Tchaikovsky: The 3 Ballets at the Bolshoi

This package includes the three ballets the composer wrote. The Bolshoi is flawless - even the third tier dancers could be first tier in any other dance company. The best dancers are perfect. Photography shows a nice mix of close ups and full stage and the music was recorded in excellent shape and crystal clear. If you turn up the volume you can make out the dancers tapping the floor as if you were in the front row. A beautiful delight. Price is great. Blue ray image quality is great. I only hope some day someone will publish ballet in 4K.

I have now watched all three ballets and have found them to be lovely and exciting; especially the Sleeping Beauty performance. The surround sound is perfect and the video is vivid and sharp. The music and choreography is beautiful and satisfying and the scenery is spectacular. If you enjoy classical ballet these three productions are a must-have in my opinion.The dancers and the ensemble work is done with great skill and artistry and provides a marvelous evenings entertainment! I'm delighted to have them in my collection and look forward to seeing them again, especially Sleeping Beauty!

Iolanta is a lovely, moving Tchaikowsky one-acter. This quite conventional staging seems to me more successful than the Met production. Galina Kalinina is a moving, lyrical Iolanta (she was the first Natasha I heard in Prokofiev's War and Peace), but all the roles are well sung. The father's grieving aria is deeply moving, and the lovers' duet, which can seem a bit rhetorical, sounds natural and ecstatic. Everything is in the right vein--the Russians know how to honor their most beloved composer.

Since this is the only readily available video of Tchaikovsky's last opera, anyone interested in this composer's theatrical output will certainly want to have it (the 1963 Soviet/Latvian dubbed studio film of the work is rather quaint and sometimes appears on the web in the Dreamlife/Japanese edition). The Bolshoi production is extremely traditional and limited in visual appeal, with curtains filling out the thin sets at the sides. The soprano's voice is sharp and a bit screechy and the tenor very over-parted, although in general the singing is certainly adequate as well as heartfelt. The final effect of the work is quite touching, especially because of the way it hints throughout at Tchaikovsky's tragically repressed homosexuality (this has been pointed out quite well by John Warrack among others). The final scene (when the blind Iolanta is at last able to see) can even be read as a very touching (gay) coming out episode. The fact that this one-act opera originally formed a double bill with the two-act Nutcracker ballet is also intriguing, and our understanding of what the now more famous ballet was all about is helped by seeing how the opera sets up certain themes of adolescence, freeing oneself from elders and finding one's way (however hesitantly and hetero-normally) in the world of adult romance and love (although I should probably add that some early and more recent critics have claimed that Tchaikovsky intended simply to make a direct contrast between the serious, brooding world of Iolanta and the childish divertissement of Nutcracker). If you are willing to make allowances for the rather wooden production, this DVD of the opera stands as a powerful and haunting work--and can easily be supplemented musically by Gergiev's compelling recording.

These 3 Bolshoi ballets are great. The performances are absolutely superb. I also enjoyed the good quality of the recordings, it looks beautiful in HD.

OK. So it's a 1982 Bolshoi performance. Video quality is not that great. Costumes were over the top cartoonish, which put me off more than a little.Another minor annoyance was that Amazon manage to completely hash the metadata. On the left side of the screen there are two clickable extras: Performers and Trivia. Clicking on those brings up the list of performers and two trivia questions for Monty Python's Life of Brian! C'mon Amazon. Not a good look.The singing was generally good. It even had its moments, but they were few. I think I still prefer my Philips CD set with the Kirov Chorus and Orchestra, conducted by Valery Gergiev, starring Gorchakova, Grigorian, and Hvorostovsky without the video. The music is much better and I can make better pictures in my head.

What can one say about the Bolshoi? Magnificent!!

Awesome performances by the Bolshoi ballet! Bravo!

good

Que dire de plus ? Une onde enchanteresse , animée d ' une lueur inextinguible . Un feu sacré .. Qui nous permet de nous élever dans le sublime ether , l'espace d' un instant , de nous envoûter ,et de nous emporter loin des miasmes terrestres .

great opera

Excelente imagen, versiones y puestas de los tres ballets. Vale la pena.

Excelente calidad de imagen y audio. Estaría mejor si incluyera la reseña de las escenas. El servicio de envío fue muy bueno.