Eugene Onegin — HDVDARTS

Tchaikovsky Eugene Onegin opera to libretto by the composer and K. S. Shilavsky based on the poem by Alexander Pushkin. Directed 2007 by Peter McClintock at the Met. Stars Renée Fleming (Tatiana), Olena Zaremba (Olga), Svetlana Volkova (Madame Larina), Larisa Shevchenko (Filippyevna), Ramón Vargas (Lenski), Dmitri Hvorostovsky (Eugene Onegin), Keith Miller (A Captain), Jean-Paul Fouchécourt (Triquet), Richard Bernstein (Zaretski), and Sergei Aleksashkin (Prince Gremin). Valery Gergiev conducts the Metropolitan Opera Orchester and Chorus (Chorus Master Raymond Hughes). Set and costume design by Michael Levine; lighting by Jean Kalman; choreography by Serge Bennathan. Directed for TV by Brian Large. Sung in Russian. Released 2008, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: A

A great cast, the most famous Russian conductor, and the usual Met flair for great story-telling. Here's a longer clip with the final scene where Tatiana makes her choice:

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Here's news about high-definition video disc ("HDVD") recordings of opera, ballet, classical music, plays, fine-art documentaries, and paintings. In the journal below are independent (and hard-to-find critical) reports on hundreds of HDVDs. Pick the best titles for your excelsisphere.

Feb 25. We have just completed one of our most ambitious reviews: Einstein on the Beach opera, the surreal 4 and 1/2 hour cult legend. Kudos, encomiums, and accolades to Opus Arte for giving us this authoritative and weirdly fascinating recording, which we grade A+. Absorbing and learning Einstein is uniquely challenging. We try to help out by providing aids not included in the keepcase materials: an accurate libretto and a list of segments in the opera with correct Opus Arte time stamps. Good luck!

We have some other good grades with an A for the recent Met The Pearl Fishers (Les pêcheurs de perles) and a B- for an earlier The Pearl Fishers from Naples. Also, we recently gave an A- for the new Don Quixote from the Vienna State Ballet.