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Customer Reviews of The Opera Gala: Live from Baden-Baden

High caliber opera medley: The women have it!
This DVD is a perfect alternative if you're not in the mood to listen or to watch an entire opera, for it provides well-known arias the majority of opera funs are familiar with. The video is of excellent quality and so is the audio. The auditorium is miked- there are mikes dispersed in various positions in the house for sound recording- but not the individual singers; and that exposes weaknesses and strengths. Ramon Vargas is the weakest in the link. If I'm not mistaken, he replaced the ailing Villazon. What a pity! His voice is small and with limited projectiom to cut above the orchestra, and barely audible in ensemble singing. Netrebko completely outsang him at the end of the duet from La Boheme. Vargas never had a big voice and its color is rather limited. The arias he sang, like "Una furtiva lagrima," the staple of golden-voice tenors, like Gigli, Pavarotti, and even Villazon, lacked colorization and chatacter, and they were rather monochromatic. <
>Tezier has a beautiful lyric baritonal voice of moderate size and his reading of "Per me giunto- lo morro" from Verdi's Don Carlo was admirable. On the other hand, a Verdi baritone needs a little more heft in the lower range which he's lacking; and that was more noticable in his "Toreador Song." <
>The stars of this concert are Garanca and Netrebko. Garanca's reading of the aria "Mon coeur..." from Samson et Dalila was superb, full of passion, yearning, and surrender. And her coloratura, in La Cerenentola's aria, fires rapid-machine-gun trills to kill you! <
>What more can be said about Natrebko. You wish she would never stop singing. Her rendition of "Casta Diva" maybe is not suited to everybody's taste, but the darkness of her voice brings something unique and totally her own. Her encore "Meine Lippen" from Lehar's Giuditta brought the house down, and showed the theater and stage animal in Anna's heart that burst all over the place: shoes and flowers throwing; twirling, dancing, and flirting! This DVD is fun, with high caliber artistic value. It deserves five stars and is highly recommended. <
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>Constantine A. Papas <
>El Paso, Texas

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Fantastic
Stunning performances. Netrebko is, of course, brilliant. A boring stage and lack of decorations is compensated by extremely good DTS sourround sound. Your neighbours might not like this DVD as much as you will.

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Baden-Baden treat
This concert dvd has it all: wonderful video and audio, topnotch vocal performances as expected from the ladies and the baritone .Evidently Vargas has lost weight and some of the beautiful topend of his voice. However, for the price of the dvd who could complain? Netrebko continues to amaze and Garanca is a wonderful mezzo.