Latest releases reviewed

VERDI: LA TRAVIATA
Soloists: Mireille Delunsch, Matthew Polenzani, Zeljko Lucic; Orchestre de Paris; conductor: Yataka Sado Harmonia Mundi Bel Air Classiques
***

This film of a production from the Festival D'Aix En Provence in 2003 will please lovers of minimalist opera. The production, by Peter Mussbach, is abstract and spare, dark with luminescent lighting reminiscent of a nightclub, suggesting rather than showing the salon of Violetta and the idle rich of 19th-century Paris. Mireille DeLunsch as Violetta is visually attractive, her pale, ethereal looks conveying the essence of the consumptive.While her voice is rather light and one-dimensional, she does rise well to the greater moments of the drama. Her Alfredo, Matthew Polenzani, has a fine lyric tenor voice which he uses well (although he's somewhat wooden on stage), while Zeljko Lucic as Giorgio Germont both looks and sounds good. www.harmoniamundi.com

Colman Morrissey

TURBONEGRO
The ResErection Bitzcore
**

Glam metal Norwegian band Turbonegro have made a moderately successful career out of rather banal Jackass-like on-stage shock tactics (frontman Hank von Helvete inserts fireworks into his anus, lights the fuse paper, and - well, you can guess the rest) and an image that crosses the worst make-up excesses of The Sweet with rather more sleazy scenes from various Werner Herzog movies. And yet the best thing here is not the stage show (perish the thought of having to watch a Catherine Wheel rotate its way out from between Hank's buttocks), but quite a mournful documentary that sees the singer discuss his heroin addiction. The puerile punning title and the roaming roman candles aside, something of an eye-opener. www.turbonegro.com

Tony Clayton-Lea