Rating: 
Summary: OMG
Review: "Martha, sell all my clothes I've just died and gone to heaven!" (That was my reaction after viewing and hearing this performance of Verdi's Requiem.) My god what a performance this video is. The words "Golden age" does NOT begin to describe what is on this DVD. If Leontyne Price's glorious voice does not dissolve you to tears you do not have a heart!! The sound of her voice soaring over (and I mean over) the orchestra and chorus had me prostrate on the floor completely dissolved in tears. (Good thing I wasn't at a live concert; it would have been rather embarrassing.) In this performance, she proves, once again that she was the greatest Verdian soprano that there has ever been-period. (END of the discussion!)
Cossotto has never been a particular favorite of mine; however, she truly shines in this video giving a most moving account of her music. Perhaps Karajan kept her in line getting the very best, from her that she had. Her voice blends very well with Price's voice. Their duet is exquisite.
A very young (pre-superstar status) Pavarotti looks scared to be in front of Karajan and surrounded by some of the world's greatest singers, of the time, gives a wonderful performance singing with sweetness and care even if he is glued to his score. He shows why he was to become superstar material.
Ghiaurov sounds like rolls of thunder anchoring the whole quartet of soloist with his deep resounding bass voice.
Karajan seems to be literally pulling out the beautiful sound of the orchestra, soloist and chorus, with his bare hands. He even sheds tears when Leontyne is singing-who wouldn't?
If you love beautiful music and want to hear what a once-in-a-lifetime performance is all about, run (don't walk!) and get this DVD. It will change your life or in the least make it so much better, and isn't that what music is all about?
Rating:
Summary: Verdi Requiem
Review: Despite its being over 30 years old, this recording is quite possibly the best one available. AND the DG engineers did a super job restoring it. The sound and the picture are both very very good. The singers... where I begin? They're all downright phenomenal. Price and Cossotto both have incredibly creamy soaring voices. While very different in timbre, they blend with astounding beauty. Just look at their faces -- they are so clearly inspired by the Higher power, it's a pure joy to watch! Nicolai Ghiaurov is truly The voice of God here, his immense basso used to earth-shattering effect. To top it off, this video has very young Luciano Pavarotti singing with rare sensitivity and real feeling. Back then, Pavarotti was a relative newcomer, while the rest of the principals were already well-established singers. But, while no doubt aware of it, he really focused on the music and his fresh lyric tenor rings with silvery brilliance.
Von Karajan is shown at his best here. You can clearly see the care for the singers and for the music, and his obvious enjoyment is a pleasure to behold. Don't delay in getting this DVD!
Rating:
Summary: Wow, this is stuff of legends
Review: Despite its being over 30 years old, this recording is quite possibly the best one available. AND the DG engineers did a super job restoring it. The sound and the picture are both very very good. The singers... where I begin? They're all downright phenomenal. Price and Cossotto both have incredibly creamy soaring voices. While very different in timbre, they blend with astounding beauty. Just look at their faces -- they are so clearly inspired by the Higher power, it's a pure joy to watch! Nicolai Ghiaurov is truly The voice of God here, his immense basso used to earth-shattering effect. To top it off, this video has very young Luciano Pavarotti singing with rare sensitivity and real feeling. Back then, Pavarotti was a relative newcomer, while the rest of the principals were already well-established singers. But, while no doubt aware of it, he really focused on the music and his fresh lyric tenor rings with silvery brilliance.
Von Karajan is shown at his best here. You can clearly see the care for the singers and for the music, and his obvious enjoyment is a pleasure to behold. Don't delay in getting this DVD!
Rating:
Summary: If you have a DVD player, this is the one to acquire
Review: I find this to be the best modern (i.e. stereo) recording of this work either on CD or DVD. The conducting by Von Karajan is both dramatically effective and lyrically sensitive, comparable, I feel, to the well known Giulini EMI recording of five years earlier, the orchestra and chorus are excellent, and the sound quality is of superior clarity, very good, moreover, by present day standards, even though this recording dates from 1967. Finally, all the four soloists are among the leading singers of Italian opera, captured in their vocal prime and in excellent voice for this recording. I take particular pleasure in Ghiaurov because with him you have a true basso voice of ample weight and resonance, not a pushed down baritone (as is Raimondi on the Abbado DVD), who also sings very expressively.
As to its video qualities, the direction by Clouzot, one of the leading French film directors of the time, skillfully keeps one focused on the salient aspects of the performance, as one of the other reviewers, Todd Kay, has explained in greater detail. The only caveat I would offer in this regard is that the colors appear to me both rather washed out and tinged with a greenish hue, but what, after all, does that really matter?
