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Rating: - Great singing & acting of great Rossini arias
This opera has a rather silly plot(sort of like the Grand Hotel movie), but it is filled with great music very well performed. The singers (from the Kirov young artists program) all sing and act very well and look their parts. Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves in this comic opera, and so did I.

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Rating: - very enjoyable
Simple (even silly) plot, wonderful music. This opera entertains and makes you smile, as can be seen by the faces in the audience.
The music is typical (and great) Rossini. The opera is a product of a big group of very good singers. An opera that has many roles for many singers. The ensembles are just pure musical art.
Gergiev proved that he can do more than Russian composers, and does it exceptionally well. The Russian singers are a joy to listen and watch.
Highly recommended to enjoy good music, good singing and even good acting.

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Rating: - ABSOLUTELLY GREAT AND ENJOYABLE
All Russian cast, orchestra and conductor for a Rossini opera? ... not a good forecast until you watch this DVD. REALLY GREAT.

As I have stated in other reviews, for a real good Rossini performance is needed an Italian conductor and hopefully an all italian cast too. I am glad to realize that there are exceptions as is this case. This is a great performance. Gergiev conducting makes the music flow with expertise during the whole opera. The difficulty here is that the orchestra is on the back of the stage so the conductor can not see the singers. But it seems that this did not cause any trouble at all.

The cast are all youg russian singers. Each one performed more than great and higly convincing the difficult roles for the large cast. The only negative point here are some minor diction problems.

The stage is almost empty and what makes the difference here is the eye-catching costumes, some of them very funny including some make up.

The way the stage is designed and the stage direction allows continuous action and gives vitality to the great individual and group performances. It allows interacion with the audience too. All this compensate the empty stage.

This is really the way to perform a comic opera. You will enjoy the music, the singing, the acting, the costumes, and laugh too watching the DVD, and at the same time makes you wish to have been there live. Really a pleasure to watch in all senses. You will not regret to buy it.

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Rating: - Riotous Rossini
I saw a live performance of this production a few months back and while the DVD doesn't fully capture all the wacky comic antics that happen onstage and in the auditorium, it's nonetheless a fun performance.

Who knew the Russian opera singers could do such a great job intoning Rossini's high-flying coloratura passages or that they were such masterful comedians? Or that the Kirov Opera Orchestra and Valery Gergiev could play Rossini's music with such panache?

This staging (co-produced by the Theatre Chatalet and the Kirov) was rehearsed for a year and the results are well worth it. The DVD quality is terrific; this is a fun, colorful performance for the entire family and for anyone who loves musical theatre!

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Rating: - Rossini's Rarely Revived Comic Opera
This is the second DVD of Rossini's 'Il Viaggio a Reims' I've had the good fortune to review. The first, released in 2004, came from the Liceu in Barcelona and although musically pretty good it was tainted by its having been updated, set in 1900 Europe but with back-projections of Hitler's Germany and the Vietnam war. It aimed for 'big thoughts' and considering the silly plot of the opera itself, made little sense and was mildly repellent as a result. My review of that DVD can be read here: Rossini - Il Viaggio a Reims.

I shall repeat part of my plot summary from that earlier review:

