Search - Jacques Offenbach, Huguette Tourangeau, Richard Stilwell :: Offenbach: La Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein

Truly rotten sound

John Cragg | Delta(greater Vancouver), B.C Canada | 10/04/2000

(1 out of 5 stars)

"Offenbach's operetta is lots of fun and, when it can be made out, Huguette Tourangeau gives a stunning performance as the Duchess. But the sound is terrible, as if the recording had been made by a mini-tape recorder in the pocket of an audience member with a bad cold and a most annoying laugh. That the Sante Fe performance was lots of fun can be deduced from the gales of laughter, obviously greeting sight-gags since there is nothing aurally to justify them. The plot etc. is supposed to be given in English by a narrator in between parts of the operetta, but most of it is unintelligible in the poor recording. Almost all of the French cannot be made out also. The Gala booklet, of course, offers no libretto and the track index adds insult to injury by giving the first few words of the numbers with in addition their translatiion into English. (Fat lot of use that is!)Even at the budget price it is not worth wasting your time on this one."

All copies should be destroyed...

Brett Farrell | Cape May, NJ USA | 02/17/2005

(1 out of 5 stars)

"As befor said, this recording is terrible. The first description describes it the best. I only wanted to chime in to mention that this CD is so bad that every copy should be destroyed. This is the only CD on the Gala label I have and I refuse to buy anything from them again just because of how bad this is. How can you trust a company that would ever let this pass for sale?"

Yes, it's awful, unfortunately

L. E. Cantrell | Vancouver, British Columbia Canada | 01/21/2004

(1 out of 5 stars)

"This one of the really annoying ones. It is entirely possible that there is a good performance going on -- the audience certainly seems to think so. However, the only things the listener is going to get from these discs are frustration and annoyance. Too bad!"