Andrea Bocelli-Tuscan Skies: Cieli Di Toscana (2001) |
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Andrea Bocelli-Tuscan Skies: Cieli Di Toscana (2001) |
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| BUY IT |
| General | Extras | ||
| Category | Documentary |
Main Menu Audio & Animation Audio-Only Track-15 (The Album) + Notes Featurette-Andrea Bocelli-Cieli Di Toscana Featurette-Backstage Footage Biographies-Cast Web Links |
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| Rating |
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| Year Of Production | 2001 | ||
| Running Time | 53:42 (Case: 171) | ||
| RSDL / Flipper | RSDL (6:37) | Cast & Crew | |
| Start Up | Language Select Then Menu | ||
| Region Coding | 2,3,4,5,6 | Directed By | Larry Weinstein |
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Studio
Distributor |
 Universal Pictures Home Video |
Starring | Andrea Bocelli |
| Case | Amaray-Transparent | ||
| RPI | $36.95 | Music | Andrea Bocelli |
| Video | Audio | ||
| Pan & Scan/Full Frame | None |
English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Dolby Digital 2.0  (256Kb/s)English dts 5.1 (768Kb/s) |
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| Widescreen Aspect Ratio | 1.78:1 | ||
| 16x9 Enhancement |
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| Video Format | 576i (PAL) | ||
| Original Aspect Ratio | 1.78:1 | Miscellaneous | |
| Jacket Pictures | No | ||
| Subtitles |
English Italian French German Spanish Portuguese |
Smoking | No |
| Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
| Action In or After Credits | Yes, aerial shots of Tuscany | ||
If there are such things as megastars in the classical music world, then surely Andrea Bocelli must be one of them. He is probably one of the more well known "new breed" of tenors and I think music lovers around the world appreciate his fabulous singing voice, his good looks, and sympathise with his blindness.
Andrea was born in 1958 in rural Tuscany, Italy. Although he was born sighted, his blindness is the result of hereditary glaucoma and he lost his sight at the age of 12 despite numerous medical treatments. Although he studied law at the University of Pisa and spent a year as a lawyer, his love of music and singing soon had him taking lessons from tenor Franco Corelli and he started performing in piano bars and nightclubs where he also met his wife Enrica. A chance discovery in 1992 and a subsequent friendship with Luciano Pavarotti propelled him to international superstardom. He has released quite a few albums ranging from operas and sacred music to "crossover" and neo-classical music.
Cieli di Toscana (Tuscan Skies) is his latest "contemporary" album, featuring original songs by Italian composers with a common theme of celebrating the natural beauty of the area he was born and grown up in, with the spectacular scenery of quilted undulating hills, olive groves and vineyards softly lit by the Mediterranean sun.
Do I sound like a travel writer or what? This DVD is partly a collection of music videos, commentary by Andrea, plus a subtle promotional video celebrating Tuscany. I doubt that it's quite escaped the notice of the producers that "cielo" in Italian can mean "Heaven" as well as "sky" - "Tuscan Skies" or perhaps "Heavenly Tuscany?" In any case, the audience is gently reminded of the scenic wonders of the area and the rustic lifestyle.
The feature starts with camera footage (taken from a car) showing a gentle pan across the streets of London's West End, where Andrea has just finished giving a concert. We are then transported from the night time hustle and bustle of London to the warm and sunny open air of Tuscany. Andrea sings the first song Melodramma under the shade of a tree - the song was written specially for Andrea.
Each song is accompanied by a music video with a definite "theme" and preceded by the song title (Italian, plus English translation) burned in the video stream. For example, Melodramma ("The Homecoming") features Andrea being driven around the countryside in a convertible, and mock footage of Andrea as a young child (when he could still see). Il Misterio Dell'Amore features a beach scene at night with a campfire as well as a horse motif.
L'Incontro is a celebration of the relationship between father and child (the album features U2's Bono Vox reciting a poem written by Andrea, but the feature only has Andrea singing). L'Abitudine features a duet with a young singer called Helena in a studio recording session. Mille Lune Mille Onde features a scene of two lovers caressing each other which I suppose represents Andrea and his wife. Mascagni features the community of Livorno, Tornerá La Neve has a winter time setting (which we find out in the making of footage is done using fake snow) and E Sara' A Settembre is a night time open air performance at a village square. The closing song E Mi Manchi Tu features Andrea singing on top of a hill surrounded by the beautiful Tuscan countryside.
Two of the songs feature winning entrants from a songwriting competition ("Premio Bocelli") held to find songs for Andrea to sing - E Mi Manchi Tu, the winning title from the 2001 competition by Czech songwriter Zdenek Bartak as well as the runner up Resta Qui by Matteo Musumeci.
Some of the songs feature Andrea performing on a musical instrument as well as singing. For example, L'Incontro features him on the guitar, Resta Qui has him playing the piano and Mascagni has him playing the flute as well as piano.
| 1. Opening Sequence (London Concert) 2. Melodramma 3. Il Mistero Dell'Amore 4. L'Incontro 5. L'Ultimo Re 6. L'Abitudine | 7. Resta Qui 8. Mille Lune Mille Onde 9. Mascagni 10. Tornerŕ la Neve 11. E Sara' a Settembre 12. E Mi Manchi Tu |
This is a widescreen 1.78:1 transfer which is 16x9 enhanced.
I am not sure whether this transfer is sourced from a video tape, or from film. I suspect probably the latter (especially as Widescreen Review states that the source is Super 16), since I can discern low level grain throughout the transfer. The transfer is a bit on the soft side and features slightly desaturated colours.
The mock footage (4:3 mail-slotted) showing Andrea when he was young looks really grainy, and jerky, and full of telecine wobble. This is intentional, as the scenes were shot on Super 8 film and deliberately done to look amateurish with bad framing and so forth.
