Rating: 
Summary: Buy it in Japan!
Review: I happen to have the Dreamlife Corp. version of this DVD, which is much better than what other music lovers here describe. I found it in Paris while I was looking for something else.
For the best preserved version of this magical evening (how can the final "lust" be as clear and murmured like this while the wind is blowing like mad and the French audience is...dissipated is a mystery for me: that's Birgit for you!) this is the best copy around.
Rating: 
Summary: The absolute worst sound
Review: I thought I was listening to something recorded in 1912. The picture quality was not much better. Simply awful.
Rating:
Summary: Dreadful Production
Review: If you're a collector, it's worth the price for the history. But the other reviewers are right. The sound stinks, thevideo stinks, and if that weren't bad enough, this is one of those Wieland Wagner-ish production in which the sets don't have the slightest relation to the stage directions. A real stinkeroo in every respect. But it does document Nilson and Vickers.
Rating: 
Summary: No bun but plenty of beef
Review: Notwithstanding the complaints of those who pan this DVD, let's ask what is most important in watching/listening to Wagner. The singing and accompaniment of course. This is an outdoor performance on a windy summer night in a Roman ampitheatre, a tough assignment for any singers and players (and at that time, apparently, film crews). The staging and minimal sets are much to be preferred to the Met and Munich absurdities.....but all this aside, when we focus just on the two lovers and their rapturous singing nothing else matters. The production and editing draw us to the only scene of importance. We can shut out all else and directly connect our mind to the drama. What remains in memory? Not the staging or filming, just the extraordinary passion and magnificent poetry of their words and their matchless voices. It is Wagner for the mind, and later reverie. Like the rapture of Siegmund and Sieglinde in the Chereau Bayreuth Walkure, it transcends the limitations of the stage and the TV screen.
Rating:
Summary: Criminally bad...
Review: That Nilsson and Vickers, the greatest Wagnerian singers of their generation, should have been subjected to a realisation as appalling as this one, is truly criminal. The sound is muffled, fuzzy, distorted and plagued by low-frequency backround noise: about as good as that delivered by an analogue phone line. The video is grainy and has the crude contrast of early fifties westerns. For much of the time, the sound and video are not even synched correctly. Part of the problem is a cavernous, circus-like staging, but primarily it is a matter of sheer engineering incompetence. By far, this is the worst video recording of an opera I know. And yet by far this is the greatest opera ever written. Hence the crime. If you care about Wagner, if Tristan is the ultimate statement beyond which lies nothing but oblivion, spare yourself the pain of mere incompetence. Listen to Nilssons' audio recording under Solti, or Flagstad's under Furtwangler. And if you need the visual stimulus, then the Mehta Munich production, despite its... staging, is still preferable to this ... At least you can close your eyes...
Rating:
Summary: Criminally bad...
Review: That Nilsson and Vickers, the greatest Wagnerian singers of their generation, should have been subjected to a realisation as appalling as this one, is truly criminal. The sound is muffled, fuzzy, distorted and plagued by low-frequency backround noise: about as good as that delivered by an analogue phone line. The video is grainy and has the crude contrast of early fifties westerns. For much of the time, the sound and video are not even synched correctly. Part of the problem is a cavernous, circus-like staging, but primarily it is a matter of sheer engineering incompetence. By far, this is the worst video recording of an opera I know. And yet by far this is the greatest opera ever written. Hence the crime. If you care about Wagner, if Tristan is the ultimate statement beyond which lies nothing but oblivion, spare yourself the pain of mere incompetence. Listen to Nilssons' audio recording under Solti, or Flagstad's under Furtwangler. And if you need the visual stimulus, then the Mehta Munich production, despite its... staging, is still preferable to this ... At least you can close your eyes...
