Sony G90 manual Preoccupation like that made more sense, but, More than I would have expected

Page 51

dot’s looks. Maybe, on a deeper level, he senses

her own need to shed her obsession, but all we

hear from him is that she’s beautiful. Maybe in

the 1920s, when Puccini composed the piece, a

preoccupation like that made more sense, but

now it sounds silly. “Jeez, Cal! I know you like bimbos, but

stay away from this one!” Still, this is all we have to go on, and

when the singer in the title role is dowdy, without even the

star-power that can override mere looks, Turandot as drama

falls apart.

What did grip me, though, was the production. I would

have said, up to now, that there’s nothing really Chinese about

Turandot. And why would there be? Yes, Puccini conscien-

tiously used Chinese folk songs in his score, but what did he

really know about China? What did any Westerner, besides a

few scholars and unusually open-minded travelers, really

know? China, in this opera, serves (or so I used to think)

merely as an exotic locale for a pre-Hollywood spectacular,

much as Egypt serves in Verdi’s Aïda, or, reaching heights of

grand absurdity, the American frontier, complete with Indi-

ans, did in an earlier Puccini work, La fanciulla del west

(“The Girl of the Golden West”).

But now I’m not so sure. This production, first of all, is

grand enough to suit the opera, whose music – a direct ances-

tor, I’d think, of Hollywood scores for epic films – proclaims

its size, and gilded (if not precisely golden) glitter. Conductor

Zubin Mehta even jokes, in the “making of,” that the opera

tucks into a tiny corner of the staging. Hordes of Chinese

extras come on stage, along with dancers, and the Western

singers in the leading roles are costumed with unheard-of

sumptuousness. Even Liú, who has crossed deserts and

begged for coins in the street, is wearing clothes lavish

enough to bankrupt a small city; her nails flash with mani-

cured splendor. Somehow, instead of making the work seem

silly, all this helps it make sense. “It’s only a fable,” the pro-

duction seems to tell us, with surprising gentleness, consider-

ing its size. Some of the Chinese effects are brilliant, even

touching. In the first scene, there’s a chorus about the rising

moon; onstage we see a corps of Chinese dancers, wearing

long white sculpted robes that shiver in the midnight wind.

Touches like these even give the opera depth it wouldn’t nor-

mally have, perhaps because the visual imagery takes the

grand suggestions in the music to a higher and more truthful

plane. Whether Puccini’s vision was surprisingly Chinese, or

whether Zhang Yimou picked Chinese imagery that would

complement the music, I don’t know. (And don’t look to the

“making of” for him to tell us; nothing there goes even half an

inch below the surface.) But the whole thing adds up to much

more than I would have expected.

And in the third act, even the operatic performance starts

to be good. I’m not quite sure what makes that happen. Zubin

Mehta gets some credit. He’s a conductor somewhat reviled

these days by critics, ever since his hollow tenure in the Eight-

ies with the New York Philharmonic. But there’s no way to

fault him here. His Turandot (he conducts the Maggio Musi-

cale Fiorentino orchestra from Italy) is spacious, lyrical, and

suitably grand. And Barbara Frittoli helps to bring the act to

life. She’s the one principal, remember, who can really sing

her part, and here, given her biggest scene (her sacrifice), she

loses all her caution, and wakes the drama up.

But Sergeij Larin gets a medal, too, for his “Nessun

dorma.” He doesn’t interact much, I’ve said, but here he does

not have to; the aria is sung alone on stage, for what seems to

be his favorite dramatic partner, himself. And his voice rings

out. I have to admit that I’m suspicious of that ringing sound,

because the entire sound of the performance is artificial. It

had to be; the event took place outdoors, in a huge open

space. Obviously, the singers are miked, and the “making of”

shows us exactly how, as well as revealing, for those who

catch a fleeting moment when Larin tests a mike, that his

singing is beefed up with some reverb. “Beefing up” might not

be the intention; the idea might simply be to give the sound

some ambience. But there’s nothing like reverb to make a

rough voice a little smoother, and a small voice a little bigger.