Finally, the price is less than the full priced CD sets of this work, so do yourself a favor and get this one for yourself and/or your family.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Classical Music Video (DVD) Available
Review: It does not get any better than this. If you want to see a truly exciting conductor in action, this is it. Karajan is in his prime. The La Scala chorus is truly one of the greatest choruses in the world. The soloists are four of the greatest opera singers of all time, all together on stage, in their primes, giving legendary performances. And this is one of Verdi's most exciting works. It does not get any better than this on DVD, Video, CD, or LP. Thank God for DVDs like this.
Rating:
Summary: OMG
Review: Martha, sell all my clothes I've just died and gone to heaven! (That was my reaction after viewing and hearing this performance of Verdi's Requiem.) My god what a performance this video is. The words "Golden age" does NOT begin to describe what is on this DVD. If Leontyne Price's glorious voice does not dissolve you to tears you do not have a heart!! The sound of her voice soaring over (and I mean over) the orchestra and chorus had me prostrate on the floor completely dissolved in tears. (Good thing I wasn't at a live concert; it would have been rather embarrassing.) In this performance, she proves, once again that she was the greatest Verdian soprano that there has ever been--period. (END of the discussion!)
Cossotto has never been a particular favorite of mine; however, she truly shines in this video giving a most moving account of her music. Perhaps Karajan kept her in line getting the very best, from her that she had. Her voice blends very well with Price's voice. Their duet is exquisite.
A very young (pre-superstar status) Pavarotti looks scared to be in front of Karajan and surrounded by some of the world's greatest singers, of the time, gives a wonderful performance singing with sweetness and care even if he is glued to his score. He shows why he was to become superstar material.
Ghiaurov sounds like rolls of thunder anchoring the whole quartet of soloist with his deep resounding bass voice.
Karajan seems to be literally pulling out the beautiful sound of the orchestra, soloist and chorus, with his bare hands. He even sheds tears when Leontyne is singing--who wouldn't?
If you love beautiful music and want to hear what a once-in-a-lifetime performance is all about, run (don't walk!) and get this DVD. It will change your life or in the least make it so much better, and isn't that what music is all about?
Rating:
Summary: A superb cast, and wonderful direction; the finest requiem
Review: One cannot imagine a finer ensemble, in better prime than those featured on this DVD. Price's interpretation of Verdi's Requiem has been hailed in its various audio recordings and her superb soprano soars in this film, sending shivers down one's spine and reminding us why she was regarded as one of the finest musical artists of the last century. The young, rather svelt Pavarotti is also in wonderful voice, with a somewhat sweeter tone than he exhibited in his later years. The rare treat of these two great performers singing together is unavailable on any other DVD, with the exception of a single duet contained in the Metropolitan Opera Centennial Gala DVD. This alone merits the purchase price.
Strong vocal support is added by Fiorenza Cossotto and Nicolai Ghiaurov, both at vocal heights of their careers. Von Karajan, whose mastery of Verdi's scores is undisputed, leads the orchestra of LaScala and the soloists in an emotional and exciting interpretation of one of the composer's greatest works.
Finally, films of such performances risk being dull; thanks to the ingenious directing of Henri-Georges Clouzot, best known for his magnificent film "Diabolique," this DVD is not only musically astounding but visually compelling. Any fan of any of these great artists should not hesitate to add this film to his or her collection.
Rating:
Summary: The greatest thing that has ever happened captured on video.
Review: Run (do not walk) out the door right now! Take this DVD home and experience the most incredible sonic experience ever. Watch Karajan weep as he merely listens to the greatest singers of our age.</p>
To mention all the virtues of this recording would require a great deal more than 300 words. The best aspect of this recording is the absolute tightness of sound achieved by opera greats. This kind of overtone tingle usually can only be achieved through thinner, weaker voices found in most academic oratorio or chanticleer-type recordings. The fact that these well-sized voices can mingle so intimately rends my soul. Maestro Verdi would have been proud. </p>
Any fan of these four singers must own this recording or forever have an inadequate collection. Luciano fans will love this sweet, fresh emanation, still very fluid in his traditional bel canto technique.</p>
Rating:
Summary: The greatest thing that has ever happened captured on video.
Review: Run (do not walk) out the door right now! Take this DVD home and experience the most incredible sonic experience ever. Watch Karajan weep as he merely listens to the greatest singers of our age.
To mention all the virtues of this recording would require a great deal more than 300 words. The best aspect of this recording is the absolute tightness of sound achieved by opera greats. This kind of overtone tingle usually can only be achieved through thinner, weaker voices found in most academic oratorio or chanticleer-type recordings. The fact that these well-sized voices can mingle so intimately rends my soul. Maestro Verdi would have been proud.
