Erik Bruchez
Tue, 20 Apr 2004 10:18:06 -0700
I just received a new DVD of L'amico Fritz. A European version of the DVD was published recently in Italy by Kicco (although I still haven't been able to get a hold of that one), but this is a just released US version (NTSC, Region 1) distributed by Kultur. The discography entry is available here:
The sound and image are very good. I noticed a few oddities in the sound here or there, which you will hear if you listen to the soundtrack with headphones: some barely unnoticeable cracks, very short silences between some chapters, and sometimes a funny mix or simply a change of left/right balance (for example during the violin solo of Beppe in Act I). These are the kind of mistakes that would probably not have made it to a regular audio CD.
This said, this is not a major problem as of course what makes this release interesting is that it is the first ever of L'amico Fritz on DVD (at least, officially). It is not every day that one can go to the theater and see a production of L'amico Fritz, so a DVD of a staged performance is pretty much the next best thing you can get.
The performance is from Livorno in November 2002, and it turns out that it is quite good. Jose Bros as Fritz is no Pavarotti (this being actually a good thing in video!), but his voice is quite fit for the part.
This is definitely a recommended buy. I got my copy from Amazon.com. It looks like you can also order directly from Kultur at http://www.kultur.com/.
-Erik _______________________________________________ mascagni-interest mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.alphanet.ch/mailman/listinfo/mascagni-interest