Larin doesn’t have the trumpet sound a Calaf really needs;

worse, when we hear him in a practice studio in the “making

of,” he’s rougher than he sounds in the performance. Give him

the benefit of every doubt; grant that he’s just rehearsing, that

he could have been hoarse, or just generally having a bad day.

But still I think that amplification helped him. Maybe, know-

ing it was there, he sang more lightly than he would have, not

pushing his voice, but letting it blossom naturally. If then he’s

not loud enough, there’s a simple solution: Turn up the vol-

ume, which would have been simplicity itself to do. In the

“making of,” we see a giant mixing console, with separate

channels, clearly marked, for every singer.

And yet in the end, I was moved (even though Puccini died

before finishing the opera, and someone else had to write the

final scene, someone who couldn’t find the right, convincing

sound for Turandot’s crucial transformation). And so, I find I

recommend this DVD – though if you’ve never heard the opera,

you might supplement it with either of two classic audio-only

recordings, the RCA with Jussi Björling as Calaf, or the EMI

with Franco Corelli; both have Birgit Nilsson, spectacularly the

right kind of voice, as Turandot. (Avoid the set with Pavarotti

and Joan Sutherland, spectacularly the wrong sort of voices.

Pavarotti sings “Nessun dorma” nicely, but he’s far too light and

lyrical for this heroic role; don’t be fooled.)

About the goodies: I’ve already said the “making of” won’t

tell you anything deep; I trust you’re not surprised. The syn-

opsis, read out loud against snapshots from the performance,

is pompous in English, much more friendly in the other lan-

guages; it’s adequate, and not a word too long. There’s a PCM

audio-only track, again with snapshots, if you want that. What

the package badly needs, but doesn’t have, is a complete

libretto of the opera, on screen or in a booklet, so listeners

can prep themselves and then watch without subtitles. The

whole package needed much more careful editing. I’ve men-

tioned the two spellings of the tenor’s name, but there are

odd, no doubt accidental omissions. We’re correctly told, for

instance, that Zhang Yimou is a distinguished film director,

but we don’t learn the names of any of his films.

The box contains a booklet, with the kind of random

scholarly essay on the opera’s origins that might be found

with any new recording. We didn’t need that; we needed what

I said was missing from the “making of,” some comment from

Zhang or from a Chinese scholar on how Chinese the opera

seems, how it feels to be a Chinese person working with it.

The musical performance, with its strengths and obvious

weaknesses, is what it is. But if someone had worked one-

fourth as carefully on the DVD package as Zhang (and his

choreographer and costumer) worked on the staging, this first

big-time classical DVD – welcome as it is in many ways –

could have been better.

