Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19330 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-06-13
• Rating: Exempt
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Classical, Closed-captioned, Colour, Dolby, DVD-Video, PAL
• Original language: Japanese, Latin, English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, German, French, Italian
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 117 minutes

Customer Reviews

Superlatives are not enough
This is a film based on an unnerving but seductive production of Stravinsky's Neoclassical opera/oratorio Oedipus Rex, given only twice to launch the Seito Kinen Festival in 1992. The production confronts us with brilliantly conceived and staged image upon image, with the huge chorus (80 singers and 20 dancers) deployed around the vast set of sculpted wooden slats over a huge pool of water. The chorus - absolutely central to this `opera' - are in mud make-up and torn clothes emphasising the diseased decay of Thebes, at times presenting them like the `living dead' or statues come to life. Placed in blocks they are - as Stravinsky wanted - `monumentalised' and eerie.

This is even more the case with the soloists. Stravinsky had wanted them to be masked - so the audience would focus on the character, not the singer/actor playing the role. To give greater vocal freedom and enabling facial gestures, the masks here - made to look like stone - were worn on top of the soloists' heads, making them giants (and for the sake of perspective they were given huge sculpted hands). "Monumentalised" indeed.

The cast of soloists is stellar. Philip Langridge is an authoritative Oedipus - sometimes appropriately arrogant but also humane and genuinely (and tragically) searching for the truth behind the plague. His pianissimo "Lux facta est" after the final revelations is heartbreaking. Jessye Norman is a ravishing Jocasta, slyly seductive in the more sinuous moments of her "Non erubescite, reges", flighty and anxious in her "Oracula mentiuntur, semper oracula mentiuntur". A young Bryn Terfel gives a powerful, resonant Creon and Teresias (Harry Peeters), the Messenger (Michio Tatara) and the Shepherd (Robert Swensen) are all excellent (and, like all the soloists, strikingly costumed). Their solos are all delivered oratorio style, directly into the audience, usually from the lowest level of the tiered stage.

The production also makes clever use of puppetry and some spare but extremely ingenious props. When the Narrator slits the curtain to reveal the story the first image is of a puppet Oedipus (the Butoh dancer Min Tanaka), his body encased in moulded clay `armature' at the end of a red silk umbilical cord in a disc-womb, with vultures circling. (Both the red silk and the disc will re-occur). Most strikingly and movingly, towards the end, when everything about Oedipus has been revealed, the puppet Oedipus takes the large `pins' from Jocasta's hands and is stripped of his casing to be left almost naked: Oedipus is stripped naked physically and psychologically. Then, guided by the Cycladic Oedipus' giant hands, he pierces the eyes of Oedipus' Cycladic mask. The scene turns red. A veil of blood falls across the stage. Then he turns with red silk tears hanging from his eyes and slowly creeps away.

There is always a controversy about how Oedipus Rex should be staged; or whether it should be staged at all or given in a semi-staged or concert form. Stravinsky wanted any staging to be minimal. He chose Oedipus Rex as his subject as an archetypal story everyone would know - so there was no need for the audience to attend to the words. Additionally the original Greek text was translated into French by Jean Cocteau, and then translated into Latin by a French priest. Latin "had the great advantage of giving me a medium not dead but ossified, and so monumentalised as to have become immune from any risk of vulgarisation" (Stravinsky). He also said: "I wished to leave the play, as a play, behind, thinking by this to distil the dramatic essence and to free myself for a greater degree of focus on a purely musical dramatisation". This is picked up by the Narrator (Kayoko Shiraishi, using traditional Japanese declamation) who tells us what we are about see before key moments. This is a presentation which "preserves only a certain monumental aspect of its various scenes".

The Director of both the stage performance and the film, Julie Taylor (perhaps best known for her direction of The Lion King), has created an astonishing range of striking visual images that unfold and unfold, from Oedipus in the womb to his final, humiliated creeping away from Thebes (possibly through the sewers - the black water beneath the stage, water dripping through the wooden slats). "At the end of the opera the sky cried rain" - in any other context that would make me gag! Here I absolutely believe it.

Taylor was supported by inspired collaborators: Suzushi Hanayagi (choreography), George Tsypin (set designer), Jean Kalman (lighting designer), Raiko Kruk (make-up designer) among them. The masks and sculptures were designed by Taylor herself, based on ancient Greek (Cycladic) sculpture (dating from 3200 - 2000 BC) and pre-Buddhist Japanese Haniwa. Similarly the choreography of the chorus and the Oedipus puppet were based on both ancient Noh and post-Hiroshima Butoh dance traditions. This is pungent stuff, dramatically overwhelming but always serving Stravinsky's strongly incantatory, almost liturgical-ritual, almost physical setting. "Acts of music made visible" as Wagner put it!

The narration is in the vernacular (i.e. Japanese) the sung text Latin. There are optional subtitles in English (the e e cummings translation), French, German, Italian and Spanish. Latin would have been nice. The opera itself last about 60 minutes. The generous and extremely informative bonuses include 187 rehearsal and performance photographs, a ten page Director's Note and "Conversations with Julie Taymor" - an interview with her followed by conversations between her and George Tsypin, Seiji Ozawa and Jessye Norman.

My non-opera, non-classical partner sat through this riveted. His verdict? "Astonishing". It is. Elemental and therefore with a universal appeal, I can't recommend this highly enough.

It is all about how you tell the story
This Stravinsky film is actually a 1992 made for TV film from one of only two live performances. You really have to like this sort of unique interpretation. So the rating is for those that do. Just do not expect Irene Papas "Elektra" (1962).

Sung in Latin so one does not get hung-up on the words as it is the music and feel that they are trying to impress you with; this is not supposed to be a drama. The narrative portion which weaves in and out of the Opera-Oratorio in two acts spoken in Japanese as the live audience is Japanese.

A unique compromise by Julie Taymor was to place the masks on the head instead of covering the face of the singers.

Oedipus - Philip Langride
Jocasta - Jessye Norman
Creon - Bryn Terfel
Oedipus Dancer - Min Tanaka
Tokyo Opera Singers
Shinyu-Kai Chorus
Saito Kinen Festival Dancers
Saito Kinen Orchestra
Stage-Director - Julie Taymor
Sculptures and masks by Julie Taymor

Runtime: 58 min

The DVD has the obligatory extras that turn out to give more depth to the performance. You will want to watch again after viewing the extras to see what you missed originally.

new view of a strange masterpiece
Well... many people hate "Oedipus Rex" ; they should see this video : the music is wonderfully played (with the likes of Seiji Ozawa and Jessye Norman, you would expect as much). But the really astonishing thing is the way the play is directed. It is at first rather unsettling, and the mixture of archaic Greek artefacts, Japanese costumes and morbid imagery is surprising. But it really makes you take part in this quite famous story. After that, it is unprobable one will feel that Stravinsky's "Oedipus Rex" is unexpressive...