'modern' stagings have little (if anything) to do with the composer's original intentions...
Last but not least, the final commercial version of the Lyon DVD will obviously provide subtitles as well as liner notes in a number of languages. But since Schreker is by no means unknown in… Chinese-speaking countries (thanks to my previous efforts since 2009), the FFS has every intention of making Chinese also one of the language options on the upcoming Lyon DVD!
~~ECC
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