Rating  - Extraordinary and Beautiful Re-imagining
This amazing film blends 3-D computer graphics with live action and it is simply brimming with creativity and ideas. The tips of hundreds of violin bows appear out of the mist-covered ground. We inhabit a weird yet wonderful world run by an all-powerful "man behind the curtain" who happens to be personified by two black gloves manipulating an enormous control console. "He" has hundreds of assistents sitting in front of computer screens, typing away in rhythm with the music. There are Gigantic Chinese Urns inhabited with dancing girls instead of Genii. There are courtiers who appear as heads inside of Chinese lanterns. There are crowds of black-gloves applauding wildly and pointing at the scenery to get some bit of stagecraft done. There is a cigarette-smoking death (Violeta Urmana), in league with a mad flying, clicking bar-code applier, and there is the Nightingale (Natalie Dessay) who sings most beautifully, and makes a present of a cellphone to the Great Emperor. Does all of this sound weird? Well, I suppose it is... a bit. But it is also stunning, moving, and, yes, even awe inspiring.
Rating - magical performance
Christian Chaudet's film of Le Rossignol is mesmerizing; the graphics that create the magical kingdom are equivalent to anyone's finest dream. Natalie Dessay's wordless vocals, throughout, mingling with the rest of the magic in the kingdom makes for an undescribably satisfying evening of watching and listening.
Rating - Classical Animation
I tuned into this midway through late one night on PBS and had to find out what it was. The mix of live action and CG is totally captivating, no small achievement in this age of big-budget special effects. I especially appreciate how the imagery, which cleverly integrates a campy Orientalism with the paraphernalia of the digital age, has a brash, disturbing edge to it that matches Stravinsky's music. This isn't your grandma's Hans Christian Andersen, and I don't think Stravinsky wanted it to be. Christian Chaudet deserves a lot of credit for finding a way to re-enchant these classics while staying true to their spirit. Well worth watching.
Rating  - A Spectacular Folly
Stravinsky's Le Rossignol [the Nightingale]is a remarkably beautiful piece. Natalie Dessay, James Conlon, and all the musical forces engaged in the work perform with remarkable warmth and charm. And, one must admit, Christian Chaudet's computerized animation is truly spectacular. Why then, is this DVD such a failure as an operatic film?
A written opera merges two forms of artistic creativity: that of the dramaticist -- the libretto with the music of the composer. Le Rossignol is based on a story by Hans Christian Andersen: The nightingale is a bird of unassuming appearance but with the most beautiful voice. Its song enchants a lowly Chinese fisherman, and then word of it reaches the Emperor and his court. All are captivated by its song until the Emperor of Japan sends a spectacular, artificial nightingale as a present to the Emperor of China. Then the Court forgets the natural bird until the Chinese Emperor lies dying. There is a moral here: The beauty of nature, often forgotten, is ultimately more lovely and enduring than those of artifice. Chaudet has forgotten this moral.
In Chaudet's film, when the nightingale sings in the forest, spectacular Chinese parisols spring up and twirl, but the "forest" is all but without plants. While Stravinsky contrasts the tender lyricism of the nightingale with striking artifice of Japan's, Chaudet is all artifice and special effects. The Disney in him corrupts and defeats the delicate beauty of this tale.
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