'Il Viaggio a Reims' is an extremely difficult opera to produce, largely because it requires the services of ten first-class soloists as well as four other singers who can hold their own in the huge ensemble that closes the first part of the opera. It was Rossini's last Italian opera and was, in its time, strictly a pièce d'occasion (written for the coronation of France's King Charles X) that he did not expect ever to be staged again; indeed, knowing this he recycled much of the music for his later sparkling French comedy, 'Le Comte Ory.' The piece lay unproduced for almost 200 years before it was mounted at Pesaro, Italy (Rossini's birthplace and the site of the Rossinian Pesaro Festival) in 1984. That production was recorded by Deutsche Grammophon and made a huge splash in the operatic world at the time. (It is still available at Amazon.) It featured such star singers as Katia Ricciarelli, Samuel Ramey, Ruggero Raimondi, Lella Cuberli, Cecilia Gasdia, Lucia Valentini Terrani, Francisco Araiza, Edoardo Gimenez, Leo Nucci and Enzo Dara. And since the plot of the work is structured by Rossini primarily as a showpiece for reigning singing stars of his time, the story-line is weak and simply an opportunity to line up a string of arias, duets, and other ensembles, with no semblance of credibility or dramatic engagement. The plot, simply, is that a group of European nobility and gentry making their way to Reims for the coronation of the French king are stuck in a spa, called the Golden Lily, and cannot make the last leg of the trip because there are no horses and carriages to be hired. They turn their virtual imprisonment there into a house party, with plenty of opportunity for romantic intrigues and self-made entertainment (lots of singing, of course!). Thus, this long one-act opera is rather similar to the 'entertainment' so often provided in Act II of gala productions of 'Die Fledermaus.' As a result, one can say that a recorded or concert performance gives us most of the 'juice' of the piece without the distraction (or enhancement, if you prefer) of the silly plot.

This staging, a joint production of Paris's Théâtre Châtelet and St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre, was filmed in 2005 at the Châtelet. The musicians are all Russian: Valery Gergiev leads the Mariinsky Chorus and Orchestra, with soloists from the Academy of Young Singers of the Mariinsky Theatre. Few of the singers are known in the West, although Daniil Shtoda, the tenor singing Count Libenskof, and Larissa Yudina, soprano singing the Countess Folleville, are reasonably well-known now. All the rest of the singers are young, attractive, dramatically apt and mostly quite satisfactory. Their voices do not match those of the classic (and first-ever) recording from the Pesaro Festival, made in 1984. And most of them are perhaps a notch below the singers in the Liceu DVD. But the staging -- or semi-staging, I should say (more about that below) -- is miles ahead of the Liceu's production in terms of it being frothy, humorous and engaging.

The Mariinsky Orchestra is seated at the rear of the Châtelet stage and all the action takes place in front of them. Considering that the singers cannot see Gergiev's baton it is amazing that there are no observable bobbles in musical synchronization. Singers interact in the shallow space in front of the orchestra and on a T-shaped runway that projects out into the auditorium, the latter allowing for some humorous interaction with the audience. The Chorus, acting as stagehands, set in place and then strike the various pieces of scenery and furniture that are required. This minimalist approach actually enhances the generally light-hearted approach to this most light-hearted of Rossini's operas.

Costumes are brightly colored, just slightly exaggerated for effect. Libenskof, dressed in Russian officer's uniform complete with astrakhan, arrives on a white horse and drinking shots of vodka. Countess Folleville is a voluptuously shaped and vacuous bottle-blond with a striking resemblance to Anna Nicole Smith. Corinna, a famous improvising poetess, makes her first appearance in a voluminous feathery costume and headdress, both lit from within; her entrance elicits gales of laughter from the audience. Count Trombonok makes his first appearance by standing up in the trombone section (get it?), holding a trombone. Shots of the audience, including some children, show them to be delighted throughout the show.

Musical highlights include the marvelous 'gran pezzo concertato a 14 voci' "Ah! A tal colpo inaspettato", the duet between Libenskof (Shtoda) and Countess Melibea (Anna Kiknadze), the Sextet 'Sì, di matti una gran gabbia', and the hilarious finale in which various of the guests sing a song representative of their country of origin. One always hopes that the aria of Don Profondo, 'Medaglie incomparabili' will be as wonderful as Ruggero Raimondi's rendition in the 1984 Pesaro recording, but we are terribly let down here. Still, I prefer this DVD, slightly, to the earlier Liceu version because of the staging. The singers may not, on the whole, be quite as good as those from the Liceu but the dramatic (or, perhaps I should say, comic) effect in this production is superior.

So. If you need a DVD of this bubbly opera, this is probably the one to have, by a small margin over the Liceu production.

Sound: LPCM Stereo or DTS 5.1; Subtitles: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian; 16:9 anamorphic; TT=135mins.

Scott Morrison