User Reviews

This is a lavish staging of one of Franz Lehar's operettas and, like all of his creations, chock full of beguiling music and enchanting songs. A young girl of a better Hungarian homestead meets, on the morning of her planned engagement to a caring and well-to-do boy of the neighborhood, a gypsy man, and gets second thoughts about settling down so young to a life of bourgeois tranquillity. Sure, she loves the boy, but the "free and easy" life at the side of the dazzling gypsy looks mighty alluring. She does not go through with the engagement, but has in the following night a revealing dream about the reality of gypsy life. Of course, the operetta was written long before the age of "political correctness", when gypsies were thought of - probably befittingly - as wandering folk with loose morals who lived by begging, fortune telling, stealing and occasionally playing music. Hence, the following morning she is thoroughly cured of her gypsy temptation, and all is good for herself and her boy. Her widowed dad is less lucky ensnaring the sexy young widow of the neighboring castle.

That's a good operetta story, and it is presented here at a lively pace with lots of people moving in captivating scenery, rousing music impeccably recorded, and beautiful voices. Beautiful, but, alas, unintelligible. No, not a language barrier for this reviewer, rather the style of "operatic" singing where all consonants are dropped in favor of loudness to fill a 500-seat opera house. A singsong by vowels only may be suitable for Hawaiian, but renders a presentation in German impossible to understand. Why, oh why, didn't the director tell his singers: pipe down, pronounce the words properly - because much of the story is told by the lyrics, and nobody enjoys to just sit there and watch singing heads. It would have been a great movie.