Die Entfürhung aus Hangar 7 – The Review

From the folks who brought you La Traviata in the Zurich Hauptbahnhof, this Servus TV production, which is part of this summer's Salzberger Festpielen, is novel and pleasant. But ultimately, it’s more of a spectacle than a drama-with-music. 

Clearly, from an acoustic standpoint, an airplane hangar is a less-than-optimal setting for the singers, and ensemble work is occasionally dodgy. On the other hand, given the obstacles, the singers do remarkably well. Of course, such flaws are part of the excitement of live performance. The acting and singing range from OK to quite good and the visuals are almost always fun, fascinating, or at least interesting. All that is to say it’s a fun cool experiment, and if it gets more people even superficially interested in opera, then job well done.

Re-Abducted – Mozart in Hangar 7, Part 2

Blonde (Rebecca Nelsen) rocks out in rehearsal.

1. The wonderful Blonde in this production is Rebecca Nelsen. (She's a new discovery for me but Smorgy interviewed  her a few years ago. I need to catch up!)
2. You can see a much higher quality video than the one on the Tube of Yoo (and some nifty rehearsal photos) at the Servus TV website.

Abduction from Hangar 7 – Salzburger Festspiele Fernsehproduktion

On August 26, Hangar-7 at the Salzburg Airport was transformed into an event location resounding with culture, when Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail, produced especially for TV viewers in co-production with ServusTV, was broadcast live from there. 

I just found this copy of the broadcast. Watch it before it disappears. We'll chat about it later.

(Updates 9/9/2013: 1. Rebecca Nelsen is Blonde in this production. 2. You can see a much higher quality video at the Servus TV website.)