O: Operatica, Vol. 1 [IMPORT]

Douglas Davis (Performer), Giulio Caccini (Composer), Christoph Willibald Gluck (Composer), Reynaldo Hahn (Composer), Sergey Rachmaninov (Composer), Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (Composer), Lord Vanger (Composer), Heitor Villa-Lobos (Composer), Antonio Vivaldi (Composer), Maureen O'Flynn (Performer), Alan Steinberger (Performer), Charles Bisharat (Performer), John Wittenberg (Performer), Peter Kent (Performer), Lord Vanger (Performer)

Product Details

• Performer: Douglas Davis, Maureen O'Flynn, Alan Steinberger, Charles Bisharat, John Wittenberg, et al.
• Composer: Giulio Caccini, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Reynaldo Hahn, Sergey Rachmaninov, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, et al.
• Audio CD (October 3, 2000)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: E-Magine Records
• ASIN: B00004Z42O
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #29,504 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #4 in	Music > Classical > Instruments > Electronic > Computer
  #20 in	Music > Classical > Historical Periods > Baroque (c.1600-1750) > Vocal & Song
  #25 in	Music > Classical > Historical Periods > Modern, 20th, & 21st Century > Composers > Villa-Lobos, Heitor

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dimond in rough, April 22, 2002

By	Trancenoah (MA United States) - See all my reviews

this is truely one of the best CDs i have ever bought. I listened to this CD exclusivly for the first week i had it. I'm a techno junkie which a picky ear but the background beats to all the songs were pleasing and blended perfectly with the harmonics. The vocalist's haunting voice reaches into my heart and turns me inside out. I LOVE this CD and will definitely play this for ever. If you like beautiful music and good emotional techno/trance definitly buy this cd, it a true find.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Adding To My List Of Vices: A Continuation, May 4, 2003

By	TastyBabySyndrome "T(to the)B(to the)S" ("Daddy Dagon's Daycare" - Proud Sponsor of the Little Tendril Baseball Team, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

When coupling sounds from two opposing polarities into one another and blending them into the perfect texturization of harmonics, one has to have a few things that fit nicely together in order to succeed. One has to first have a musical stylization that works when placed into an arena that isn't normally associated with its feel, making sure that the seams that could be ripe for the picking aren't taken advantage of. Next, one has to make sure that the voice behind the work, if there is a vocal combination in the work at all, is something that will work smoothly and will not let the vehicle of sense assailment down. Otherwise, the end result is painful and the art, it is merely noise. This is especially true when one is trying to fit a glove on the hand that isn't accustomed to wearing it, making certain that the fit is right and that the end result isn't too rudimentary because something was overlooked.

With Operatica: "O" Volume 1, the components come together fabulously and the seams don't really show at all except on the rarest of occasions (two songs out of eleven by my count, and perhaps that's more beat than anything), throwing a mixture of motions into a vocally moving ocean that would, on many occasions, be seen as items that wouldn't fit together. Here, the beautiful voice of Maureen O'Flynn mixes the operatic sounds I had never truly experienced into a sea of electronic beats, ambient rhythms, speaking pianos, and other vessels to compose the perfect structure. This takes a classical form and introduces it to a world that paints new scenes that couldn't have been painted otherwise, letting its audience ingest a spectrum of thoughts that they wouldn't intake normally. I, myself, was stunned to find that I was instantly addicted to the release, listening to it over and over again and wondering where Opera had been all of my life. Honestly, being a child of electronic music that drifts into heavier organisms of feeling, I never thought I would ever think such thoughts.

For people that can't bridge the span of biases and enjoy items that span gaps in tastes and in sensations, then this wouldn't be something that you would enjoy. There are many things within it, like the work itself, that aren't traditional and that a person looking for the flairless would find flavorless, from the sound clips used as accents to the beats that infest the sounds and make them dance through the mind with zeal. For someone that is looking for something that breaks outside the mundane drum and bass notions of music and that wants to hear an angelic voice pouring through synthetically fashioned skylines, then this might be something you'd look into tasting. Me, I never thought that something like this would find its way into my home, but it did more than that. It actually made me listen to things I hadn't really listened to, liking them for what might amount to a first time.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A new sound in electronica, October 18, 2000

By	John G. (Palm Beach, FL) - See all my reviews

Very rarely does somebody have a great idea artistically and find a way to take that idea right to the edge of perfect. The combination of electronica and opera has been an idea long coming, yet nobody has either been brave enough to try it, or smart enough to really do it justice. It's obvious that electronic music is moving from its heavy beat-laden begginings and moving into something far more eclectic and "worldly" -- cultured even. When I first saw the title for this I knew I had to have it -- if it was what I though it was. And was I pleasantly surprised. Fantastic producing, a FLAWLESS mix and an all around fabulous list of tracks to play in almost any situation, this new genre of electronica is going to go much further than Volume 1. Because this album hasn't received much airplay yet, (or at least I haven't heard it) I think it's a rare find. I'm sure when the right DJs get their hands on it, that will quickly change. It's a great feeling to discover something on your own and that joy is getting increasingly harder to do in this heavily saturated market of mediocre and homogenous music. This album is anything but mediocre and is definitely original enough to lead and possibly even dare other "electronica technicians" to move the genre in the direction its been begging for -- world classic.