Ballet for Children Box Set

Ballet for Children Box Set released 2017. Below are the discs. Each of them has already been reported on this website, and you can get more details by using the links provided:

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Wheeldon. 2011. (Grade: A+)
The Nutcracker. Tchaikovsky. 2010. (Grade: B) [Grade adjusted to A- as an item for kids]
Peter and the Wolf. Prokofiev. 2011. (Grade B) [Grade adjusted to A+ +as an item for kids]
Tales of Beatrix Potter. Ashton. 2010. (Grade: A)

This is one of the best box sets that Opus Arte has offered. For adult viewers, this Nutcracker faces huge competition, but it's probably as good as any for the kids. I marked down the Peter and the Wolf as a warning to adults that it's a short student recital. But it passes the kid test with an A++. So this is a box set with no loser and a big winner for the consumer with children in mind.

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What's New

Here's news about high-definition video disc ("HDVD") recordings of opera, ballet, classical music, plays, fine-art documentaries, and paintings. In the journal below are independent (and hard-to-find critical) reports on hundreds of HDVDs. Pick the best titles for your excelsisphere.

Feb 25. We have just completed one of our most ambitious reviews: Einstein on the Beach opera, the surreal 4 and 1/2 hour cult legend. Kudos, encomiums, and accolades to Opus Arte for giving us this authoritative and weirdly fascinating recording, which we grade A+. Absorbing and learning Einstein is uniquely challenging. We try to help out by providing aids not included in the keepcase materials: an accurate libretto and a list of segments in the opera with correct Opus Arte time stamps. Good luck!

We have some other good grades with an A for the recent Met The Pearl Fishers (Les pêcheurs de perles) and a B- for an earlier The Pearl Fishers from Naples. Also, we recently gave an A- for the new Don Quixote from the Vienna State Ballet.