Mozert: Avatus, A Musical Opera (Blur-ray review)

Lt. Sir Cedric Noel Vivian Barnstable III and His City Slickers. Lots of singers, too. Remastered 4K/4-D screen presentation. DDT-LSMFT 20.35 surround-sound audio track. Danish-only spoken language. Really Big Pictures; 2022; Really Big Blur-ray Discs 7.77.777.7777.etc.

By John J. Puccio

Anyone who doesn’t think that Avatusian composer-writer-producer-director-spot-remover J. Cameron Mozert’s 2022 movie epic Avatus: A Musical Opera isn’t the best 4K/4-D movie-musical-opera rip-off ever made is obviously unable to comprehend the genius behind this monumental project and deserves whatever ill fortune fate has reserved for him. In other words, if you don’t like this movie, you’re an idiot.

J.C. Mozert has generally reserved his best work for small-scale projects like Terminatoricus, Titanicus, and Aliens in the Atticus, but this time he has outdone himself with a musical opera so natural, so lifelike, so genuine, you’d think he used real people to perform it. Avatus: A Musical Opera (music by J.C. Mozert; lyrics by Mahatma Kane Jeeves; words by W. C. Dukenfield) stars counter-soprano Leonardo Di Capricorn as Jake Dawson; basso-profundo Kate Winstone as Rose Butler; alto-sexist Clarke Gable as Rhett Butler; mezzo-neen Sigorney Weaving as Robert Ripley; renowned hopscotch authority and part-time hockey puck Morgan Freeperson as The Great Mandala; and the incomparable Mac Demon as Francois “Sparkling” Perrier. Lt. Sir Cedric Noel Vivian Barnstable III and his Band That Plays for Fun support the singers with a deferentially recalcitrant opprobrium.

The music explores one man’s vision to bring to the masses of a dying planet, Avatus, the rugged indoor sports event known as Mallet-Style Quidditch (or MS Quidditch), a variation on the hammer throw and tiddly winks, using large wooden mallets. (And not be confused with Mullet-Style Quidditch, which requires participants wear their hair short in the front and long in the back).

Needless to say, the people of Avatus are reluctant to take up a new sport, far more content to continue their time-honored amusement of killing one another for power and wealth. Even Mandala, His Greatness, an instant fan of MS Quidditch, is appalled at his own Avatusians’ willingness to shed blood over trivialities like war and peace rather than over something really important like MS Quidditch. Nevertheless, the Greater Mandala plunges forward, organizing an MS Quidditch team to equal any in the universe. Since it turns out there are no other MS Quidditch teams in the universe, this is far easier done than said.

Unfortunately, no one in the known universe has ever figured out the rules for playing MS Quidditch, which somewhat limits the scope of its promise. But it does not stop either Mandala the Greater-Than-Anybody-Else or Mozert the Not-Really-So- Entirely-Great from forging headlong ahead in heading up their head count of headcheese (a necessary ingredient in any MS Quidditch game worthy of the name, although for what purpose, no one has determined).

By bringing MS Quidditch to Avatus, the Greatest of All Mandalas saves the sports-starved peoples of the planet from near extinction by encouraging them to stay in school, get high grades, go to college, become good citizens, cure cancer, end bigotry, prejudice, and hatred, establish eternal peace, and live long and prosper. More important, the Intergalactic Sports Television Network makes a fortune.

We interrupt this review for an important message from our sponsors:
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We now return you to our regularly scheduled review:
Anyway, that’s about all the plot there is to the plot, plot wise, but the opera’s undoubted pleasures are its visual splendors rather than its narrative, and these splendors are simply splendiforous. Di Capricorn is divine, Winstone is winsome, Gable is glorious, Weaving is wonderful, Freeperson is frabulous, and, as expected, Demon is darling, especially in 4K/4-D. To feast one’s eyes on these individuals in all their grandeur is a banquet to behold. Which is about all one can do when one is hungry, stuck in a theater with 800 other people, and can find no way to the refreshment stand (or the exit doors). Oh, and there’s some singing in the opera, too. So there’s that.

Video:
Not content with conventional 2-D or gimmicky 3-D, this Blur-ray disc brings us Avatus, the Musical Opera in all its 4K/4-D theatrical-release glory. (A 4K four-dimensional motion picture provides an audience not only with the dimensions of height, width, and depth but adds the sensation of touch as well. Things don’t just jump off the screen at viewers, they actually hit them. This has inevitably led to several law suits (see our sponsors) from patrons claiming to have been maimed by flying MS Quidditch chips, but I understand most of the suits have been settled out of Quidditch court. I, myself, have never been struck by any flying objects during a 4-D movie, although a poorly thrown MS Quidditch grenade narrowly missed me on several occasions. I also understand that at least three actresses in 4-D movies have claimed they were casually caressed by overzealous theater patrons, again unsubstantiated, although what 4-D activities one pursues while in the privacy of one’s home is another matter entirely.)

