Customer Reviews

David Carlson: Anna Karenina

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

 

 

Finally a recording available of what must be one of the most beautiful of modern operas. Written in a contemporary and romantic tonal fashion, I was completely blown away by the power of the music and the composer's ability to communicate the story.
The performance is uniformly excellent. Taken from a series of live performances, the sound is brilliant and almost demonstration quality.
All in all I would recommend this to anyone. Listen ing to this also opened for me the other compositions on cd of David Carlson. I am now a complete admirer of this great living composer.

This is a fantastic piece of contemporary opera. The music is consistently gorgeous, it compliments the story beautifully. The singing is excellent throughout and the orchestra is first rate. Everyone is sure to enjoy this piece.

I'm sure this opera will be popular with young people.Frenzied action, huge cast. Good, but pretty consistently loud, music. No recognizable tunes. The main problem is the libretto probably suffering from the fact tht the librettist died at about the same time as the opera was completed. There would not appear to have been much of the interplay that Verdi had with Boito, or even more infamously Puccini with Illica where the consistent theme was prune the story. I longed for Karenina, the cuckolded spouse, to sing an "El a gamai m'amo" or for Anna to sing the equivalent of "the letter scene". Virtually no musical painting of charachters, it was all action, ACTION, ACTION. Wow, she fell under a train, I missed that. Compare this opera with a somewhat similar dark story by Tolstoy, "Risurezione" by Alfano. Alfano's work is far superior.