people listen to it in a manner they had neglected since its inception. Long the territory of canary-like high sopranos with no interest in drama (eg: Lily Pons), Callas brought the role into the same dramatic focus it had been created for. At its premiere in1835, members of the audience wept audibly at Lucia's lunacy. With her darker tone and psychological probing, Callas made us hear what was in the poor girl's soul--she was an innocent, tricked, abandoned, and driven mad. This live performance, in so-so sound (but absolutely worth it), is staggering in its musical and dramatic potency; something between Callas and Karajan was in the air that made them think, breathe, and create music as one. Callas ducks the first big E-flat in the Mad Scene for dramatic effect; the second one is all the more special for making us wait for it. And elsewhere Callas's "rightness" within the role is never in doubt. Costar Giuseppe di Stefano, too, is at his best, singing with ardor and gorgeous streams of sound, and the ensemble work is so spectacular that the audience demands--and gets--an encore of the 2nd Act sextet. Any collection of great opera recordings without this set is incomplete. --Robert Levine
Actor(s): Renato Bruson, Vincenzo La Scola, Marco Berti, Carlo Colombara, Floriana Sovilla, Ernesto Gavazzi, Mariella Devia, La Scala Chorus, La Scala Orchestra, Stefano Ranzani
Genre: Musicals & Music Films - Opera & Operetta
Classification: Exempt
Running Time: 2 hours 23 minutes
Plot: A performance of the Donizetti tragedy which tells of the tragic love affair between Lucia and Edgardo. Sung in Italian.
Release details
DVD Region: Region 0 (All Regions)
Studio(s): OPUS ARTE MEDIA PRODUCTIONS; SELECT MUSIC & VIDEO DISTRIBUTION
Release date: 31/05/2004
No of Discs: 1
Catalogue No: OA LS 3003
Barcode: 0809478030034
DVD Description
A performance of the Donizetti tragedy which tells of the tragic love affair between Lucia and Edgardo. Sung in Italian.
Languages
Main Language: Italian
Subtitle Language: English
Technical information
Special Features: Booklet Containing The Full Libretto By Salvadore Cammarano
...awesome. The cops uniforms, the flight attendants and the military stand out as great examples. Eric Serra scored the film as always for Luc Besson. Some of the music in this is awesome as well. I remember watching in a daze as the Diva sang LuciaDiLammermoor which moved seamlessly into The Diva Dance with shots of Leeloo kicking Mangalore butt! Brilliant!
The acting in this film is high class. Bruce Willis turns in another good performance, but the highlights for me were the perpetually overlooked Brion James, Gary Oldman, Ian Holm Tricky and of course Milla Jovovich in one of her first ever films. Obviously it helps that she is going out with Besson!
The one strange fact I know about the Fifth Element relates to the divine language spoken by Leeloo and understood by only Vito Cornelius. Luc Besson and Milla Jovovich actually invented...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Advantages: Rhythm, a fantastic photograpy and the music Disadvantages: If you don't like flamenco, forget about it
...If you have been always curious about flamenco, this is your movie. Carlos Saura, a well known Spanish director, already made the miracle of bringing this type of music to the general public with Sevillanas, and now he gets it right again with this film.
It may sound boring a film of people just singing and dancing one after another, but Saura manages to make a story of all of it, to give it more sense than just an exotic entertainment; he makes it magic and, even if you don't fancy the music, it won't leave you indifferent
With top flamenco stars (singers and dancers) like Paco de Lucia and Joaquin Cortez, and the incredible photography of Vittorio Storaro, Flamenco is vigorous, beautiful, moving and intensely passionate....
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Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful
Advantages: In the style of classic Argento Disadvantages: Runs out of steam
...FILM:
A cop with a troubled past has three problems: a) his new girlfriend is being hounded by a mystery stalker, b) his boss is in hospital dying, and c) a psycho is murdering people, dismembering them and leaving doll parts in place of the missing limbs!
With a few sub-plots to follow (even peripheral characters are given their own points of note - secretive affairs, etc), EYES OF CRYSTAL demands your attention. But it's because you have to really watch it - especially since it's subtitled so it would be easy to lose the thread if you turned away - that the film becomes so absorbing.
It helps that the performances are solid and we get a cast of likeable characters that we can actually care about. Luigi Lo Cascio makes for a convincing lead, handsome but suitably intense and tortured by a tragic past, while Lucia Jimenez makes her...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
helpful 31.05.2006
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