DVD 11626 BENVENUTO CELLINI (Berlioz)

of a production--as bawdy and imaginative as SF's Mephistopheles! I recognized only Willard White, but the cast was excellent. Bonus, sung in English with English subtitles. No issues with DVD quality.

I went London to see this production of ENO in 2014. This performance was quite good. I was mostly satisfied with that except the fact that Therry gives unnecessary noise seeming not to respect the music of Berlioz with cut of Ink-keeper's aria. Still, I prefer the production of Andrei Serban in 2003 at MET. Despite, this is far better than the production of Salzburg in 2007.

Even though it was sung in English I was glad of the subtitles not much would have been intelligible without them except for Spyres, sounding, in English, very like the also excellent Richard Lewis, and Sir Willard. Very good stereo sound and the production works most of the time, at others it is a bit of a mess.Ed Gardner made the Overture sound even more modern than usual. The copy I recieved played the first Act without problems The second Act Kept shutting down after about 30 minutes It took a while to complete the opera In the end it was well worth the time.

Superb production(by Monty Python alumnae), great singing, fine audio and video of this madhouse opera.