Producers' showcase "Festival of Music" Vol. 1.(Video Recording Review)

Producers' Showcase "Festival of Music" Vol. 1

[] Scenes, arias, songs, instrumental solos. Peerce, Warren, Peters, R. Stevens, M. Anderson, M. Miller, Thebom, Milanov, Bjorling, Tebaldi, Rubinstein, Stern, Piatigorsky, Laughton; Showcase Symphony Orchestra, Rudolf. VAI DVD 4244 and VHS 69238. Black and white, English subtitles for opera excerpts. 89 mins.

Producers' Showcase "Festival of Music" Vol. 2

[] Scenes from La Traviata and Boris Godunov, spirituals, instrumental solos. De los Angeles, Morell, Christoff, Moscona, M. Anderson, Rubinstein, Segovia, J. Ferrer; Showcase Symphony Orchestra, Wallenstein. VAI DVD 4245 and VHS 69239. Black and white, English subtitles for opera excerpts. 89 mins.

NBC TV's Producers' Showcase series, known for prestigious theatrical presentations, took a different form for two nights of "live" classical-music-making in 1956. The idea was developed by famed impresario Sol Hurok and grew out of the talent-lineup format so popular on The Ed Sullivan Show. In these ninety-minute specials, featuring some of the day's foremost singers and instrumentalists, the slant "was definitely toward opera. The results, brought out individually on DVD and video by VAI, are something akin to the Gala of Stars we used to see on PBS (which seem to have been supplanted by Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman "specials"), but with even more care and variety. The idea that this was prime-time network fare is simply inconceivable today.

The shows were broadcast in both black-and-white and the then-new medium of color, but they are preserved only in black-and-white. But the picture and sound quality are excellent: even the few excerpts from the shows that appeared previously elsewhere are in far better quality here. For instance, for the chunk of Act I of La Boheme, featuring Renata Tebaldi and Jussi Bjorling (which here begins with Mimi's entrance rather than "Che gelida manina"), VAI found a separate superior audio source, which they have seamlessly synched to the video, making the sound comparable to a fine '50s studio recording.

Hurok's concept of a lineup of artists dominates the first show, but he found himself collaborating with the casting department of NBC's record division, RCA, and with the Met's iron-willed general manager Rudolf Bing, who retained control over the television appearances of Met artists. Bing had to agree upon what singers were to be billed as "The Metropolitan Opera's greatest stars," and he insisted that the list go beyond the proposed names from the roster of artists under Hurok's management. The result was fortunate for us, as it added to the bill Bjorling, Zinka Milanov (her only appearance on video) and Rise Stevens. Hosting the first show, Charles Laughton found his planned comments being cut for time so radically that he ended up attempting to read scribbles and ad-libbing. There is, however, something endearing about Laughton's awe at the presence of so many great artists; it is refreshing to see this in an era during which television (with the exception of appearances by the ultra-dynamic Leonard Bernstein) played down overt emotion inspired by art. The evening begins with costumed Pagliacci excerpts--an inanimate but richly sung Prologue from Leonard Warren, and a heartfelt "Vesti la giubba," sung by Jan Peerce in front ...