Incidentally, the folks at Really Big Pictures are also making Avatus, the Musical Opera available on a standard-definition Digital Ultimate Disc (DUD), but, really, who would want the movie on an ordinary DUD when you could buy the 4K/4-D Blur-ray edition?

Audio:
Here, we get a loss-leader soundtrack in DDT-LSMFT 20.35 surround that closely matches what several people claim they heard in a theater. Is it worth upgrading your audio system to 20.35 for a single motion picture? The answer is a resounding, Yes! Especially when you consider that there is no way on Earth (or on Avatus) that you could fully understand or appreciate the game of Mallet-Style Quidditch without 20.35 speakers. Well, to be fair, there is no way on Earth (or on Avatus) you could understand or appreciate the game of MS Quidditch under any circumstances, but that’s beside the point.

Oh, and the sound is pretty sound, too.

Extras:
Because of the film’s raging length--5 days, 6 hours, 27 minutes, 30 seconds (or 7,227.5 minutes for the minutely minded, or 433,650 seconds for the compulsively compulsive)--Really Big Pictures didn’t have a whole lot of room left over for too many extras, even using a bi-quadral, multiplex-layered, high-capacity Blur-ray disc. So about the only supplemental materials we get are two of J. Cameron Mozert’s younger brother’s briefer briefs, Alienicus from 1986 and Aliensicus from 1997. Of course, they don’t compare with big brother J.C.’s monumental achievement, but they are useful to have around.

In addition, the disc contains approximately 4.7 scene selections; a six-hour theatrical trailer; Danish as the only spoken language; and some fishy-looking captions for the herring impaired.

Parting Thoughts:
Words cannot adequately express the joy, elation, bliss, delight, happiness, felicity, rapture, ecstasy, jubilation, enchantment, exultation, exhilaration, joie de vivre, or downright really good feelings one gets from watching Avatus, the Musical Opera, be it on the big 360-degree wraparound 4K/4-D screen at your local movie theater or on the 3” x 6” cell phone you use at home. Mark my words, Mark, Avatus, the Musical Opera will go down in history as one of the greatest film adaptations of an Avatus, the Musical Opera opera ever made.

And anyone who says otherwise is an idiot.

Cautionary Note:
A 4K/4-D Blur-ray disc must only be played on compatible 4K/4-D Blur-ray equipment (4K/4-D television, 4K/4-D Blur-ray player, 4K/4-D Blur-ray receiver, 4K/4-D Blur-ray speakers, 4K/4-D Blur-ray speaker wire, 4K/4-D Blur-ray goggles, 4K/4-D Blur-ray gloves, and 4K/4-D Blur-ray couch). Any attempt to play a 4K/4-D Blur-ray disc on an ordinary Blu-ray, DVD, HD DVD, LD, VHS, Betamax, Victrola, Dictaphone, or Vitaphone player will result in grievous bodily harm. For more information on the availability of compatible 4K/4-D Blur-ray equipment, visit https//:www.wereouttosoakyouforeverythingyouvegot.con.

JJP

To listen to an excerpt from this album, click below:

In the Golden Age

By Bill Heck
 

Ah, to have lived in the Golden Age of…well, anything. The Golden Age of philosophy? Ancient Athens, hobnobbing with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Less ambitiously, there’s the Golden Age of American literature: maybe the mid-20th century, when we could hang out with Faulkner and Hemingway, or perhaps earlier so we could look over Melville’s shoulder. There’s even a Golden Age of American Industry for a few postwar decades, when American industrial might was unchallenged and a husband (it was always a husband, wasn’t it?) could provide for an entire family with a single factory job.
 
Then there was the Golden Age of American Classical Music, in the pre-WWII and postwar eras when giants roamed the land: Reiner, Szell, Ormandy, and Stokowski and their city orchestras, when first radio and then television networks competed to be highbrow: NBC even had its own symphony orchestra!
 
And the Golden Age of High Fidelity? Well, that could have been in the 1950s – 60s when the classic Marantz, McIntosh, KLH and then Advent appeared, or perhaps in the 1970s – 80s when exotic “high end” brands arose, tubes all aglow: Audio Research, Conrad-Johnson, Mark Levinson.
 