Rating: 
Summary: A disappointment
Review: The great performances of these wonderful singers are NOT capture on this DVD. The sound quality if extremely poor, even by 1973 standards. The camera work is dreadful. It's actually painful to watch and listen to this DVD because you can't help imagining what was lost by the terrible production. Don't waste your money on this, or if you must have it, do as one reviewer advised and get the cheap Brazilian version on ebay.
Rating:
Summary: A disappointment
Review: The great performances of these wonderful singers are NOT capture on this DVD. The sound quality if extremely poor, even by 1973 standards. The camera work is dreadful. It's actually painful to watch and listen to this DVD because you can't help imagining what was lost by the terrible production. Don't waste your money on this, or if you must have it, do as one reviewer advised and get the cheap Brazilian version on ebay.
Rating:
Summary: Great singing, great acting but bad camera work
Review: To see Birgit Nilsson and Jon Vickers together on the stage is something that most people in the 60's and 70's could just dream of seeing. They didn't do many performances together, which is a shame. I bought this performance on CD from Opera d'Oro a couple of months ago and I loved it, despite the blowing wind in the background. Then I saw that the performance was available on DVD, and I was so excited that I felt I HAD to have it. I ordered it right away and yesterday I recieved it. I played the DVDs right away and what noticed right away was the horrible camera work and sub standard sound. The sound quality was somewhat better than the CD, so the sound satisfied me. What was really frustrating was the camera not being where I wanted it to be many times. Why did it had to pan the solists on the far sides and why did it had to zoom out at couple of key moments? But there are so much that is great about this performance. I find myself extremely fortunate to see Vickers and Nilsson performing my favourite opera. Their performances are so powerful that you can't stop looking at them. The love duet is so beautiful and their acting is exeptional, even though they don't do much on stage during the duet. Vickers' act 3 performance has to be seen to be believed. At all times he sings beautifully and excitingly while acting so wonderfully. His expressions, eyes and voice do all the acting perfectly. Walter Berry's Kurwernal is also very good. He sings the part wonderfully and his acting is equally good. Bengt Rundgren, I thought, was very stiff as King Marke, but he sang the part with more betrayl in his voice and acting than I am used to hearing. Ruth Hesse is weak link vocally in the supporting cast, but her acting is very good. I just wish that Christa Ludwig had sang in Paris that day. The picture quality is not good, but not bad either. It shows very little evidence to having been restored. The colors are washed out and it is quite soft. The picture and sound quality were good enough for me. I would have been satisfied with a B/W picture. To see the two greatest interpreters of this great opera in the latter half the 20th century is something that I would want to see. The sets were not so much to my liking, but so much better than the horrible production I saw on the Mehta performance on DVD with West and Meier. Even though there weren't any boat, a garden or a castle in the production, I was satisfied. The other reviewers have said that it is too bad to buy. If you are, like me, a great fan of the opera, Vickers and Nilsson, then you wouldn't want to pass this up, despite the shortcoming of the camera work Buy this wonderful performance if you are a die hard fan. If you aren't, you should wait for the Met DVD with Heppner and Eaglen. I am going to buy that one myself when it comes out.
Rating: 
Summary: Yes, but....
Review: Truth-in-advertising time: The sound is poor (which is surprising, since a CD recording of this performance in clear, vivid sound has long been available on a French import label), and the camera work is unsteady and amateurish, with washed-out colors. Still, this is the only known video of Nilsson and Vickers together in this opera, which they performed as a team only a handful of times (though there's a bootleg black-and-white videocassette of Nilsson in "Tristan" with Wolfgang Windgassen under Pierre Boulez). Vickers does "Tristan" excerpts in a Canadian videocassette, but with nothing like the intensity we see in this French show. Together, Vickers and Nilsson are the Tristan and Isolde of one's dreams, and even in this subpar DVD set their brilliance leaps out at you. The love duet and Tristan's third-act delirium are all you could ask for vocally. Until the Met releases its Eaglen/Heppner "Tristan" on DVD, this is the one to get, for all its flaws.
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