Search - Vera: Life of a Diva on DVD

La Gran Ira...er...Vera!

Shirley A. Herron | Seal Beach, CA USA | 05/27/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I, too, came to buy this wonderful disk via the review in Opera News. While the reviewer does say its length might be too much of a good thing, the operative phrase is "good thing". If you love opera, in spite of its sometimes wretched excesses, then you will be totally charmed by this send-up of all its gloriously wretched conventions, lovingly spoofed, beautifully (mostly) sung.

I wish I'd been in that audience, an audience which obviously understood the layers upon layers of meaning -- listen for the undercurrent during Kavatina Turner's "battles" to get every little thing just the way she wanted it, listen for Sylvia Bills's lament about the few notes she had at the end of her career...oh, what the heck, just listen, because you'll have a hard time catching it all the first time through. And you will watch and listen over and over, I guarantee it!"