Our Favorite Things - Christmas in Vienna

If Christmas is about bringing people together, then Our Favorite Things succeeds admirably by assembling one of the most oddly disparate groups of singers ever to roast a chestnut on an open fire. Placido Domingo and Vanessa Williams singing a Barry Manilow song? Domingo and Tony Bennett together for "I'll Be Home for Christmas"? An appearance (on just three numbers) by young soprano sensation Charlotte Church? It's all here on this 22-song, 70-minute extravaganza (also on CD), taped in December 2000 in Vienna (the subject of a 14-minute bonus video that may be the best part of the disc). Some of it's a bit stilted (Bennett swings, Domingo can't), but there are some genuinely moving moments, like Domingo and Church's "O Holy Night" and the Domingo/Bennett/Williams "Angels We Have Heard on High." And let's face it: hearing such great voices sing these timeless classics, sacred and secular, can't be bad. Superior family fare. --Sam Graham