Donizetti - Maria Stuarda
This is about as unconventional and controversial as an opera video can  get. Opinions on it range from wildly enthusiastic to uncompromisingly negative,  with little in between. I find it extraordinarily powerful and (once some mental  adjustments are made) theatrically convincing.Maria Stuarda, an opera by  Donizetti based on a play by Schiller, exists in two rather different editions--from 1834 and 1835. Both are represented musically in parts of this production,  with considerable rewriting by Bonynge (as was done in Donizetti's time) to show  off the spectacular voices of Sutherland and Tourangeau. As if that was not  complicated enough, this 1988 production, a joint project of Czech and German  television, uses the 1975 Decca recording for its music, with Czech performers  doing skilled lip synchronization. In nonmusical connecting passages, they  synchronize to Schiller's original German script. For full enjoyment, you have  to expand the usual "suspension of disbelief" to cover frequent shifts between  spoken German and sung Italian, in which you never hear the actual voices of the  people you see on the screen.Not a promising description, but it works like a charm. The Czech actors, the  German speaking voices, and the recorded singers are all first-class and Petr  Weigl has blended their efforts with dazzling skill. Most hard-core opera fans,  who have already accepted the concept of two British queens singing at one  another in Italian, should be able to handle the whole package. The story (of  the condemnation and execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, by her rival, Queen  Elizabeth I) is a powerful one, and both Schiller and Donizetti have exploited  it for all its worth. The central scene--a face-to-face confrontation between  Mary and Elizabeth--never actually happened, but it makes crackling drama, and  in this production it has enormous impact.--Joe McLellan