Customer Reviews

The Blu Ray Experience: Opera and Ballet Highlights [Blu-ray]

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Within the realm of classical performance arts, this is a wide-ranging and high-quality disc. It's a bit short, but video and audio quality on every selection are perfect. If nothing else, this makes a great show piece for your blu-ray player and HT setup. THese are some of the most popular moments from some of the best-known operas and ballets. You'll find that you know most of this music even if you don't "know" anything about classical music. And for less than 10 bucks, what's to lose? If you need something to get you over that Super Saver Shipping minimum, you could do much worse than this disc. Enjoy!

An appealing, tantalizing (that's the idea) collection of balletic and operatic chestuts, as professionally performed and smartly filmed as one might dare hope for. BUT--there's a major caveat. Many of the selections are awkwardly terminated at mid-chorus--in a couple of instances, simply a "fade-out" rather than anything resembling a cadence or final chord. Whether a sampler such as this is more irritating than titillating to the neophyte Blu-Ray discoverer is perhaps a tough, highly personal call (reminds me of the first "stereophonic" recordings, with canons coming from two channels during the "1812 Overture" followed by ping-pong balls bouncing from one side of the room to the other and a parade of drummers soon to follow).

What irks me is that, despite the 13 excerpts, there's space for much more on the DVD, whether in the form of complete selections (preferably) or more of same. Although these are not the international stars whose artistry and charisma enabled them to cross genre boundaries (a la Domingo and Pavarotti), each is good enough to make you wonder why the artist in question isn't a household word. Perhaps the most absorbing, thoroughly delightful performance is the Cecilia & Bryn duet "Pa-pa-pa-pa" from Mozart's "Die Zauberflote." There's only one other performer who strikes me as capable of equaling the performance included here: Danny Kaye. (On the other hand, I defy Cecilia and/or Bryn to match Kaye on Cole Porter's "Let's Not Talk About Love" which, as performed by Kaye, is practically a toccata tour de force beyond the reach of anything human.)

All the same, a collection such as this should be going for no more than five bucks.

This is an interesting disc in several respects; the first one for me being the audio options available to the listener. On the opening screen one is given the option of choosing between PCM Stereo, PCM Surround, DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby True HD Surround. That alone is worth the price of admission as it could help address the never-ending question about which audio format sounds best in your system. I am not personally aware of any other disc which provides this opportunity.

Moving on, the music and performances cover a wide variety from Puccini's comic opera "Gianni Schicchi" to the rather stilted and strange work by Rameau, "Zoroastre." A friend of mine who appreciates music has several times asked to hear this disc again, so it definitely exhibits a charm.

I'm a ballet fan and have a high level of respect for the Paris Opera Ballet, their selection from Act 2 of Swan Lake is beautifully done as I would have expected. I was a little surprised with the staging in the selection from Il Trovatore where in the famous "Anvil Chorus" scene they show some action with a prisoner being saved from being shot while the chorus is singing instead of the anvil scene with sparks flying.

On the whole there is more to like than to dislike and I'm glad I added it to my collection.

This Blu-Ray contains "the good bits" from popular Opera and Ballet.....and the performances are from the world's most famous companies.
The price is low and the sound "mind bending". Here in Bandung Java Indonesia only few Blu-Ray discs are available, and there is no FTA terrestrial digital HDTV. My favourite track on this "sampler" DVD is from a Straus Opera....all tracks are absolutely beautiful. It is very tempting now to order the complete versions.
Stephen Fleay Bandung Java Indonesia

Not going to get into much detail but simply put....this BR is amazing! I got this for the family as where we live there's not much chance for us to get to see such cultural events. My kids are young and I figured this would open their imagination and curiosity. The picture is SOOOOOOOOOOO clear and the sound is superb that they were immediately sucked in. No it doesn't have the action and explosions that other BR movies have but it's on a class of it's own for PQ and SQ. I highly recommend, specially at this price!

I'm going to be honest, I only purchased The Blu Ray Experience: Opera and Ballet Highlights because I wanted to test out my new blu-ray player and the price of the disc was very inexpensive but I was not disappointed. When they called this "The Blu Ray Experience", that was an understatement. The HD picture and sound quality of the video is phenomenal and really brings the performances to life. I feel like I was actually there. The acts were very enjoyable. The makers of this disc were sure to include many of the most popular opera and ballet performances that were familiar to even people like me who do not follow this type of entertainment as much. I still found this disc enjoyable and even though my blu-ray collection is growing, I still pop this disc in when I'm in the mood for some classical entertainment. The only thing I don't like about The Blu Ray Experience: Opera and Ballet Highlights is the fact that it's too short. If another 45 mins. to and hour were added, this disc would be perfect.

This is how to enjoy various music pieces and fantastic video. Too short, would have loved more. A great value.

I was expecting a little more from this blu-ray. It's kinda short. The singing is good and the quality is good but this seems like it wasonly meant to be a demo disk.

This is a great way to get some exposure to ballet and opera. The blu-ray video quality is very good and the choice of all the advanced audio codecs is a bonus.

Meant to be a showpiece of what is available on operatic and ballet Opus Arte BDs, I find this a mixed success and it did not entice me to buy the originals (although I have bought many, more inspite of, than because of, this disc).
However it is inexpensive so is worth the few dollars asked but I doubt if it would persuade anyone who is not interested in the genre to suddenly collect opera and ballet BDs.
That said it does illustrate the effectiveness of BD for showing opera and ballet and does include the brilliant (both technically and artistically) "Queen of the Night" aria from Mozart's "magic Flute" so the disc is worth the cost for this item alone.