Sony G90 manual Start of each one, there’s Karajan on screen, his face

Page 54
DVD-ness:
How well do these items
use the DVD format?
Performances:
A question of another hue.

Paging through the chapters is an eerie experience. At the

start of each one, there’s Karajan on screen, his face

inscrutable, a mask of – what? He projects, at best, a statue-

like institutional persona, “Herr Music Director of All

Europe,” as he used to be sarcastically called, in charge not of

music, necessarily, but of musical institutions. Flip from one

chapter to the next, and he looks the same. No New Year’s

froth for him; whatever’s at stake here, it seems deadly seri-

ous, and I’m not the only one to find this unsettling. Two

friends, both seasoned musical professionals, found it

strange, as well, and one of them even told me that Karajan –

his unmoving, not quite human face – disturbed her children.

The operas are happier experiences. Verdi’s Attila is far

from his greatest work; it was the product of a rushed time

when he was building his career, a period he later called his

“years in the galleys.” There are moments when you know his

heart isn’t quite in the music that he’s writing, maybe because

at times he was too rushed to write music that he really liked.

When I’ve seen it on stage, the

work comes off like an animated

poster, broad and bold but never

subtle, though it has wonderful

moments, like most of the last act,

where there’s a tenor aria that

ranks with Verdi’s best, and a trio

that’s simply ravishing.

This performance is broad and

bold, but never quite involving. For a start, I’d blame Samuel

Ramey, the Attila, and the reason for many of the opera’s more

recent revivals; not many works provide such a juicy title role

for a bass, and Ramey’s huge and oaken voice is perfect for it.

(So is his bare chest, as almost any woman who saw him in the

part will tell you.) His problem is that he doesn’t give us any

notion of the person behind the music. Attila, as a dramatic

character, doesn’t go very deep, but he’s more than a cartoon,

depicted, in fact, as the only honest human being on stage, the

only one who isn’t plotting against anybody, the only one who

rejects cowardice and rewards courage, whether shown by

friend or enemy. Ramey can’t show us any of that, and plays

the role mostly as a force of nature, powerful but blank.

Cheryl Studer, as the Italian warrior woman Attila falls heav-

ily for (and who ultimately kills him) is another strong-voiced

blank, completely unable to convey either her character’s

strength, her anger, her conflict, or her swirling, lost love for the

tenor, to say nothing of all of these together. The tenor, Kaludi

Kaludov, is far better, a manly persona with a ringing sound (it

helps, too, that he gets much of Verdi’s best music); his only

problem, as video so mercilessly shows us, is that he looks Slav-

ic, hardly his fault, since he’s Bulgarian. But he’s supposed to be

Italian, and, unfortunately for him and us, this matters here,

because the most convincing of the principals, baritone Giorgio

Zancanaro, looks, with his fine, chiseled Italian face, exactly like

what he’s supposed to be, an ambassador from Rome. “Bring the

Roman envoy to me,” Ramey sings to a servant, and when Zan-

canaro comes on stage, reality, for one brief moment, settles

into place, because a Roman is precisely what Zancanaro looks

like. Nor is his solid baritone voice a disappointment. This is the

one moment of dramatic truth in this performance; everything

else, even Riccardo Muti’s conducting – strong but blank, like

his two leading singers – falls short by comparison.

Adriana is another kind of stew. Cilea was a minor com-

poser of Puccini’s era, the early Twentieth Century, with a gift

for heart-stopping moments. There are a few of

these in this opera, most of them familiar

excerpts, like the soprano’s two arias, “Io son l’u-

mile ancella” and “Poveri fiori,” or the tenor’s

two. Everything else is empty boilerplate, and

one principal character, the vengeful mezzo-soprano princess,

has no real musical existence at all. The plot of the opera posi-

tively creaks, and should have been turned into a French farce.

