Nevertheless, this DVD offers an extremely memorable performance, one unavailable anywhere, even on video, until the release of this new DVD. To hear Cossotto and Cappuccilli in top form is an amazing experience. This Trovatore can be thoroughly recommended, even if the picture is marginally less crisp, and the sound less sharp, than if the recording had been made today.
Finally a prize-winning animated version of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf. This Anglo-Polish co-production is very different from earlier versions, mainly in having no narration. Instead, the story is told by manipulated puppets, moved millimeters at a time frame by frame, so that one second of film involved 24 adjustments to their positions. Not surprisingly the whole thing, a mere 30 minutes long when complete, took 100 people five months to film (in Poland), and the whole project five years to plan.
The result, directed by Suzie Templeton, and made with both children and adults in mind, is set in modern Russia and is both vivid and engaging. Particularly attractive is a wealth of bonus material on how the various effects were achieved, the musical themes associated with each character, and so on. You can't help feeling that this DVD's value is first and foremost educational, and indeed scenes of London schoolchildren painting, writing poems and playing their own music to the same story are included. The orchestra is the Philharmonia.
Of these four products, the choice for new classsical DVD of the month would have to go to the Trovatore.
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