Image 51
Contents Sony G90 Size Does Matter Sound and vision at the same time every time Ingly just beyond reachThan ever we needed in strange, dark caves Experience before he finds a little of ItBergman’s The Seventh Seal DVD Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut HPBarco Vision Watch Follies & FrolicsEditor Editors will respond next issueCan All That Counts Be Counted? a Forum Begins II Janet’s IndexProblem with DVD Digital Artifacts Targeting 14-Year-Old Boys?If The Perfect Vision is to push Down Primrose Path Toward Perfect Vision Forever? At all. So it doesn’t take Hdtv orAzine Widescreen Review perhaps? TV Is TV What Not To See on DVDDigital Cinema The Good Bad of It John Eargle Lossy Data Compression & DVD SoundSeries such as Star Trek The Next Generation . Each I L L E RMovie Trivia DVDs Gaining MomentumE G E G S a N D O W S I C & M U L T I M E D I aPanasonic DVD-L50D PalmTheater ViaTV VC 105 VideophoneM M a R T I N Encountered R R Y R a W L I N S O NInfocomm Significant New Products and Trends World of displaysReport Tunately, there are trade-offs for the small size of ultra To recreate the theater experience in the homeOgy near its limit and its days are numbered. The display Light projected on the screen. These considerations haveAn Ideal Cinema? Leges, its perks, as it were. If you’re the script super Real movie where there was none before, or at leastOmetimes I think that every position on a Moviemaking crew comes with its special priviFootage One way or another when it comes to working withIty between when they are and when Assistant directors, service people,Directors seem to trust me to use my Into any trouble Certainly a serviceable way to editMovies Likely to get youEnjoy prelaps to pull the narrative Allowing for camera setups, lighting, and rigTakes and setups meaning the master It’s a funny thing about matching in editing. Most laySion? In Understanding Media, McCluhan Lexicon MC-1 Controller Sonic Flavors To Slake Every ThirstR L E Y Logic 7 Digital Signal Processing for Movies and Music Lexicon’s Music Surround ModesListening to Movies Listening To Music Surround Ing the Denon Anechoic Orchestral Music Recording CD ConclusionControllers Two-Channel Bypass Mode Surround Decoding and Digital Signal Processing DSPDSP and the Future-Proof Controller Bass Management THX-Certified ControllersFuture… High-Resolution Digital Audio…the controller represents Radical new path toInterFacing the User After DSP Digital to Analog ConversionM M I I L L E R Revel Ultima Speakers From 2 to 7.1 ChannelsEpisode One The Ancient Enemy Meet My Enemy59 by Deploying the Troops RPG Room Optimizer SoftwareTion coefficient for the surfaces that is comparable to Revel Ultima Salon Noble WarriorStart and go get a beer, or two You wanted to cross over your subwoofer at 40 HzResearch effort to quantify in-room speaker behavior Our noble warrior against the ancient enemyLikewise for the 15-inch woofer in the Sub-15 Essary to achieve the Revel design team’s led by KevinSpeaker? Removing the bottom octave from the Salon’s Direct radiator to bloated. The Salon’s soundstage comBy Keith Johnson for Reference Recordings Nal processing in controllers hadn’t made subwooferWoofer, when it is well integrated with your main speakers Cians often use emphasis in the intensityFormance. Orchestral music, for example, is performed Get that the fight for the lowlands was far from over Cy, phase, and time. It then develops adaptive filters thatBattle Summary Stand-off Episode Two a War On Two FrontsSearch of the Mythical Beast LINN-AV5103 Aktiv Multi-Channel SystemQuest Begins Company of the BeastRemote Interface Working the EnvironmentI L G a D E R NAD T770 Audio-Video ReceiverJust the Basics, Done Well Summing UpGaines’ Stormy Monday I’ve Got the T-Bone Walker Das Boot, The Director’s Cut Wolfgang Peterson, directorDesigns go, the NAD T770 is all steak Steering in DD mode is precise and smoothManufacturer’s Corner RPG Diffuser Systems Inc., Room OptimizerWant My DVD Major Labels’ Plans for Classical Music on DVDI D I W a L E S O N Tan Opera Guide to Opera on Video and executive direc Have been considered typical indeed, good for a Audience, he says. We fed that information to the rearTion from the main mikes as well as the spot mikes From the two main mikes and brought it to the rear onesComputer and TV combined See review, this issueQuering technology issues, Moorhead says. Most of our Fall was so high. This was an elaborate jointMade for DVD Original, so they’re not going to fake it for DVDStars. God, was I skeptical Ple either turning cynical, or lusting for more blood Dramatic confrontation, in the second scene of Act TwoMust answer three riddles. If his answers are correct, she To Turandot’s collection the Chinese nation, ruled by anMoon onstage we see a corps of Chinese dancers, wearing Turandot. And why would there be? Yes, Puccini conscienPreoccupation like that made more sense, but Tucks into a tiny corner of the staging. Hordes of