Eine Nacht In Venedig: Munchner Rundfunkorchester (Eichorn) [DVD] [2008]

This review is for Eine Nacht in Venedig operetta which was filmed in 1973 by the Czech producer Vaclav Kaslik. I purchased this production with some trepidation because I couldn't find a single review and aside from the qualities of the performance I had considerable fears that the video/audio quality would be below par - more about that later!

I first became acquainted with this operetta when I bought a vinyl album of the work some 40 years ago. Despite the `ancient' format the vinyl recording was of a surprisingly good quality and the work was sung wonderfully by Rita Streich, Anneliese Rothenberger, Niccolai Gedda and other distinguished artists of that era. I still have that treasured album. When I disposed of the majority of my old vinyl collection I couldn't bring myself to get rid of this Strauss Operetta!

All those years ago I remember wondering why this Opera was relatively unknown - certainly in comparison with Die Fledermaus which was composed some 7 years earlier. I know that I am not alone in my view that Eine Nacht in Venedig is musically superior to Die Fledermous. The former is so musically rich with one glorious melody after another. Unfortunately, its weakness is in the rather banal story and in its lyrics. These problems have bedevilled the Opera since its opening night in 1883 and despite several revisions the lyrics have been the weakest element of the Opera.

Moving swiftly to this production there is much to enjoy in this filmed version and I was pleasantly surprised with the video quality on a film which is nearly 40 years old. I was watching the film through a projector and the picture was reasonably sharp and with good contrast and colour. To my surprise the default aspect is 16:9 but this distorted the performers and when I changed the ratio to 4:3 the picture quality improved considerably. There are 2 audio options - the original stereo recording and a converted 5.1 surround sound version. I listened to the latter and found it to be generally very good. I was quite impressed with all the singers and while they weren't quite as good as the artists on my original vinyl recording (I was bound to say that!) they will impress most people. The versatile Julia Migenes is a joy to watch.

The one weakness with this recording is with the technical production by `Unitel Clasica'. This is not the first time that I have criticised this Company for their lazy production methods. This dvd is divided into 2 parts - Act 1 and Act 2. There are no chapters and if you want to scroll to one of the individual 30 chapters of the Opera you have to keep clicking on `next' and hope that you will arrive at your intended destination. Very, very amateurish and annoying in this day and age - especially as the dvd was released in 2008!