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Actually, there are two Bolshoi "Raymonda" DVD's on the market. Kultur has released on DVD the Lyudmila Semenyaka/Mukhamedhov performance. The video quality, sharpness of image and color quality are much improved from the video release which was dingy and fuzzy. However, there isn't much in the way of indexing to pinpoint all those lovely classical solos. Pretty much they divide it by scenes and acts which can be frustrating since the one of the joys of DVD is improved scene search capability.

Semenyaka was still in her prime in the late 1980's when this performance was taped and for my money it is one of the best documents of a great classical ballerina. It is available for about $16.00 on www.deepdiscountdvd.com (but Amazon will kick in some $ for BalletAlert if you use the amazon logo link on their page and order it there).

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Taranda was splendid in both Bolshoi Raymonda DVD's. I wrote up my opinions of both DVD's in this thread:

http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.p...ndpost&p=162457

and won't repeat the detail. But to summarize, while I agree that Bessmertnova was stiff in her upper body, her feet and leg work were superb, as were her technical facility and pacing. I also really like Vasyuchenko. And many of the demi-soloists in the Bessmertnova version were very, very good.

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I think she was to old (48) to do Raymonda, she is stiff and slow and have only one expression on her face. Yuri Grigorovich should have given a younger ballerina with more vigour the chance to do Raymonda.

I hope for a Kirov or a Paris opera ballet version of Raymonda.

I totally agree with you. IMO she was miscast as Raymonda. If you look at

exerpts of Kolpakova, Plisetskaya, Dudinskaya or Semenyaka's complete performance, there's no comparison. By Act 3 she was flagging. The Act 3 solo

was particularly weak. In the prep for the last diagonal she, the pianist and the conductor were not in sync. The effect and result was :excl:. Taranda

was excellent in both DVDs.

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Well, I just rented the Semenyaka, and she is to my mind fabulous in the Hungarian variation -- I haven't seen many versions, but she far outshines Guillem. I love the performance overall, and Mukhamedov's, and Taranda is off the charts --

But I agree with Solor's complaints, the dvd itself is dull -- they simply filmed a stage performance, and did not think out how to make it live on the small flat screen... the vision scene is almost impossible to stay awake through, though when I saw exactly this production 6 months ago in Berkeley I was beside myself with delight.

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