You may have noticed that all these Golden Ages have something in common: they happened in some magical past. We hear that philosophy has been all downhill since those smart Greeks; literature has succumbed to the way of Kindle; classical music is a mere footnote to popular culture; American industry is a shadow of its former self. And audio? Alas, High Fidelity has given way to MP3 and earbuds, with a few remaining enclaves accessible only to those with megabucks for gigantic amplifiers and massive speakers – and even multi-thousand dollar cables!

I won’t try to speak for philosophy or literature or even manufacturing, but there’s something odd about the tales of the demise of classical music. If serious music is sunk, how is it that we see a steady stream of classical recordings being released each and every week? And how is it that even newly minted musicians, those so obscure that only their mothers have heard of them, amaze us with their talents on a daily basis? Listen critically to some of those giants of yesteryear: Schnabel and Richter were known to hit some clinkers, and some of those legendary orchestras seemed occasionally lost in thickets of (sometimes wrong) notes. The level of accomplishment of even the rawest rookies these days is amazing, as they confront works formerly thought nearly unplayable and toss them off with ease. Orchestras in cities that you never heard of could play rings around some of the fabled bands of a few decades ago. And wait – how is it that those cities you never heard of even have orchestras? Still more: what about those contemporary composers who are once again writing music that ordinary music lovers actually want to hear? While there’s no denying that the classical music world has issues to confront, in many ways we are in the Golden Age of Classical Music: more music, and more ways to access it, than ever before.
 

But what about the Golden Age of High Fidelity? It’s true that earbuds and Alexa speakers get the headlines. It’s also true that many of the stereo shops of a decade or two ago have gone the way of the dodo, and too many of those that remain seem to specialize in multi-channel systems optimized to produce the sounds of car chases, laser weapons, and earthquakes. But quietly, behind the scenes, we have entered a true Golden Age of High Fidelity sound reproduction. And you, my friend, are the beneficiary.
 
So what do I mean by a “Golden Age?” Just this: audio equipment has evolved to a point at which:
 
· it is easy to obtain music sources – and the equipment to play those sources – that would have provoked awe just a few years ago; and
· doing so requires less specialized knowledge, effort, and commitment than ever before; and
· those sources and equipment are available at extraordinarily low cost, affordable to those with even moderate incomes.
 
Let’s take these in order, starting with the sources and equipment. Incredibly, the CD standard, developed back in 1980, has turned out to be capable of music reproduction that is rarely surpassed. Perhaps some people do hear small differences between CD and “high resolution” audio, although evidence beyond mere assertion is spotty, but the real point is that the plain old CD standard is remarkably robust and satisfying.
 
Moreover, a little listening should convince you that recording processes and techniques now routinely deliver superb results – not perfect, and of course some recordings are better than others, but a high percentage of contemporary recordings sound very good. Yes, some (a few) older recordings still hold their own, but the batting average seems much higher these days, and the best of today surely equals or even – oh heresy! – surpasses those fabled recorded masterpieces of yesteryear.
 
Meanwhile, even the best recordings need to be played back through a good sound system. Here again, the technological progress has been astounding. CD players, digital-to-audio converters (DACs), music streaming devices, preamplifiers and amplifiers now boast specifications and performance so good that it is difficult to find measurable or demonstrable audible differences among them. Yes, I know that the previous sentence invites derision and flaming comments from those convinced otherwise by the incessant advertising that passes for audio reviewing in some quarters. But even bastions of audio perfection like The Absolute Sound seem to admit, albeit sometimes reluctantly and only between the lines, that many humble components are really, really good. Meanwhile, the more objectively oriented world, as represented by sites like audiosciencereview.com, produce both measurements and listening results that indicate staggeringly good performance over and over. The point is not that “everything sounds the same,” but rather that excellence is readily available.
 
Turning to my second point above, the mere availability of first-rate components isn’t much help if you need to spend months or years learning enough to identify them, more months looking for them, and a lifetime learning to adjust and tweak them to optimize their performance. Who has time for that?
 

But, in fact, high quality components are easy to find. As the quality of even entry level components has skyrocketed, the problem of finding good stuff has decreased proportionally: if many components are now pretty good, your odds of finding satisfactory ones are high. We have not reached that state of audio nirvana in which components are indistinguishable commodities, but consider the contrast with even the recent past. Back in the earlier supposed golden ages, say the 1970s, the typical audiophile might haunt electronics shops weekend after weekend, searching for that elusive combination of components that would work well together, the strengths of each offsetting the weaknesses of the other. And let’s not even get started on craziness like adjusting tube bias or figuring out which transformer tap worked best with which speakers. (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, consider yourself lucky.) In the more recent past, the search may have been easier, but one at least needed to identify multiple types of components, learn the function of each and how to connect them, and assemble complementary units into a working system. Now consider something like the NAD C 658 unit that I reviewed some months back: it’s one box. That’s it. Oh wait, you need an amplifier; if that’s too complicated, you can purchase a similar unit that combines most or all of this same functionality plus the amp into one box. But wait, don’t you need a CD player? Not even that. Instead, you can use streaming to pull music out of thin air, so to speak, at CD or higher resolution.
 
