Customer Reviews

Fyodor Chaliapin [VHS]

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This video is a dud - only the most die-hard Chaliapin fan would want it. Almost none of the period footage (some of it seemingly inexplicable) is identified; practically none of the musical excerpts are either. Long sections of the documentary should have edited out. All in all, a great pity: Fyodor Chaliapin, the great bass and legendary Titan of singing, deserves much better!

A laughably bad, utterly amateurish BBC documentary about Fyodor Chaliapin, the greatest basso of all time. Lots of stock footage of old Russia that seems to have been pulled at random from the shelves (people skating on frozen rivers, sailors engaging in pillow fights, people drinking soup) while unidentified snippets of Chaliapin play in the background. A few scraps of biographical info padded out with lots of simple-minded narration ("then World War One came, it was very violent and upset Chaliapin, who didn't like violence..."). Then it just ends. No interviews with musicologists or modern-day opera singers about Chaliapin's unique talent or his influence on modern opera performance. Nothing. Just an utterly pointless exercise in...I'm not sure what. It was a complete waste of time and money. Avoid this one like the plague.