The Princess, at one crucial point, is hidden in a back room, not

knowing that everybody knows she’s there; it’s meanwhile

essential that everyone onstage should have a different notion

of who she is. One intelligent question from anybody, and the

whole tired house of cards would collapse.

So why perform this nonsense? Because it gives a soprano

diva a commanding role, and this rendition features two divas

at once, Mirelli Freni in the title part, and Fiorenza Cossotto as

the Princess. And they’re not just divas; they’re aging divas,

whose combined experience and charisma gives the perfor-

mance a kind of stature, much loved

in opera, that lies halfway between

star appeal and utter camp. There

are some problems, though. One of

them is Cossotto’s character, an

older woman who, if she can’t have

the younger man she loves, would

launch nuclear missiles, if only

they’d been invented, to destroy the

world. This all is so absurd that, as I watched Cossotto, I almost

had to look at the calendar to make sure it wasn’t Halloween.

Another problem is Freni’s voice, originally a lyric soprano,

and too light for this role, even though it’s been strengthened by

age and artifice; it still negotiates (rather than simply conquer-

ing) music that’s too low for it. And the final problem, I’m

afraid, is Freni’s age. I can enjoy a battle of the matron-divas,

but the whole point of the confrontation in this story is that

Freni’s character is young and beautiful, and therefore gets the

guy Cossotto can’t keep. We even hear about her age right near

the start, when a devoted older man falls in love with her.

Worse yet, Freni’s one moment of real dramatic truth is only

bearable if she’s young. Her character is supposed to be a

famous actress, and when she first comes on stage, she’s wor-

ried about a passage in a role she’s about to play. “I’m just a

humble handmaiden of art,” she tells us, and those sentiments

from the lips of an older woman would be disastrously self-

involved, too disingenuous to take seriously, even for a

moment. From a woman of about 22, they’ll pass, but Freni has

not seen 22 for quite a while.

Beyond this, there’s not much to say. The tenor, Peter

Dvorsky, playing a character whose irresistible manly charms

provoke everything, sensible or silly, in the story, sings in a

manly fashion, while looking like a stable, proper bourgeois.

The many minor characters are fine, except the scheming little

Abbott, tenor Ernesto Gavazzi, who has a sharp, clear voice,

but mugs relentlessly, underlining every utterance with a sim-

per or a pose. I wanted to swat him like a fly. I can’t finish,

though, without a cheer for Maestro Gavazenni, whose alert,

rapt, and passionate conducting deserves every drop of the

audience’s adulation. Gavazenni was music director of La Scala

in a bygone era; Riccardo Muti, who conducts the Attila, is

music director now. The difference between them – one man’s

art has character, the other is a flashy empty suit – tells a sad

story about what’s become of opera in our modern age.

