Search - Alexandre Desplat, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Antonio Vivaldi :: Casanova (2005 Lasse Hallstrom film)

Authenticity can sound great as well!

Tromba Prima | Elgin, IL | 07/11/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"As an avid baroque music listener and performer, I can attest to the delightfully pleasing performances on the soundtrack as well as the painstakingly accurate performance practices utilized in the recording of this soundtrack.



The producers of this film fortunately went to the trouble of hiring some of the top period performance musician-specialists in the country (perhaps in the entire world) to record the soundtrack to Casanova. I know, because several of them were faculty members of the Oberlin Conservatory Baroque Performance Institute who went AWOL to Hollywood in June 2005 for the recording sessions. We all forgave them, and were actually quite excited that period music performance was having its day on the silver screen.



Do not miss this exquisite potpourri of wonderful baroque composers' works performed as closely as humanly possible to the way that they heard their works during their lifetimes! The film may not have been intended to be historically accurate (part of the fun), but the music certainly ended up that way. Not only that, but it sounds heavenly (unlike Casanova's antics) and up-to-date, not musty and old as if it were sealed in a museum case.

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Sheer Beauty for the Ears

James C Smith | MI United States | 07/24/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"For those that purchased this CD, I need not get into how masterfully infectious the movie was. After the first viewing, I found it charming, but after the second, I was hooked by the witty, clever story holding fun twists all along the way. So while I could go on and on about the movie and all of its wonderful aspects, the score was simply priceless. Apt in every scene, and all done with incredible baroque music that I had never had the opportunity of hearing before the film.



The disc walks you through the movie with no changes that I could tell from the original score. The only omission I found was that the song dubbed "Casanova's Theme" is played in much greater length in the closing credits, and that didn't seem to make it to the CD. Not a terrible loss."