Product: Menotti - Amahl and the Night Visitors (1955)
Rating: 5.0
Wonderful experience
I was a little worried when I ordered this Amahl because of its early television production quality, but I am very, very happy with it. I was involved with two different productions of this Operetta, one in high school and one in my church. I love the music very much, and the voices on this video are very good. If you ever owned the 60s RCA recording of the Hallmark Hall of Fame production, you'll remember a terrible electronic glitch apparently in the master recording during one of the soprano's best moments ("... but no one brings him incense or gold . . . though sick and tired and hungry and cold") that ruined the experience for me each time I listened to it. But there's nothing like that in this recording. If you love this work, you'll want to buy this DVD. I suspect some of the folks critical of it weren't around in the 40s/50s and perhaps think that the quality of telvision images broadcast then were better than they actually were. I doubt any amount of technical restoration would help with the picture quality which is, in my opinion, quite good anyway. It's mostly about the singing after all. The extras on the DVD are good too. I especially enjoyed the boy's choir. Listening to them depresses me in the sense that their singing is tecnically so superior to anything I've heard recently. Probably the Diocese that trained and supported them has sunken to guitar music these days.Just thinking about the music makes me break into: "Emily, Emily, Michael Bartholomew,how are your children and how are your sheep?" Wonderful.