La Bohème (Dessi)

Puccini La Bohème opera to libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica. Directed 2014 by Ettore Scola at the Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago. Stars Daniela Dessì (Mimì), Alida Berti (Musetta), Fabio Armiliato (Rodolfo), Alessandro Luongo (Marcello), Federico Longhi (Schaunard), Marco Spotti (Colline), Angelo Nardinocchi (Benoît/Alcindoro), Ugo Tranquini (Parpignol), Marco Simonelli (Customs officer), and Jacopo Bianchini (Customs man). Valerio Galli conducts the Orchestra and Choir of the Puccini Festival (Chorus Master Stefano Visconti) and the Coro delle voci bianche del Festival Puccini (Chorus Master Sara Matteucci). Set designs by Luciano Ricceri; costume designs by Cristina da Rold; lighting design by Valerio Alfieri. Directed for TV by Francesca Nesler. Released 2016, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: NA

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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.