The Phantom Menace? (Coda).(Column)

It was a disturbing article. According to the July 21 New York Times, Universal Classics, the parent company of Decca, Deutsche Grammophon and Philips, was suspending complete opera recordings in favor of DVDs. The report later turned out to be false: although Universal's schedule of studio-recorded operas has slowed down, the company still is working on a handful of high-profile projects. Still, the story couldn't help but chill the hearts of longtime opera-lovers. Videotape and laserdisc operas may have been around for two decades, but they've never threatened to supplant CDs as the primary medium for experiencing opera at home. Suddenly, it seemed entirely possible that the troubled classical-recording industry would give itself over to the new video medium.

At first glance, the ascension of DVDs wouldn't seem terribly disturbing. After all, don't DVDs offer the opera's music, with the added attraction of an image? On a practical level, though, I'm not sure that's the way it works. "Home entertainment systems" have traditionally been marketed to movie buffs who want the Star Wars spaceships zooming around their heads. This enticement is apt to be of limited interest to the opera-lover, who is more likely to have invested in a high-end, audio-only system.

That's not the only problem: on a deeper level, the two media aren't really equivalent. A DVD performs a separate function from a CD, and I would argue that in many ways it's less satisfying. I was struck by this recently when I watched the DVD of Die Walkure from the famous Patrice Chereau/Pierre Boulez Bayreuth Ring (Philips 070 402-9). It's certainly a provocative interpretation, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to see a high-quality copy of it. But as a Walkure to pull off the shelf, it definitely has its limits.

I got to know Walkure through the pioneering Solti recording of the Ring, on Decca. Like the Chereau/Boulez performance, it is the work of a particular group of performers coming together at a particular time. One hears the voices of Birgit Nilsson, Regine Crespin and James King, not literally those of Brtinnhilde, Sieglinde and Siegmund. Still, the lack of a visual component frees the recording from the specifics of its creation. Rooted to a lesser degree in a set of performance circumstances, the audio Walkure plays out in the theater of the mind. It achieves the illusion of presenting not an individual performance but Walkiire in the abstract.

The Chereau DVD, on the other hand, ties the action to a particular, idiosyncratic visual interpretation and a particular set of performers. The disembodied voices on a recording give way to the very specific images of Gwyneth Jones, Jeannine Altmeyer and Peter Hofmann, costumed and coiffed in `70s chic. In current jargon, it's too much ...