Britten - Death in Venice / Tony Palmer, Robert Gard

Rating:
Summary: Tadzio Too Robust
Review: Well, we now have two performances of this opera on DVD: the one by the Glyndebourne opera, and this film from Tony Palmer. It's a film rather than a recording of a stage performance, and, perhaps necessarily, reminiscent of the Visconti film. Some of the lines are so similar that, if I didn't know otherwise, I'd think one artist was stealing from another. It's more visually interesting than the austere Glyndebourne performance, but I kept expecting to hear Mahler rather than Britten. Hallelujah, thank God and Image Entertainment that this DVD has subtitles in the original languages. That is when English is being sung, the subtitles are in English; when Italian, then Italian; and when German, in German. One aspect of both performances that I don't care for is that the actors playing Tadzio are not the delicate fourteen-year-old of Mann's novella, but robust dancers in their late teens.