"The Great Caruso" film quality

[Verna XXX]

Hello, as a way of re-acquainting myself with Mario Lanza on film, I purchased a DVD of "The Great Caruso" on DVD but it's very poor copy (Asian). I wondered if a better print of the film might have been digitized and checked snippets on Youtube but I'm not yet convinced there is a version with better picture resolution. Vincent Di Placido's posting of  the Marta finale is quite a bit better than my film copy though. It is available in the Warner "From the Vault" collection, but unfortunately I see from reviews that is a poor quality Asian copy too. Tantalizing references seen in another post to a possible box set reissue of the films but I guess that has not materialized? Can anyone comment or give me a steer?

[Derek McGovern]

Hello, Verna, and welcome to the forum!

We were promised a remastered DVD version of The Great Caruso back in 2014, but it never materialized and instead an "on-demand" version was issued by Warners. No Blu-ray version has been released so far.

The Warners DVD isn't perfect, but it's the best we have. You'll find my specific comments (and those of other members too) about the sound and picture quality of the DVD in the posts starting here:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mariolanza/HXuxvxpZl0s/XWhjLxQvu2wJ

The DVD itself can no longer be purchased brand new from Amazon, it seems, but there are second-hand copies available at reasonable prices:

https://www.amazon.com/Great-Caruso-Mario-Lanza/dp/B00508W3FW/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=mario+lanza+the+great+caruso&qid=1588425277&sr=8-1

Please let us know how you get on!

Derek

[Derek McGovern]

P.S. There is no official boxed set reissue of The Great Caruso.

Lanza's recordings were slow to arrive on CD, and his movies have been even slower to arrive on DVD, let alone Blu-ray! To date, only his final film, For the First Time, has been released on Blu-ray (in the German release discussed here).  

[Vincent Di Placido]

Hi Verna, here is a link

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ffDoxtWo9X_2WENgfF7TzUfzuSJF-OtI

This is a rip from the Warner's DVD of "The Great Caruso" it is 6 GB, full quality, no compression. you can download it or watch it, I'll leave it in my Google Drive for a while. It is an MPEG video file so quite widely compatible. It has just gone up so download away, it might be processing for a while so watching the file on google drive might not show the full quality this evening.

[Verna XXX]

Thank you Derek and Vincent for your replies. I've been able to watch it at the link you posted Vincent but my download attempts have all crashed so far - still trying! It's a blast from the past for me, I seem always to have known the arias. Thank you for the steer to Amazon, Derek. They don't seem to be posting to Australia at the moment but I will try later if necessary.

For the benefit(?) of anyone else reading this thread, the cheap DVD copies of That Midnight Kiss/Toast of New Orleans and The Seven Hills of Rome that I purchased are absolutely fine quality-wise. There's also an acceptable full version of For the First Time on Youtube.

Derek, I just wanted to thank you for the discography and disk reviews on the website, they're a great resource.

regards

Verna