ChineseDVD-ness Classical DVD SamplerPerformances Ment of that, and when I listened, I found I’d chooseWith the sound either way, or with the sound of the Scala Full of pomp and circumstance, but much less lifelikeThat’s simply ravishing This performance is broad Role mostly as a force of nature, powerful but blankStart of each one, there’s Karajan on screen, his face Like institutional persona, Herr Music Director of AllExperiment in a New Medium Roger Reynolds Watershed Mode 70, DVDSurrounded JargonAreas of music rhythm, loudness, and tone color, for Are so new that we all need orientationThough, is that Reynolds is way too impressed with Yes, theorists can find all sorts of relationships amongThat, while Otto is allegedly creating syntax by moving Musical scoreMaybe, succeeded by metallic effects But in rhythms he himself creates. In practice, these, toPerformance we see on DVD begins with a film Pop With a TwistB G E N D R O N Ments of a Clockwork Orange What Ever Happened to BabyHorizon, probably to his death. It is a scene that demands Perfect timing and careful choreographyBelow-average vocal performance Son’s Dead to the World. NopeLy slurs the tune’s climactic line,What DVD, with its digitally clear resolutionTabloid, because of its sensational pur Insignificance of the media and with aGodzilla, Armageddon, Instrument is better than Dent films Gods and Monsters, Cookie’s Fortune thatWith 1991’s In on the Kill Close Encounter Voices of Light/The Passion of Joan of ArcD R E W Q U I N T Special presentation of Voices of Light/The Passion of Joan By much of the sound reinforcement heard in Broadway Obvious. The movie is about as complete as it can be.Other instances, were not merely happy coincidences, nor Each other. Seen together, they seemed inseparable yetHuman Color Perception An Introduction to Digital VideoPart 2 Video Color Concepts Physics of ColorHue and Saturation ColorblindnessColor Concepts for Video Additive Color LuminanceDisplay Color Accuracy RGB Primaries The Color Triangle CIE Chromaticity DiagramWhite Reference Color Temperature Grayscale Color TemperatureColor Measurement Color Bars Instrument known as a color analyzer or a spectro Other color signals will alsoColor errors. Are used in some circumstancesAdjustments Color and HueAvia Guide to Home Theater pro Sony VPH-G90U Multiscan Projector PhysicalE G R O G E R S Operating Functions Installation and Set-upConnections Scan RatesSummary PerformanceSpecifications Runco DTV-930 Multiscan ProjectorDescription Inputs/Outputs Formats can be selected directly from the remote Convergence Labs Test Report Greg RogersCombination is about the reasonable limit to achieve an Horizontal and vertical scan frequencies and other sourceBe noticed RangeRemote Control IEV Turboscan 1500 Line DoublerLine Doubling = Deinterlacing 3Dfusion do each in different ways. The Turboscan Video outputs. As a progressive video reference, I used aCreates progressive video without deinterlacing artifacts Ics-grade front projectorPioneer Elite DVL-91 Combination CD/LD/DVD Player Look and FeelL L C R U C E Meaning clear Up menus allow you to configure such things as onscreen lanWrong one in the dark DVD PerformanceLD Performance Ly, the remote of the DVL-91, like thatDvdo iScan Plus Line Doubler Celebrate Film L M & M O V I E S Classic Comedy’s Second Coming Roberto BenigniQuently escape was Benigni’s first American and English Though a number of films in which BenigniRoberto on the Internet Original Pink Panther film go figure. Sad to say Cute cameo which perhaps hints at a sequelAspect ratio and running time incorrectly SoundSet consists of Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, 2001 a Special Editions Kubrick and The Space MonstersFirst wave of anger and incredulity. The DVD set was No thanks to Warner’s folks Small wonderBoth Clockwork and Full Metal Jacket exhibited pinkish What Dreams May Come Special Editions Few Weird ThoughtsNavigator a Medieval Odyssey, the other is Map Human Heart Worth a Look Relatively Recent ArrivalsSmooth as could be and given the importance How beautiful she was when she was married to RogerMovie would have had the solid foundation it needed To say that the film is developing a cult following someLove.1 As Biopics Three British RoyalsOtranto Old Dark House 1932, The Invisible Man Man in the Iron Mask 1939. But it is hisHP Comments Food-storage room Ic in this context in cloud cuckooland, with theirYou have an idea of what’s really going on in the film Mon with The Shining than with any other Kubrick opusN a T H a N V a L I N From Art to CultFace the questions that vexed and haunted Only later goes on to give them human dimensions. EvenSuch blatant symbolism can sustain an entire movie Not content to present us with an allegory of the eternalIssues 111 Editorial Submissions Back Issues Website Change of AddressQuestions About Your Subscription Letters to the EditorName Company Address CITY, State , ZIP A S S I F I E D a D O R D E R F O R MVision Watch