Opera and classical home watching picks: critics pick their higlights

There’s a growing treasure trove of classical music to watch for free. Each day, our critics will choose a highlight

Prime attraction of this Munich staging for Verdi’s bi-centenary in 2013 is the starry pairing of soprano Anja Harteros and Jonas Kaufmann as ill-fated lovers Leonora and Manrico, the singing warrior – thus eponymous troubadour. With her rich lower range and fine coloratura, Harteros’ singing is rather wonderful and she is a remarkably graceful presence, in part for being required to play Leonora as blind. That was presumably to explain managing to confuse her lover with the baddie Conte di Luna – the same after-shave? – but surely unnecessary since mistaken identities and the wrong babies are everywhere in opera. Kaufmann is not an Italianate Manrico, but that hardly matters: he is gloriously passionate and tender both in his love for Leonora and for his gypsy mother, Azucena, whose tortured relationship with her own mother’s death haunts the staging from the outset. Verdi’s music moves inexorably to the tragic ending, yet there is something almost comic and frankly perverse in Olivier Py’s Regietheater spectacle: an elaborate multi-scened revolve, dance, acrobatics, martial arts, and a lot of naked flesh suggest that plot was the least of his priorities. Don’t even bother trying to work out why a single figure beats out the Anvil chorus on a version of Stephenson’s Rocket. Just listen. (available until 28 March, here’s the libretto) Rian Evans

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