Small numbers of video artefacts are present in the transfer, including background pixelization, some evidence of haloing due to edge enhancement, and some shimmering.
Selecting English as the menu language (which is done when the disc is first inserted into the player) will automatically turn on the English subtitle track - which translates dialogue spoken in Italian. Other subtitle tracks are also available.
This is a single sided dual layered disc (RSDL). Given the short duration of the feature (53:42), the layer change does not occur during the feature but in an extra (The Interviews featurette at around 6:37).
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There are three audio tracks on the disc: Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s), Dolby Digital 2.0 surround-encoded (256Kb/s), and dts 5.1 (768Kb/s). Even though these audio tracks are flagged as "English" I think it would be more accurate to think of them as Italian audio tracks since most of the dialogue and music is in Italian.
First of all - the positives. This is a great 5.1 multi-channel mix - with the emphasis on surround. All the songs sung by Andrea are mixed for surround - with instruments and sometimes even Andrea's voice distributed across all speakers including rear speakers. In addition, extensive care has been taken to mix Foley effects across speakers - car engines, horses, birds, tractors, fire crackling - all these sound effects are positioned well and panned where necessary.
Most of the dialogue is clear sounding but in Italian. Surprisingly, I found Andrea's diction very easy to understand and even with my very limited understanding of Italian I could catch perhaps 30% of his words - enough to understand a glimpse of what he was saying. I did not notice any audio synchronisation issues.
The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track is very pleasant sounding though mixed at a fairly low level, and turning up the volume can sometimes reveal a sense of "harshness" in the audio track.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 surround encoded track sounds a bit louder and clearer by comparison and as far as I'm concerned is the best sounding audio track even though it is not as enveloping (due to the use of matrix surround encoding instead of discrete multiple channels).
The biggest disappointment is the dts 5.1 audio track, which is mixed at a very very low level and sounds somewhat distant and muffled as well as lacking in dynamics. I had to turn the volume level up to something like -3 dB (my normal listening level on DVDs is more like -15 dB) before the audio track sounded decent.
The subwoofer is only lightly used by the audio tracks but there is no real low frequency content in the tracks anyway.
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This disc comes with a very pleasing set of extras - including two fairly lengthy featurettes and the full album (plus bonus tracks) available with a choice of audio tracks.
All menus are 16x9 enhanced. In addition, the main menu features background audio and animation, plus transitions when a menu item is selected.
Here is an unusual extra - the entire album (plus two bonus tracks) with a choice of three audio tracks, together with an accompanying montage of photos (as a full frame video stream).
Basically we get the same choice of audio tracks as for the main feature: Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s), Dolby Digital 2.0 surround-encoded (256Kb/s), and dts 5.1 (768Kb/s). So not only is there no need to buy the CD (unless of course you want to play it in your car/discman or you want the higher quality uncompressed sound on the CD), but you also get a multi-channel surround mix of the album instead of boring stereo.
The titles of the tracks are:
The quality of the audio tracks are roughly the same as for the main feature: ie. the Dolby Digital 2.0 surround-encoded sounded the best to my ears, followed closely by the Dolby Digital 5.1 track with an excellent surround mix and the dts version sounded soft, distant and lacking in dynamics.
The accompanying montage of stills are mainly taken from either the main feature or from behind-the-scenes footage. A number of the songs (Chiara, Se La Gente Usasse Il Cuore, Si Voltó, L'Abitudine, and Il diavolo E L'Angelo) only feature a single still (each) which looks pixelated.
This is a featurette promoting the album, presented in widescreen 1.78:1 with 16x9 enhancement and Dolby Digital 2.0 (256 kb/s).
It features edited interviews with Andrea Bocelli, who mainly talks about the background for some of the songs in the album, including some comments on the "story" behind each song, the composer, the musical style, and so on. The songs featured include:
Besides Andrea, a number of other people are also interviewed (Italian dialogue is subtitled into English):
Interestingly, the layer change happens in this featurette, about 6:37 into the title. The pause is slight but perceptible.
This is another featurette, featuring behind the scenes and "making of" footage plus interviews with cast and crew, presented in widescreen 1.78:1 with 16x9 enhancement and Dolby Digital 2.0 (256 kb/s).
Songs featured in this include:
Besides Andrea, a number of other people are also interviewed (Italian dialogue is subtitled into English):
This consists of a set of navigable stills/submenus providing bullet points in text of highlights of Andrea Bocelli's career from 1994-2001. This includes information on albums released and number of copies sold, as well as awards won.
When inserted into a PC with a DVD-ROM drive, the disc has an "Autorun" feature that will launch a browser that directs the user to www.cieliditoscana.com.
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
The Region 1 and 4 versions of this title appear to be identically featured.
Cieli di Toscana (Tuscan Skies) features tenor Andrea Bocelli singing a number of contemporary songs that have been written especially for him and inspired by his own memories and fantasies of Tuscany where he was born and grew up. The 16x9 enhanced video transfer is acceptable, and the audio tracks feature an extremely aggressive surround mix. Unfortunately the dts 5.1 audio track is disappointing. Extras are very good, and include two long featurettes plus the entire album remixed into surround.
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| Review Equipment | |
| DVD | Pioneer DV-626D, using Component output |
| Display | Sony VPL-VW11HT LCD Projector, ScreenTechnics 16x9 matte white screen (254cm). Calibrated with Video Essentials/Ultimate DVD Platinum. This display device is 16x9 capable. |
| Audio Decoder | Built in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Video Essentials/Ultimate DVD Platinum. |
| Amplification | Denon AVR-3300 |
| Speakers | Front and rears: B&W CDM7NT; centre: B&W CDMCNT; subwoofer: B&W ASW2500 |