Music by Mendelssohn
Choreography by Balanchine
Performers: Pacific NW Ballet & BBC Concert Orchestra/Stewart Kershaw
Studio: BBC/Opus Arte OA HD5003 D
Video: Enhanced for 16:9 widescreen color, 1080i HD
Audio: Dolby TrueHD 5.1, Dolby 2.0
Extras: Cast gallery
Length: 94 minutes
Rating: ****
Balanchine was known for his rejection of the evening-long story ballet form, yet that is really what we have here in this adaptation of Shakespeare’s play to wordless dance. It works very well if you are completely familiar with the intricacies of the original play’s convoluted plot. The mimed parts are delicate and graceful but frankly – not being heavily into ballet – I marvel at how Shakespeare’s complex web of spells, deceptions, confusions, meetings and separations can be translated into nothing but mime and dance steps. Actually, that bothers me in all ballets – not just this one.
In order to create the full-length ballet, Balanchine had to find other Mendelssohn works to fill out the incidental music the composer had written for the Shakespeare drama. It all blends together beautifully, and the various fairy-magical passages that Mendelssohn is so good at spinning out fit perfectly to the children and adult dancers flitting about the stage. The concluding scene – with the soprano, mezzo-soprano and chorus entering for the first time – makes a glorious conclusion to the two-act ballet.
Since the only choice for surround here is the TrueHD 5.1 option, if your player or AV processor isn’t set up for that new codec, you will be limited to the two-channel option, which unfortunately is also Dolby rather than higher-res PCM. I ran it thru ProLogic II and the sonics were of good quality and the playing excellent. Visually, the hi-def images were highly detailed, and one doesn’t mind a bit that there are not as many closeups as in most standard DVD ballet discs. Seeing the entire stage from high above as though one were seated in the balcony circle of the theater, is entirely appropriate when we’re dealing with such a perfectly sharp and detailed screen image. This also preserves the choreographic sense of the ballet much better; too many closeups completely destroys that.
Comparisons with Blu-ray discs on my same 56” 1080p screen made me even more disgusted over the idiotic hi-def format war between the two opposing camps – the bottom line is they look just the same on the screen – even with the differences between 1080i and 1080p! Since the HD DVDs are more similar to standard DVDs in manufacturing and thus less expensive to produce, if that had been the only format perhaps the cost with larger quantity sales (which would have resulted from a single format) could have eventually been brought down to being identical with standard DVDs.
– John Sunier
