Ladonna Gaines moved from her hometown of Boston to live and work in Munich in 1968, appearing in the musicals Hair and Porgy and Bess. It was during her time here that she met her husband Helmut Summer, their marriage giving her the opportunity to change her name to Donna Summer. Her first big hit was Love to Love You Baby which became an international smash and featured her sighing vocal over a disco beat. I Feel Love was her next major success and along with her screen debut in the awful disco film Thank God it’s Friday, which gained her an Oscar for the song Last Dance, she was now recognised as the true diva of disco. The ‘70s also saw her release the hits MacArthur Park, Hot Stuff, Bad Girls and No More Tears (Enough is Enough) with Barbra Streisand.

This was without doubt the peak of her popularity and with the death of disco in the early ‘80s she became a born again Christian. At this time she reportedly made some anti-gay comments that brought her a worldwide boycott of her music in dance clubs. These comments were reportedly false, but that depends on who you ask. She currently has quite a large gay following so one can only assume that she has been forgiven by most.

The ‘80s still saw her producing hits including On the Radio, The Wanderer, Love is in Control, She Works Hard For the Money, This Time I Know it’s For Real and I Don’t Wanna Get Hurt. The ‘90s were quiet for Summer and this time saw her move to Nashville to work on country music and pursue her passion for painting. 1997 saw her win her fifth Grammy Award for the 'Best Dance Recording' for the song Carry On and she currently has plans to launch a Broadway musical based on her life entitled Ordinary Girl.

A couple of divas.

This release sees Donna Summer in concert at the Manhattan Centre in New York on February the 4th, 1999 and although the concert is only a short one, it demonstrates her ability to not only sing but to also captivate an audience. Another nice surprise is to see Australia’s own Tina Arena performing an impressive duet. The show contains hit after hit from the Disco Diva.

Track listing...

The show is quite short, running for only 39 minutes, but fans will love it. The diva is in fine voice and the enthusiastic audience lap it up. She has been around for a long time and doesn’t appear to be slowing down. Fans will love this show and those that think they only know one or two of her songs will be surprised at how many are actually familiar.

Being a made for television special, this full frame presentation is of good quality. Sharpness is strong with generally impressive detail. Colours are natural and only suffer slightly from over-saturation caused by stage lighting. There are no real grain, aliasing or any other major issues.

Audio is where it counts and this remastered Dolby Digital 5.1 mix delivers the sound well. Vocals are clear at all times and the only real gripe is the use of the rear speakers. They are definitely used, but the sound emanating from them is extremely subtle and most will struggle to hear anything unless close to the speakers. All in all a stereo mix would have delivered just as well. This is not to say the audio is bad, far from it, it really does pump out the sound well overall and with nice balance and clarity, makes this diva sound just as she should.

There are a couple of extras with this release, but nothing too enticing. First is a selected discography which is basically seven text pages of album names and years of release. Along with this there is Umbrella Propaganda which contains preview trailers for four other Umbrella music releases.

If you are a fan of Donna Summer or even the disco era, this release is well worth seeing. It is basically her 'best of' collection and although the running time is way too short, the quality of performance makes up for the lack of quantity in running time. Video and audio are of a reasonable quality and extras are minimal.