Product Description

Opera & Ballet: The Blu-ray Experience includes opera and ballet highlights from the Opus Arte catalogue, and gives everyone the opportunity to experience the stunning quality of High Definition picture and sound, at an extremely competitive price.

Including world-class artists such as Bryn Terfel, Cecilia Bartoli, Anne Sofie von Otter, Jose Cura, Simon Keenlyside and Agnes Letestu, this 50-minute introduction to the world of Blu-ray is a must-have.

Blu-ray offers an outstanding audio and visual experience, with up to six times the resolution of standard definition DVD, and up to 7.1 channels of High Definition surround sound.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2735 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-11-18
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.77:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Classical, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Widescreen
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 50 minutes

Customer Reviews

A good way to show off your home theater
Within the realm of classical performance arts, this is a wide-ranging and high-quality disc. It's a bit short, but video and audio quality on every selection are perfect. If nothing else, this makes a great show piece for your blu-ray player and HT setup. THese are some of the most popular moments from some of the best-known operas and ballets. You'll find that you know most of this music even if you don't "know" anything about classical music. And for less than 10 bucks, what's to lose? If you need something to get you over that Super Saver Shipping minimum, you could do much worse than this disc. Enjoy!

Pay for ray and too little play: fully valued
An appealing, tantalizing (that's the idea) collection of balletic and operatic chestuts, as professionally performed and smartly filmed as one might dare hope for. BUT--there's a major caveat. Many of the selections are awkwardly terminated at mid-chorus--in a couple of instances, simply a "fade-out" rather than anything resembling a cadence or final chord. Whether a sampler such as this is more irritating than titillating to the neophyte Blu-Ray discoverer is perhaps a tough, highly personal call (reminds me of the first "stereophonic" recordings, with canons coming from two channels during the "1812 Overture" followed by ping-pong balls bouncing from one side of the room to the other and a parade of drummers soon to follow).

What irks me is that, despite the 13 excerpts, there's space for much more on the DVD, whether in the form of complete selections (preferably) or more of same. Although these are not the international stars whose artistry and charisma enabled them to cross genre boundaries (a la Domingo and Pavarotti), each is good enough to make you wonder why the artist in question isn't a household word. Perhaps the most absorbing, thoroughly delightful performance is the Cecilia & Bryn duet "Pa-pa-pa-pa" from Mozart's "Die Zauberflote." There's only one other performer who strikes me as capable of equaling the performance included here: Danny Kaye. (On the other hand, I defy Cecilia and/or Bryn to match Kaye on Cole Porter's "Let's Not Talk About Love" which, as performed by Kaye, is practically a toccata tour de force beyond the reach of anything human.)

All the same, a collection such as this should be going for no more than five bucks.

The good bits
This Blu-Ray contains "the good bits" from popular Opera and Ballet.....and the performances are from the world's most famous companies.
The price is low and the sound "mind bending". Here in Bandung Java Indonesia only few Blu-Ray discs are available, and there is no FTA terrestrial digital HDTV. My favourite track on this "sampler" DVD is from a Straus Opera....all tracks are absolutely beautiful. It is very tempting now to order the complete versions.
Stephen Fleay Bandung Java Indonesia