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Amazon.co.uk Review
It's a common complaint that opera singers can't act, and actors can't sing opera. In this handsome 1988 film of Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene Onegin, director Petr Weigl attempts to solve the problem by letting each group of performers do what they do best. Thus the music is a studio recording with some great voices in the principal roles, and the film is a lip-synched performance shot in stunning locations by a good-looking cast of players.
On the positive side this means that the whole thing looks gorgeous, and sun-drenched dachas, glittering ballrooms and snowy steppes are all captured with painterly verve. The musical performances are also splendid, with Bernd Weikl making a passionate, tortured Onegin, Teresa Kubiak a honeyed, fresh-sounding Tatyana, and Solti conducting with driven intensity. But realism and opera rarely make happy bed-fellows, and the down-side of this film is that the naturalistic "speaking-style" lip-synching and understated acting are entirely at odds with the grand musical gestures, and occasionally give rise to a somewhat absurd alienation effect. Thus while Kubiak's voice is at full blast, Magdalena Vasaryova looks like she's making polite chit-chat at a cocktail party. But the project feels like a brave experiment, nonetheless, and if the whole isn't quite the sum of its different elements, those elements are still jolly good.
On the DVD: Eugene Onegin on disc has excellent picture quality (which is fortunate in such a visually exquisite film), though the sound is a little distant and muffled. The film starts with the entry of the peasants in Act 1, but the DVD includes the Prologue and music before this point as an audio bonus. There are subtitles in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Chinese, and a series of trailers for other Decca DVDs. --Warwick Thompson
Video Description
DVD Special Features:
Menu screens: English
Aspect ratio: 4:3
Region & format: 1-6 NTSC
Subtitles: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese
Soundtrack: DTS 5.1, LPCM Stereo
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
I always enjoyed Solti's resonant, but never terribly idiomatic 'Eugen Onegin' on record and cd, but I sincerely cannot recommend this DVD set to anyone. It is filmed on location, but looks startlingly artificial and bland none the less. The wonderful singers were not allowed to act in the film, so they are substituted with a bunch of very anonymous Eastern European actors, and not very able ones at that. They mime to the singing and do it badly, and, what's more, they look completely out of place. Lensky, our all-time favourite passionate young man, is played by a graying, retiring gentleman who does not look like he has half the passion of Stuart Burrows on the soundtrack. Actually, this DVD is very bad. Buy the CD instead, or go for the brilliant, illuminating and extremely well-sung 'Eugen Onegin' made for Glyndebourne in 1992 by Graham Vick and issued on DVD earlier this year.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a film version, made in 1988, of an older audio recording made by the forces at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden conducted by Georg Solti in the mid-1970s. The original Decca recording is good for its age. Solti's conducting conveys the beauty and pathos in Tchaikovsky's magnificent score. However, some cuts were made from the original recording.
Bernd Weikl's (Onegin) voice has a slightly throaty and nasal timbre which suits the title role. Teresa Kubiak's singing brings out Tatyana's emotions very well. Stuart Burrows (Lensky) sings with youthful ardour.
All the roles are performed by handsome actors rather than by singers. They look their respective roles, particularly Onegin and Tatyana, although the actor for Lensky - with slightly greying hair - looks a little too old for a young amateur poet. They mime the singers to the libretti, but they sometimes look as if they are talking rather than singing. This may be slightly disconcerting at first, but one gets used to the disparity and appreciates the naturalistic acting that brings out the characters' emotion.
The film was shot on location somewhere that looks suitable. All the settings are very well chosen, particularly the duel scene in a snow-covered wood, Tatyana's name-day party scene at the Larins in the countryside and a ballroom scene at a nobleman's mansion in St. Petersburg.
In summary, despite cuts, this is a very enjoyable film version of this operatic masterpiece. There are some DVD versions of performances on stage, but this film would be a valuable addition to the music collection of lovers of this masterpiece.
Bernd Weikl's (Onegin) voice has a slightly throaty and nasal timbre which suits the title role. Teresa Kubiak's singing brings out Tatyana's emotions very well. Stuart Burrows (Lensky) sings with youthful ardour.
All the roles are performed by handsome actors rather than by singers. They look their respective roles, particularly Onegin and Tatyana, although the actor for Lensky - with slightly greying hair - looks a little too old for a young amateur poet. They mime the singers to the libretti, but they sometimes look as if they are talking rather than singing. This may be slightly disconcerting at first, but one gets used to the disparity and appreciates the naturalistic acting that brings out the characters' emotion.
The film was shot on location somewhere that looks suitable. All the settings are very well chosen, particularly the duel scene in a snow-covered wood, Tatyana's name-day party scene at the Larins in the countryside and a ballroom scene at a nobleman's mansion in St. Petersburg.
In summary, despite cuts, this is a very enjoyable film version of this operatic masterpiece. There are some DVD versions of performances on stage, but this film would be a valuable addition to the music collection of lovers of this masterpiece.
Format:DVD
This DVD simply doesn't work. The musical recording exists separately on the quite beautiful Decca CD of 1974 (exactly the same recording) and I'd certainly recommend that. ("Onegin" is one of my favourite operas and on CD I'm still torn between the Solti set and Philips' set with Hvorostovsky and Nuccia Focile.)
With this DVD the frankly bizarre idea of having a separate cast of actors "lip synching" to the Solti recording fails on every level. Yes, there are some quite prettily pulled off moments - the ballroom scenes, the duel - but the disjunction between what's going on in the music and what's happening visually is so extreme as to ruin both. At such a dramatic highlight as the letter scene, the actress looks almost disinterested. There is no effort to suggest that these people are in an opera - everything seems flat and unanimated. There is no attempt to marry the lip-syncing to the sound. (I'm reminded of Glen Close in "Meeting Venus". She actually sang the Hall Aria - look at the muscles in her neck - but an operatic voice was over-dubbed. And it worked perfectly)
I really wanted to like this. The recording it's based on is unquestionably great; and it was a gift from a friend. All I can say is that I've been looking for an alternative since I got this. (I think I've found it in the superb Decca DVD with Renee Fleming and Dmitri Hvorostovsky). I'm not really sure how to rate this in terms of stars. Musically it's certainly very worthwhile - get the CD! - but as a DVD this is a poor choice. Feeling generous I'll give it three stars for its musical value (and if you can see the attractive imagery as apropos back-ground: if you can live with the disjunction between sound and image. I can't).
As a DVD this has very little value.
With this DVD the frankly bizarre idea of having a separate cast of actors "lip synching" to the Solti recording fails on every level. Yes, there are some quite prettily pulled off moments - the ballroom scenes, the duel - but the disjunction between what's going on in the music and what's happening visually is so extreme as to ruin both. At such a dramatic highlight as the letter scene, the actress looks almost disinterested. There is no effort to suggest that these people are in an opera - everything seems flat and unanimated. There is no attempt to marry the lip-syncing to the sound. (I'm reminded of Glen Close in "Meeting Venus". She actually sang the Hall Aria - look at the muscles in her neck - but an operatic voice was over-dubbed. And it worked perfectly)
I really wanted to like this. The recording it's based on is unquestionably great; and it was a gift from a friend. All I can say is that I've been looking for an alternative since I got this. (I think I've found it in the superb Decca DVD with Renee Fleming and Dmitri Hvorostovsky). I'm not really sure how to rate this in terms of stars. Musically it's certainly very worthwhile - get the CD! - but as a DVD this is a poor choice. Feeling generous I'll give it three stars for its musical value (and if you can see the attractive imagery as apropos back-ground: if you can live with the disjunction between sound and image. I can't).
As a DVD this has very little value.
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