And that brings us to the third point: low cost. Let’s build a simple, low cost system; I’ll refer to a few brands as examples, but please understand that there are plenty of choices that would be highly satisfactory.
 
First, we’ll use a streaming unit. You could get something like the Bluesound PowerNode, which combines streaming with an integrated amplifier for just under $1,000 (less for a perfectly good used unit), or any of a number of similar units, or even separate streamers and amplifiers, for not much more. For that price, you get competent audio streaming at high resolution and sufficient power to drive some decent speakers.
 
The contrast with previous alleged Golden Ages is stark. Oh sure, those lovely Marantz tube units back in the 1960’s were only hundreds of dollars – but in real dollars, i.e., accounting for inflation, prices for high quality audio equipment that have never been lower. (And remember, in those halcyon days of yore, you needed both a preamp and power amp, along with a turntable with tonearm and cartridge.) Moreover, those old tube units required periodic and often expensive maintenance and adjustment: replacing tubes was a periodic ritual. In addition, those of us of a certain age remember when every small town had at least one electronics repair shop, needed because those old electronics broke with distressing regularity. Modern solid-state stuff, not so much.
 
You still need speakers, and again it is technology to the rescue. Advances in science and engineering have made formerly exotic materials available and usable at low prices, and advances in computation have made formerly onerous and time-consuming design work much easier and faster. The result is a generation of widely available, reasonably priced, high-performance speakers. Of course, you can spend a lot on speakers, and expensive speakers often (though not always) yield better performance, but you can get into the game with very good speakers at very low prices. Let’s start you out with speakers at $1,000: they won’t shake the room with thunderous bass or wake up the dog with ultra-high frequencies, but they can sound quite credible in a basic system.
 
Our total allocation so far is around $2,000 brand new, full retail. (Lest you think such a number totally outrageous, just consider that a high-end television can easily be more.) Not pocket change, but as a long-term investment, not eye-watering either. If you find used equipment, subtract some more. Will you be satisfied forever? Maybe; if not, you can improve things incrementally, again at low cost, in one or more of the following ways.
 
· Upgrade the speakers. This is the obvious place to start: the possibilities – and the price levels – are endless. At our introductory cost level, even small increments in price will buy you significant upgrades in sound.
· Add room correction: This can produce major gains; one easy option is a $400 – 500 standalone unit from the likes of miniDSP. Alternatively, spend a little more up front and some streaming units include room correction for free.
· Add a CD player: as the streaming device likely has a digital input, you can get away with a cheap or used player functioning only as a transport. $100 - 200?
· Add a subwoofer: There are plenty of competent choices starting well under $1,000.
 
Finally, there’s the music. You can have high-quality audio streaming for a dirt cheap $10-15 per month. Even if that price doubles or triples (to better support the musicians), it’s still cheap, especially considering that the monthly fee buys you access to a library of hundreds of thousands of albums – audio nirvana indeed.
 
Does all this make our own time the Golden Age of Audio? There are those who say no, who lament the fact that it’s too easy; who long for the days when, by golly, you really had to work to put together your audio system; who whine that it doesn’t count if you don’t have to spend endless hours getting it right (or even getting it working at all). It’s the same syndrome as with the golden age of cars: those Jaguars, MGs, Triumphs, early Corvettes were so beautiful, so fun, symbolizing the freedom of the open road. I understand that nostalgia, and I, too, feel the appeal of those early cars – until I want to go somewhere. By any objective measure, today’s cars are better than those vehicles of yesteryear: more reliable, faster, mostly better handling, more economical, safer, etc. Similarly, we can understand the appeal of glowing tubes, monster amps, giant but inefficient speakers – until we just want to listen to music. Is the audio hobby in a golden age? Maybe not, but audio is.
 
A final note:
There are supposed audio gurus who will tell you that putting together a decent audio system condemns you to spending hours and hours tweaking this and that, putting little gizmos that rely on effects unknown to physics on top of and under your components, endlessly comparing freaking wires – and that you most certainly need to subscribe to their YouTube channels and haunt their websites so that they can guide you through this foreign landscape. Forget all that, at least for now. Get the basics under control. If you are inclined to mess around with such things, do so later. (Personally, I recommend that you continue in your blissful ignorance and spend your time listening to music.)
 
