Rating: 
Summary: Qýuantitative Evaluation
Review: Audio Merits:4/10;Video Merits:3/10;Scenario Merits:2/10;Cinematograhic Merits:5/10;Musical Merits:6/10;Overall Artistic Performance:3/10;DVD Extras:3/10;Recording Total Quality:4/10. Professor's Comment:Superb names only on the title page!
Rating: 
Summary: Both dimished by half
Review: Bloodless bland facial expressions and body language as accompaniment to deliberately emotional full-body singing is a disconnect I don't find appealing. Just letting your mouth hang open as long as a note is held does not convey the fire or the ice of the musical content and intent. Yikes. This is painful to watch when these two genres -- Italian opera and German dramatic play -- are mixed, but never really blended. I'd rather watch a too-old Sutherland and an un-English Pavarotti impersonating their characters through music than watch actors impersonate characters while impersonating singers.
It all comes across hollow/empty/fake/contrived to this viewer/listener. This is a hybrid that thankfully cannot reproduce itself.
Rating: 
Summary: A BEAUTIFULLY FILMED OPERA!
Review: I BEG TO DIFFER WITH THE OTHER RATHER PESSIMISTIC REVIEW! I FOUND THIS PRODUCTION STUNNING IN EVERY WAY, THE SETS ARE PROBABLY HAMPTON COURT IN ENGLAND, THAT QUEEN ELIZABETH DID INHABIT. AND THE COSTUMES ARE NOT ONLY GORGEOUS BUT HISTORICALLY ACCURATE. THE LIP SYCHING FOR BOTH THE SPOKEN GERMAN DIALOG, AND ESPECIALLY THE ITALIAN OPERA SINGING IS FIRST CLASS! AND WHAT VOICES, SUTHERLAND, PAVORITTI, AND TOURANGEAU WHO HAS THE DEEPEST FEMALE VOICE I HAVE EVER HEARD! I FOUND THE WHOLE PRODUCTION ENCHANTING!
Rating:
Summary: wonderful singers
Review: I could not disagree more strongly with the review that says these actors look rediculous! i thought they did a magnificent job of difficult lip synching with both the german dialog, and the singers voices, whcih by the way are truly outstanding, especially huegette tourangeau's incredible mezzo/contralto singing, the likes of which i have never heard another mezzo equal, and i have been listening to opera for over sixty years! magnificent!
Rating: 
Summary: About Huguette Tourangeau
Review: In his film about Donizetti's Maria Stuarda, Petr Weigl used large excerpts from the 1975 Decca recording of that romantic opera with Joan Sutherland, Huguette Tourangeau and Luciano Pavarotti, Choir and Orchestra of the Bologna Teatro Comunale, conducted by Richard Bonynge. A reviewer took Madame Tourangeau for an Australian dramatic soprano. This is incorrect. Huguette Tourangeau is an authentic mezzo-soprano, and she is not Australian, but French-Canadian. She was born in Montréal, Québec in 1940. She studied piano and singing at Le Conservatoire de musique in Montréal with Ruzena Herlinger and the conductor Otto-Werner Mueller. She made her debut under Zubin Mehta's baton with Mercedes in Carmen in 1964. The same year she had a first fruitful contact with Richard Bonynge at the Stratford Festival in Ontario. The next year, she toured the US with the Metropolitan Opera singing the title character in Carmen. Later, she was to sing with Dame Joan Sutherland and her husband, conductor Richard Bonynge, several important mezzo parts like Alisa (Lucia di Lammermoor), Orsini (Lucrezia Borgia), Elisabetta (Maria Stuarda), Unolfo (Rodelinda), Hua-Qui (L'Oracolo), Parséis (Esclarmonde), Maddalena (Rigoletto), and several others. In June 1974, Huguette Tourangeau joined Joan Sutherland for the inaugural season of the Sydney Opera House in Australia. Whence perhaps the mistake about Madame Tourangeau's nationality. In 1977, Madame Tourangeau became the first recipient of the Canadian Music Council's artist of the year award. «Her magnificent voice is a flexible mezzo-soprano adaptable to the wide range of the mezzo repertoire, from Rossinian coloratura to the robust sound required by the trouser roles of German opera or the lyric mezzo of the French heroines.» (Gilles Potvin, Encyclopedia of Music in Canada). She has been teaching voice in Montreal since 1984. Here, in Québec, all opera lovers are very proud of Madame Tourangeau's brilliant career worldwide.
Rating:
Summary: Nevermore
Review: It goes without saying that this, having once been done, need not be done again.
Rating:
Summary: Different, but very well done!
Review: It helps to watch and listen to this excellent production open-mindedly. If you are the kind of "opera buff" that cannot tolerate any other versions but the absolute original, please skip this recording. I enjoyed it tremendously! The different languages and dubbing did not worry me as much as I thought it would. As the work progresses, you get so involved with the wonderful acting, the costumes, the locations, the singing etc that the anomalies disappear completely. I wanted to cheer aloud at the end! A wonderful production!
Rating:
Summary: another Weigl's wonderful film
Review: Once you realize that this is not to be Donizetti's opera, but rather Weigl's own creation that consists of Schiller's dialogs in German and Donizetti's music in Italian, you'll love it. Weigl chose the parts from both that he found important to show us the aspects of a relationship of the two queens. He created a film that fluently moves from German to Italian, from talking to singing. Both German dialogs and (of course) singing were lipsynced, but there is nothing to be affraid of - as always with Weigl, actors did an excellent job. I think there cannot be more European film than this - Czechoslovak actors "speak" German and "sing" Italian. Turn on the English subtitles to get the complete image. Well, you either like an idea of a multilingual film or not. I happen to like it. As for an opera part, being a fan of mezzos I love the idea of transposing the role of Elisabeth for contralto. This brings a better contrast between the queens as well as gave a chance to Huguette Tourangeau to be revealed to me :-) I must admit I like her (and Kamila Magalova, who plays Elisabeth) more than Joan Sutherland (and Magda Vasaryova). If you find Maria Stuarda interesting, don't forget to check out also The Turn of the Screw, Rusalka or Winterreise.
Rating: 
Summary: An Infertile Hybrid
Review: Petr Weigl deserves praise for his bold experiment, a combining of the rhetoric of Schiller with the lyricism of Donizetti to achieve something higher, a Shakespearian heft in the telling of the sad tale of the Scottish queen, Mary Stuart. Unfortunately, the tale as related does not transcend the soap operatic, and this despite the beautiful voices of Sutherland, Tourangeau and Pavarotti. The end result is essentially no more than vintage melodrama. The characters parade past the viewer as if on stilts. The combination of the rhetorical and the lyrical emerges simply as doubly pretentious in the unfriendly (because realistic) medium of film. The director's intention was fascinating. It is too bad that the resultant film is no more than mediocre.
Rating:
Summary: And now for something completely different
Review: The film attempts to combine Schiller's play with Donizetti's opera. The target audience may be opera lovers who grew up in countries where Shiller is taught and revered in highschool. The Czech actors are dubbed in German for the dialogues and in Italian by the Decca recording of the opera, for the sung scenes. The film starts with 15 minutes of an exceedingly tedious dialogue in German. Watching the Czech actors proceed from dubbed spoken German to the dubbed voices of famous singers in Italian is absurd beyond belief. The whole thing has the logic of a Monty Python sketch, and casts some doubt on director Petr Weigl's artistic judgment. The audio and video quality are excellent.
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