Ades: Exterminating Angel / Metropolitan Opera [Blu-ray]

This Blu-ray Disc is only playable on Blu-ray Disc players and not compatible with standard DVD players.

Also available on standard DVD

“If you see one opera this year, make it The Exterminating Angel,” ran the headline in the New York Times after the US premiere of Thomas Adès’ “stunningly inventive” opera based on Luis Buñuel’s surreal and satirical 1962 film El ángel exterminador. Like the British composer’s score, Tom Cairns’ production is both spectacular and surprising. “Adès keeps the listener on edge,” wrote Opera magazine, “because one never knows where his dazzling palette of possibilities will take him next.”

Set and Costume Designer, Hildegard Bechtler
Lighting Designer, Jon Clark
Projection Designer, Tal Yarden
Choreographer, Amir Hosseinpour

Running time: 142 Minutes (main feature)
Color / NTSC systems
Sound Format: Stereo PCM 2.0 & DTS 5.1

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REVIEWS:

You need to see the opera at least twice to get your head around the many guests who arrives at the dinner party from hell and never leave it. The most enjoyable moments are those in which this unwieldy tapestry focuses itself on a single point…And nobody films this stuff as imaginatively as the Met’s team led by Gary Halvorsen. Adès’s presence suggests that is anyone can come near to taming the beast, it’s the man who spawned it.

– Gramophone

Adès’ music is challenging, arresting and texturally complex, and strongly conveys the mental meltdown that the characters experience as their sophisticated veneer is stripped and they descend into suicide, sacrifice and incest. Everyone is on top form, the performers incredibly involved, and the tension builds unbearably. It is an uncompromising and challenging opera to watch, but powerful and thrilling.

– Opera Now