Any fan of these four singers must own this recording or forever have an inadequate collection. Luciano fans will love this sweet, fresh emanation, still very fluid in his traditional bel canto technique.
Rating:
Summary: Then Luminaries, Now Legends
Review: This classic film from 1967, shot in an empty La Scala theater, always has been well regarded and only has gained in stature with the passage of 35 years, capturing as it did five legends in peak or at least prime form (conductor Karajan and the four immensely capable Verdians comprising the group of vocal soloists), along with the La Scala orchestra and its excellent chorus. The great Bulgarian bass Nicolai Ghiaurov anchors the team with a performance as authoritative and disciplined as it is suave and elegant; if anything, he is in better form here than on the celebrated Giulini-conducted recording of a few years earlier. Luciano Pavarotti, looking strikingly young and clean-shaven, was a last-minute and then-little-known substitute for the great tenor Carlo Bergonzi -- a turn of events that caused some anxiety on the part of organizers -- but in the accurate words of Karajan biographer Richard Osborne, "He sang like a god." His opening Kyrie eleison is the first, and certainly not the last, of the performance's deeply stirring moments. Leontyne Price delivers all of the radiant vocal production that one would expect from her at this juncture of her career, and for all of her well-noted difficulties with chest voice, in 1967 she could still give a respectable accounting even in the lowest reaches of the tricky Libera Me. Throughout her performance, beauty and keen involvement go hand in hand; there is no hint of routine. But if this performance "belongs" to any member of this quartet, if we must select a star among stars, then the laurel must go to Fiorenza Cossotto, whose stunningly rich Verdian mezzo-soprano voice is heard at its ferocious, incendiary best here, in (among other places) the Liber Scriptus of a lifetime. Karajan's view of this score is characteristically broad and cultivated, but it is a more lively, dramatic and immediate reading than we hear on his various recorded attempts with Berlin and Vienna orchestras (one of which has been issued on Sony DVD). It is difficult to say whether this can be chalked up to the occasion or perhaps to the conductor's interpretation's being filtered through a more directly idiomatic orchestra and chorus (the Italian chorus, trained by Roberto Benaglio, certainly puts its Viennese counterparts in the shade). There is undeniably an element of showmanship in Karajan's elaborate, fluid gestures (he directs without baton, as was his custom in the choral repertory), but I believe it would be a mistake to dismiss this as showmanship alone -- there is also evidence of an enormous expressive vocabulary, a superbly finished and graceful technique, and at all times a clear-eyed, firm-handed control of the proceedings. This was a great conductor. The film's director, the auteur Henri-Georges Clouzot, avoids many of the common pitfalls in documenting a classical-music performance. He is anything but static; indeed, he is consistently alert and enterprising in his choices. His camera whizzes cinematically from trumpet to balcony-borne trumpet in the Dies Irae; elsewhere captures the almost humorous aside of a wind player struggling to turn the page during a hectic orchestral passage, and, in a blink-and-you-miss-it felicity, finds Karajan (via stern facial expression and "whoa" gesture) reining in an unseen participant who apparently was about to jump his or her cue. On occasion, Clouzot also makes the interesting decision to "anticipate" a singer's entrance by several seconds, treating us to such sights as the regal Price standing motionless and awaiting a cue in the Offertorio, then finally letting loose with a perfectly shaped, shimmeringly beautiful high "E" -- this is an ecstatic moment. The transfer looks to be a video-to-DVD job, and this will disappoint those who had hoped for a ground-up remastering from the original film elements. To be frank, the quality is inconsistent from section to section, with blacks and flesh tones variable, and at times a generalized fading or flickering. Nevertheless, this is probably the best the film has looked in a home-video format, and it always has been marked by a relative pictorial softness. One may well decide that its mellow visuals lend it a certain understated classicism that befits the "time capsule" allure it has acquired with the passage of years. The audio news is unambiguously happier: the high frequencies are pleasingly firm and accommodating (no small matter in a recording featuring such singers as Price and Cossotto), and the sonic blend is decidedly better than on the VHS version, whose obtrusive tape hiss shall not be missed. It is somewhat bass-light, but the timpani crisply slices through at key moments, and definition is at least decent -- through high-end headphones, I could easily isolate various instruments in the mix. In sum, incidental caveats (mostly on the video level) aside, this is a treasurable performance; essential viewing/listening for admirers of these singers, this conductor, or simply the magnificent and moving work to which they gave the best of themselves on this day in January 1967. Priced significantly lower than full-price audio-only recordings of the Verdi Requiem (only a fraction of which rival the artistic quality of this one), it represents a bargain of which I advise readers to take advantage with haste.
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