in a home theater, don’t toss that VCR or
laserdisc player just yet. Ken Crane’s, a DVD
consumer sales website address, a subsidiary
of Image Entertainment, and one of the medi-
um’s distributors and licensees, lists 3,759
titles (everything from pornography to operas from Milan’s
La Scala opera house) and climbing. Of the 325 music titles,
41 are classical music, 21 more are opera. DVD Express,
another dedicated internet site, offers 55 titles under “Clas-
sical Music”; some of the titles listed on both sites are not
yet available (though scheduled to be released in the next
few months). Nominally (read: dubiously) classical events
such as “The Three Tenors” and performances by Andrea
Boccelli were, naturally, the first to appear. But what
about the opportunity to have some fabulous opera pro-
ductions with DVD’s high definition image? Pickings are
still slim. “Opera tends to be a year behind – that’s how it
was for VHS,” says Paul Gruber, author of The Metropoli -
tan Opera Guide to Opera on Video and executive direc-
tor for program development at the Metropolitan Opera
Guild, which sells such products through the Met By Mail.
No one disputes the usefulness of the format for clas-
sical programs – the ability to choose tracks without the
constant rewinding and
one of the more practical advantages. Still, most of the
major classical labels are hedging their bets. Universal
Classics, the company formerly known as Polygram, com-
prising the classical labels London (Decca), Philips, and
Deutsche Grammophon, has nothing yet to say about how
much or how little of their vast back catalog of opera and
concert video will make it into DVD in the US. (Polygram
Japan, however, has released a
titled in Japanese and the original language, so probably
not destined for the US market.) EMI Classics has nothing
to say yet either.
Pioneer, which put out laserdisc versions of a number of
the Metropolitan Opera productions, did leap into the fray
with two DVDs of popular operas from the Met – a 1982 La
Bohème and a 1985 Tosca plus the 1983 Centennial Gala. The
Met, however, found some flaws, and all three titles have been
recalled for audio remixing. Over at Lincoln Center, caution
now prevails. One other Met opera, a
Zandonai, Francesca da Rimini, a particularly lavish produc-
tion, is out on Pioneer in DVD, and two more are in the
pipeline. Choices available so far from other houses are not
exactly greatest hits: for example, Verdi’s early work Attila
(see review) from La Scala; Janàcek’sˇ The Cunning Little
Vixen from Chatelet.
Some major labels do admit to be grappling with the ques-
tion. Sony Classical has brought out six titles; five more,
including one new program, a teenage wundersinger from
England, Charlotte Church: Voice of an Angel in Concert, are
in the plans. Most of the Sony titles are old Herbert von Kara-
jan performances – the Great Stone Face conductor (see
review) up close and personal. Only one, planned for next
spring, is an opera – Karajan conducting a 1987 Vienna per-
formance of Mozart’s Don Giovanni with Samuel Ramey.
Leslie C. Cohen, vice president, business development at
Sony Music, is decidedly bullish on the potential of DVD and
is jubilant at the demise of Circuit City’s DIVX competitor.
“Sony Music supports DVD. Each of our labels [Columbia,
Epic, etc.] has had it from the beginning, and there are now 34
music titles out,” she says. “With three to five titles a year,
Sony Classical has done slightly less than some of the other
labels, but is keeping pace proportionately with the number of
releases. We’re also working toward simultaneous release of
VHS and DVD programs.”
There are two million DVD players in our homes today. But if you like watching classical concerts and operas on home theater, don’t toss your VCR and laserdisc players just yet.
It’s not surprising that Sony, with its hardware divi-
sion, supports the new format. Cohen also cites its wider
entertainment potential. “There’s an entire market of DVD-
ROM players to be satisfied,” she says. “There are only a
handful of titles available. People are traveling with their
computers, and the DVD gives them flexibility. We can also
do web links with DVD – with a new title from an artist, we
could add a link to their web site, so that fans can keep
current.” (It would also naturally give the company the
opportunity to sell fans its other recordings by that artist.)
All new Sony projects are being evaluated as to their VHS
and DVD potential. Will the day come when DVD replaces
VHS? “Not in the immediate future,” says Cohen. “But DVD
has been adopted more quickly than either VHS or CD. If it
keeps going, the whole market may change.”
An added feature of the Sony DVDs with Karajan is the
addition of surround sound, familiar to moviegoers – that
airplane taking off from the back of the theater and flying
over your head – but new to classical video. According to
David Kawakami, a director in Sony Corporate strategy
and a developer of DVD, the medium can support sur-
round sound in the compressed audio formats of Dolby
ital Theater Sound) and SDDS (Sony Dynamic Digital
Sound). “They all allow 5.1 channels of audio, compressed
so they can fit on the disc with the video,” Kawakami
says. “The quality is good, though below the quality of CD.
Psychoacoustically, we are able to elicit perceptually
good quality, though if you turn off the picture and con-
centrate on the sound, people have commented that the
audio falls short of what we’re used to hearing.”
Richard King, engineer on the Karajan discs, agrees.
“No one is
you compress it, you don’t get everything back.” He says
that Sony is working on the new
ogy, which, when combined with compressed video,
should give a better result. There is room to combine
uncompressed stereo with DVD, but the 5.1 channels for
surround sound take up too much space.
By adding surround sound in a music program, the pro-
ducer’s goal is “to recreate the ambiance of the actual hall,”