Image 54
Contents Sony G90 Size Does Matter Experience before he finds a little of It Ingly just beyond reachThan ever we needed in strange, dark caves Sound and vision at the same time every timeKubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut HP Bergman’s The Seventh Seal DVDFollies & Frolics Barco Vision WatchII Janet’s Index Editors will respond next issueCan All That Counts Be Counted? a Forum Begins EditorProblem 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? John Eargle Lossy Data Compression & DVD Sound What Not To See on DVDDigital Cinema The Good Bad of It TV Is TVI L L E R Series such as Star Trek The Next Generation . EachMovie Trivia DVDs Gaining MomentumE G S I C & M U L T I M E D I a E G S a N D O WPanasonic DVD-L50D PalmTheater ViaTV VC 105 VideophoneM M a R T I N R R Y R a W L I N S O N EncounteredInfocomm Significant New Products and Trends World of displaysReport Light projected on the screen. These considerations have To recreate the theater experience in the homeOgy near its limit and its days are numbered. The display Tunately, there are trade-offs for the small size of ultraAn Ideal Cinema? Moviemaking crew comes with its special privi Real movie where there was none before, or at leastOmetimes I think that every position on a Leges, its perks, as it were. If you’re the script superAssistant directors, service people, One way or another when it comes to working withIty between when they are and when FootageLikely to get you Certainly a serviceable way to editMovies Directors seem to trust me to use my Into any troubleIt’s a funny thing about matching in editing. Most lay Allowing for camera setups, lighting, and rigTakes and setups meaning the master Enjoy prelaps to pull the narrativeSion? 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 Conclusion Ing the Denon Anechoic Orchestral Music Recording CDControllers Two-Channel Bypass Mode Surround Decoding and Digital Signal Processing DSPDSP and the Future-Proof Controller THX-Certified Controllers Bass ManagementRadical new path to High-Resolution Digital Audio…the controller represents Future…After DSP Digital to Analog Conversion InterFacing the UserMeet My Enemy Revel Ultima Speakers From 2 to 7.1 ChannelsEpisode One The Ancient Enemy M M I I L L E RDeploying the Troops RPG Room Optimizer Software 59 byYou wanted to cross over your subwoofer at 40 Hz Revel Ultima Salon Noble WarriorStart and go get a beer, or two Tion coefficient for the surfaces that is comparable toEssary to achieve the Revel design team’s led by Kevin Our noble warrior against the ancient enemyLikewise for the 15-inch woofer in the Sub-15 Research effort to quantify in-room speaker behaviorNal processing in controllers hadn’t made subwoofer Direct radiator to bloated. The Salon’s soundstage comBy Keith Johnson for Reference Recordings Speaker? Removing the bottom octave from the Salon’sWoofer, when it is well integrated with your main speakers Cians often use emphasis in the intensityFormance. Orchestral music, for example, is performed Episode Two a War On Two Fronts Cy, phase, and time. It then develops adaptive filters thatBattle Summary Stand-off Get that the fight for the lowlands was far from overLINN-AV5103 Aktiv Multi-Channel System Search of the Mythical BeastCompany of the Beast Quest BeginsWorking the Environment Remote InterfaceSumming Up NAD T770 Audio-Video ReceiverJust the Basics, Done Well I L G a D E RDas Boot, The Director’s Cut Wolfgang Peterson, director Gaines’ Stormy Monday I’ve Got the T-Bone WalkerRPG Diffuser Systems Inc., Room Optimizer Steering in DD mode is precise and smoothManufacturer’s Corner Designs go, the NAD T770 is all steakWant 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 From the two main mikes and brought it to the rear ones Audience, he says. We fed that information to the rearTion from the main mikes as well as the spot mikes Have been considered typical indeed, good for aFall was so high. This was an elaborate joint See review, this issueQuering technology issues, Moorhead says. Most of our Computer and TV combinedMade for DVD Original, so they’re not going to fake it for DVDStars. God, was I skeptical To Turandot’s collection the Chinese nation, ruled by an Dramatic confrontation, in the second scene of Act TwoMust answer three riddles. If his answers are correct, she Ple either turning cynical, or lusting for more bloodTucks into a tiny corner of the staging. Hordes of Chinese Turandot. And why would there be? Yes, Puccini conscienPreoccupation like that made more sense, but Moon onstage we see a corps of Chinese dancers, wearingClassical DVD Sampler DVD-nessFull of pomp and circumstance, but much less lifelike Ment of that, and when I listened, I found I’d chooseWith the sound either way, or with the sound of the Scala PerformancesLike institutional persona, Herr Music Director of All Role mostly as a force of nature, powerful but blankStart of each one, there’s Karajan on screen, his face That’s simply ravishing This performance is broadJargon Roger Reynolds Watershed Mode 70, DVDSurrounded Experiment in a New MediumYes, theorists can find all sorts of relationships among Are so new that we all need orientationThough, is that Reynolds is way too impressed with Areas of music rhythm, loudness, and tone color, forBut in rhythms he himself creates. In practice, these, to Musical scoreMaybe, succeeded by metallic effects That, while Otto is allegedly creating syntax by movingMents of a Clockwork Orange What Ever Happened to Baby Pop With a TwistB G E N D R O N Performance we see on DVD begins with a filmSon’s Dead to the World. Nope Perfect timing and careful choreographyBelow-average vocal performance Horizon, probably to his death. It is a scene that demandsInsignificance of the media and with a DVD, with its digitally clear resolutionTabloid, because of its sensational pur Ly slurs the tune’s climactic line,WhatDent films Gods and Monsters, Cookie’s Fortune that Godzilla, Armageddon, Instrument is better thanWith 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 Each other. Seen together, they seemed inseparable yet Obvious. The movie is about as complete as it can be.Other instances, were not merely happy coincidences, nor By much of the sound reinforcement heard in BroadwayPhysics of Color An Introduction to Digital VideoPart 2 Video Color Concepts Human Color PerceptionLuminance ColorblindnessColor Concepts for Video Additive Color Hue and SaturationCIE Chromaticity Diagram Display Color Accuracy RGB Primaries The Color TriangleWhite Reference Color Temperature Grayscale Color TemperatureColor Measurement Color Bars Are used in some circumstances Other color signals will alsoColor errors. Instrument known as a color analyzer or a spectroAdjustments Color and HueAvia Guide to Home Theater pro Sony VPH-G90U Multiscan Projector PhysicalE G R O G E R S Scan Rates Installation and Set-upConnections Operating FunctionsPerformance SummarySpecifications Runco DTV-930 Multiscan ProjectorDescription Inputs/Outputs Convergence Labs Test Report Greg Rogers Formats can be selected directly from the remoteRange Horizontal and vertical scan frequencies and other sourceBe noticed Combination is about the reasonable limit to achieve anRemote Control IEV Turboscan 1500 Line DoublerLine Doubling = Deinterlacing Ics-grade front projector Video outputs. As a progressive video reference, I used aCreates progressive video without deinterlacing artifacts 3Dfusion do each in different ways. The TurboscanPioneer Elite DVL-91 Combination CD/LD/DVD Player Look and FeelL L C R U C E Up menus allow you to configure such things as onscreen lan Meaning clearLy, the remote of the DVL-91, like that DVD PerformanceLD Performance Wrong one in the darkDvdo iScan Plus Line Doubler Celebrate Film Classic Comedy’s Second Coming Roberto Benigni L M & M O V I E SThough a number of films in which Benigni Quently escape was Benigni’s first American and EnglishRoberto on the Internet Sound Cute cameo which perhaps hints at a sequelAspect ratio and running time incorrectly Original Pink Panther film go figure. Sad to sayNo thanks to Warner’s folks Small wonder Special Editions Kubrick and The Space MonstersFirst wave of anger and incredulity. The DVD set was Set consists of Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, 2001 aBoth Clockwork and Full Metal Jacket exhibited pinkish Special Editions Few Weird Thoughts What Dreams May ComeWorth a Look Relatively Recent Arrivals Navigator a Medieval Odyssey, the other is Map Human HeartTo say that the film is developing a cult following some How beautiful she was when she was married to RogerMovie would have had the solid foundation it needed Smooth as could be and given the importanceBiopics Three British Royals Love.1 AsOtranto Man in the Iron Mask 1939. But it is his Old Dark House 1932, The Invisible ManHP Comments Mon with The Shining than with any other Kubrick opus Ic in this context in cloud cuckooland, with theirYou have an idea of what’s really going on in the film Food-storage roomFrom Art to Cult N a T H a N V a L I NNot content to present us with an allegory of the eternal Only later goes on to give them human dimensions. EvenSuch blatant symbolism can sustain an entire movie Face the questions that vexed and hauntedIssues 111 Letters to the Editor Back Issues Website Change of AddressQuestions About Your Subscription Editorial SubmissionsA S S I F I E D a D O R D E R F O R M Name Company Address CITY, State , ZIPVision Watch