Not all that familiar with zarzuelas, but what I have seen of them are entertaining, and El Duo De La Africana is no exception if overall not one of the best of them.
The production looks good. It's nicely shot, has some beautiful costumes and the minimalist sets didn't bother me at all, if anything they did give off the right atmosphere. The music featured is wonderful, with bits from L'Africaine, Ah Mes Ami and an ingenious parody of La Donna E Mobile. The dialogue is hilarious with some brilliantly witty satirical moments, the staging is engaging throughout and the story is simple, provides some great entertainment and is not too hard to follow. The music is beautifully performed by the orchestra with lots of zest, the chorus are youthful, involved and attractive in voice and the whole production is directed and conducted very solidly. The performers show naturalness in their acting and while not all the singing is great (Ah Mes Ami is pretty painful in fact) some of it acquits itself just fine.
However, the sound quality balance is not very good, the orchestra are recorded too softly and the singers could have been toned down a little comparatively to make it even. Some of the performance is lit too darkly which seemed to be a technical value deficiency than an atmosphere thing. Picture is sometimes fuzzy in background, and those unfamiliar with zarzuelas or Spanish will find the performance difficult to understand fully without subtitles (it wasn't a problem for me as somebody studying Spanish as part of her music degree), even if they still enjoy it somewhat for the music and the atmosphere.
All in all, could have been better but it's entertaining. 6/10 Bethany Cox
The production looks good. It's nicely shot, has some beautiful costumes and the minimalist sets didn't bother me at all, if anything they did give off the right atmosphere. The music featured is wonderful, with bits from L'Africaine, Ah Mes Ami and an ingenious parody of La Donna E Mobile. The dialogue is hilarious with some brilliantly witty satirical moments, the staging is engaging throughout and the story is simple, provides some great entertainment and is not too hard to follow. The music is beautifully performed by the orchestra with lots of zest, the chorus are youthful, involved and attractive in voice and the whole production is directed and conducted very solidly. The performers show naturalness in their acting and while not all the singing is great (Ah Mes Ami is pretty painful in fact) some of it acquits itself just fine.
However, the sound quality balance is not very good, the orchestra are recorded too softly and the singers could have been toned down a little comparatively to make it even. Some of the performance is lit too darkly which seemed to be a technical value deficiency than an atmosphere thing. Picture is sometimes fuzzy in background, and those unfamiliar with zarzuelas or Spanish will find the performance difficult to understand fully without subtitles (it wasn't a problem for me as somebody studying Spanish as part of her music degree), even if they still enjoy it somewhat for the music and the atmosphere.
All in all, could have been better but it's entertaining. 6/10 Bethany Cox