Even more annoyingly, there will be those who sneer that you can’t possibly appreciate the nuances of good music because you haven’t spent their threshold amount, whether that’s $10K or $100K, or you haven’t performed the proper rituals or penances of tweaking and fiddling. If that happens, just smile politely, go home, turn on the music, and enjoy your time in the Golden Age of High Fidelity.
 
BH

Musica Barocca (CD review)

Music of Albinoni, J.S. Bach, Handel, Marcello, Pachelbel, Purcell, Telemann, and Vivaldi. Giovanni Antonini, Il Giardino Armonico. Warner Classics 0190296455322.

By John J. Puccio

Il Giardino Armonico (“The Garden of Harmony”) is a period-instrument ensemble co-founded in 1985 by its leader Giovanni Antonini. Like most such bands, its primary purpose is to play music in a historically accurate style and on original instruments appropriate to the era (mainly the late seventeenth to early nineteenth centuries). In other words, to play music that the composers of such music would easily recognize if they were alive today. The 1980’s saw a number of such HIP (historically informed performance) orchestras pop up, many of which are gone now and many of which have stuck around. Il Giardino Armonico is one that stuck around.

Although Il Giardino Armonico is still performing and still recording, they recorded the present album in 2001 for Teldec Das Alte Werk, and Warner Classics is just re-releasing it 2022. So you might say it’s something of a relic itself. Still, it’s a good and welcome relic, filled with an abundance of good tunes by Baroque composers like Albinoni, J.S. Bach, Handel, Marcello, Pachelbel, Purcell, Telemann, and Vivaldi. It’s not quite a golden oldies collection of Baroque favorites, but it’s close. The main thing is that it’s well played and enjoyable to hear. The composers couldn’t have wanted more.

Here’s the program:

J.S. Bach: Suite No. 3 in D major
Albinoni: Oboe Concerto in D minor
Vivaldi: Flautino Concerto in C major
Albinoni: Adagio for solo violin and strings
Marcello: Oboe Concerto in D minor
Telemann: Concerto for two flutes in B minor
Pachelbel: Canon and Gigue in D major
Traditional: “Greensleeves”
Purcell: Chaconne in G minor
Handel: Solomon, “The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba”
Albinoni: Sinfonia a quattro in F major

So, some things familiar, some things not so familiar, but all things baroque. Il Giardino Armonico play with elegance and precision. This leads to technically well executed but not always the most exciting presentations. For me, they tend to suck a little of the life out of the music in the process of being so well-mannered. Take, for instance, the opening selection, the familiar Suite No. 3 in D major, BWV 1068. While it comes to life in the Gavottes, it’s generally polite in the extreme. Now, compare it to Jordi Savall’s account with La Concert des Nations on Alia Vox. Antonini and his crew may provide the greater degree of contrasts in style and tempo, but it’s Savall who delivers the most fun. He and his players simply sound as though they’re having a better time playing the music. Of course, this is hardly a slam against Antonini, who does a splendid job getting the music across with a minimum of fuss. It’s just a matter of taste in the long run, and many listeners will prefer the refinement of Il Giardino Armonico over the comparatively scruffy qualities of Savall’s group.

Il Giardino Armonico appear more in their element with Albinoni’s Oboe Concerto, which they render beautifully, with grace, ease, and polish. That’s followed by a zippy treatment of Vivaldi’s Flautino Concerto, and so on. One thing you can’t say about Antonini, though, is that he’s predictable. He tends to go from one extreme to another not only in his choice of material but in his choice of manners to play them. With the exception of several Albinoni pieces, you never quite know what he’s going to do with the music. Some of it comes off with strength and vigor (the Handel “Arrival of the Queen of Sheba” is especially lively); others sound rushed or overworked.

Producer Christoph Classen and engineer Michael Brammen recorded the music at Chiesa di San Giorgio, Morbio Inferiore, Switzerland in 2001. There is the feeling here of a very large space, with good orchestral depth and a fairly reverberant but not objectionable hall resonance. The image comes across coherently, with instruments well spaced. However, the dynamics seem all over the place, sometimes strong, sometimes a bit lifeless; lucidity sometimes transparent, sometimes soft and dusky; and the frequency balance sometimes tending to favor the upper register. All of this is perhaps a result of the various combinations of players and instruments involved, so like the performances, you never quite know what to expect.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click below: