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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Amazon Verified Purchase
Mein Gott, vot are ze Germans thinking of hier. What looks like a decent Russian production of this rarely staged opera is sung in German with no subtitles and cut in half. This is an absolute travesty although easy on the eye. Would Kupfer like his Ring sung in Chinese, slashed in half (please give me the blue pencil) and with no German or English subtitles. The Immolation scene would be interesting. It is almost unforgiveable but works as a pantomime. I am sorry for the sanger und spieler but I must find a Bolshoi or Kirov version. Vot in Gott's name vould ze do mit Peter Grimes or even Vest Side Story??????????? Danke Himmel hoch zey never made Gone mit der Wind. Anyway, on with the show.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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2 reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Enjoyable evening spoiled by inept packaging - NO SUBTITLES
3 Mar 2011
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This is a very strange DVD. First off this is an opera that I would be willing to bet most if not all of us have never heard let alone seen. So on our first acquaintance we find the opera cut in half. The Viiking Opera book says it is 3:15. This production is 90 minutes. Then it is a Russian opera sung in German translation. Then about those subtitles. To make matters worse the DVD begins it's cast list before the opera is over - a good 3 minutes before the curtain falls. Then to compound the insult they now repeat the cast list in English. By the way there is not one musician or singer I have ever heard of. But on the whole they are quite good.
The only person I recognized was Harry Kupfer, the director. The one mastermind behind the whole enterprise including the creation of the new version. Kupher is best known for his Ring at Bayreuth. That was a minimalist production complete with the requisite rain coats. Tsar Sultan is nothing like that. It is a traditional production of a very colorful la Russian fairy tale. And it has truly beautiful moments.
But the question is, just what is this production? There is no sense of an audience or that this is a live performance. The "special effects" are what one might expect from a good stage production. However if this is a film the effects are pretty cheesy. Perhaps it was filmed on a sound stage. You won't get any answers from the DVD sleeve. Just a decent plot summary - thank God for that.
In spite of all this lunacy I enjoyed this production. It has some very nice Rimsky music. After all this is where the Flight of the Bumblebee comes from. And you've got to see this bumblebee. A real hoot. Perhaps because of the tightening it doesn't lose its momentum. I would love to hear what was cut because if you didn't know, you wouldn't guess. All in all this is a fun experience of an opera that could use a good revival today. It's just a shame that a decent production is brought down by the stupidity of View - the company responsible for the DVD. I think the production is lip synced. But it is very well done. The sound is ok: a little boxy. This is a film from the 70s. Maybe produced for TV.
The only person I recognized was Harry Kupfer, the director. The one mastermind behind the whole enterprise including the creation of the new version. Kupher is best known for his Ring at Bayreuth. That was a minimalist production complete with the requisite rain coats. Tsar Sultan is nothing like that. It is a traditional production of a very colorful la Russian fairy tale. And it has truly beautiful moments.
But the question is, just what is this production? There is no sense of an audience or that this is a live performance. The "special effects" are what one might expect from a good stage production. However if this is a film the effects are pretty cheesy. Perhaps it was filmed on a sound stage. You won't get any answers from the DVD sleeve. Just a decent plot summary - thank God for that.
In spite of all this lunacy I enjoyed this production. It has some very nice Rimsky music. After all this is where the Flight of the Bumblebee comes from. And you've got to see this bumblebee. A real hoot. Perhaps because of the tightening it doesn't lose its momentum. I would love to hear what was cut because if you didn't know, you wouldn't guess. All in all this is a fun experience of an opera that could use a good revival today. It's just a shame that a decent production is brought down by the stupidity of View - the company responsible for the DVD. I think the production is lip synced. But it is very well done. The sound is ok: a little boxy. This is a film from the 70s. Maybe produced for TV.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Badly cut but worth having
7 April 2011
The following is from my review of the VHS tape. The DVD seems to be the exact same and I intend to purchase it.
My introduction to Tsar Saltan was in the late 1960s via a badly worn out library copy of a Belgrade Opera performance. Since then I've enjoyed the 1954 Bolshoi recording over many listenings. I only recently became aware of this video and I've now watched it 3 times, once with libretto in hand. True, it is very badly cut. The Bolshoi recording comes in at about 147 minutes and this is only 98 - about 1/3 of the score is missing. The prologue is fairly complete but then the cuts get worse and only about 1/2 of Act IV is here. The most regrettable cuts, in my view, are the duet between Guidon and the Swan Princess in Act IV (and the tranformation) and the wonderful interlude in the same act. The transformation gets moved to the last scene and that necessitates some rearrangement of the action. It works ok but you have to ask why they did that. The other aggravating bit is the close of the opera where the credits roll and then roll again over the performance. Who made that editing blunder? (The full credits also appear at the beginning and between the Prologue and Act I...talk about overkill.)
All of that said, I enjoyed the production, warts and all. I was concerned that it wouldn't wear well through repeated watchings but I still like it after #3. The performance is solid and lively. It's no where up to the standards of the other videos of Rimsky's operas (Sadko, Mlada, Coq d'Or and Tsar's Bride) but I'm glad that there is a video of Tsar Saltan. Hopefully this is a stop gap and there will be a decent DVD at some point in the not distant future.
If the performance were complete I'd give this 4 stars. 50 minutes of cuts does hurt, at least if one is familiar with the work. Why they did so much cutting I've no idea. Maybe the Russian to German translator was paid by the word and they ran out of funds.
My introduction to Tsar Saltan was in the late 1960s via a badly worn out library copy of a Belgrade Opera performance. Since then I've enjoyed the 1954 Bolshoi recording over many listenings. I only recently became aware of this video and I've now watched it 3 times, once with libretto in hand. True, it is very badly cut. The Bolshoi recording comes in at about 147 minutes and this is only 98 - about 1/3 of the score is missing. The prologue is fairly complete but then the cuts get worse and only about 1/2 of Act IV is here. The most regrettable cuts, in my view, are the duet between Guidon and the Swan Princess in Act IV (and the tranformation) and the wonderful interlude in the same act. The transformation gets moved to the last scene and that necessitates some rearrangement of the action. It works ok but you have to ask why they did that. The other aggravating bit is the close of the opera where the credits roll and then roll again over the performance. Who made that editing blunder? (The full credits also appear at the beginning and between the Prologue and Act I...talk about overkill.)
All of that said, I enjoyed the production, warts and all. I was concerned that it wouldn't wear well through repeated watchings but I still like it after #3. The performance is solid and lively. It's no where up to the standards of the other videos of Rimsky's operas (Sadko, Mlada, Coq d'Or and Tsar's Bride) but I'm glad that there is a video of Tsar Saltan. Hopefully this is a stop gap and there will be a decent DVD at some point in the not distant future.
If the performance were complete I'd give this 4 stars. 50 minutes of cuts does hurt, at least if one is familiar with the work. Why they did so much cutting I've no idea. Maybe the Russian to German translator was paid by the word and they ran out of funds.
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