THE ARTS ON HOME VIDEO : UPSCALE TAPES FOR CULTURE VULTURES

‘Top Gun,” “Debbie Does Dallas” and Jane Fonda doing knee bends--that’s what video means to many people.

However, to a small-but-growing number of VCR-equipped culture vultures, video means something else entirely: a night at the opera, the ballet, or an hour spent with a great author or painter--all without leaving one’s home.

Cultural videos may be hard to find at your local store, but they do exist. And one relatively new company is making the boldest step yet to establish its haute couture tapes in the hot video market.

Even though it only made its first full presentation at the Video Software Dealers Assn. meeting in August of last year, Chicago-based Home Vision already has a slick catalogue of 150 releases--with many other tapes released since publication. But it isn’t the quantity of HV’s product that impresses so much as the quality.

While there are other video companies around specializing in art and music (mainly opera)--including Kultur, Video Arts International and, at least until changing its name to HBO/Cannon, Thorn/EMI/HBO--none offers the breadth of cultural tapes that Home Vision does.

A sample:

--OPERA: HV’s “Great Performances” series consists of more than 30 hi-fi/stereo cassettes of such live productions as a Giulini-conducted “Falstaff” and “Manon Lescaut” starring Kiri Te Kanawa.

--ART: A 32-tape “Portrait of an Artist” series offers studies of painters ranging from Raphael to Hockney.

--BALLET: Includes “American Ballet Theatre in San Francisco” and the Pierre Lacotte reconstruction of the original “La Sylphide.”

--LITERATURE: HV’s “Profile of a Writer” series takes a look at such modern writers as Joseph Heller, David Mamet, Gore Vidal, Alberto Moravia and Jorge Luis Borges.

--MUSIC: Besides opera and ballet, there’s “The Story of the Symphony,” a series in which, for example, Andre Previn explains the history and structure behind Brahms’ Symphony No. 4. Another series is called “Musicians in Action.” It includes the four-tape “Guitarra!” in which Julian Bream traces the history of the guitar, and “Puccini,” featuring an examination of the relationship between the composer’s work and his life.

Since publishing its catalogue, Home Vision has also released several BBC-TV tapes documenting the British royal family, including one on Princess Diana and another on the royal art collection, “The Treasures of the British Crown” (hosted by former BBC television director Huw Wheldon). And if you want a “History of English Furniture,” HV has that too. Also: a dramatized portrait of Charles Ives, a “Women in Art” series and several new operas.

Most of Home Vision’s material is supplied by the British distribution company National Video Corp. and Germany’s RM Arts, which also make these programs available to European television.

Speaking from Chicago, Home Vision president Gale Livengood explained why the product obtained from those distributors is so high grade. “The operas, for example, are taped with state-of-the-art one-inch equipment,” he said. “They’re shot from nine camera angles on as many as four different nights--so you really get the best scenes from those four performances.”

The scenes are smoothly edited to seem like a single performance, and much of the taping is done at La Scala and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

Also, he noted, the “Portrait of a Writer” videos aren’t simply talking-head discussions. The topics in each interview are illustrated with dramatizations of scenes from the writer’s work. Livengood is particularly delighted with the tape on mystery writer Patricia Highsmith. “She’s actually in the re-enactment. While we see a (fictional) murderer stalking about a house, Highsmith is talking to us from another room in that house.” Shades of “Tamara.”

Home Vision not only has impressive material but also the clout of its parent company. HV is actually a subsidiary of a subsidiary--Films Inc., whose parent is Public Media Inc. (where Livengood spent 33 years before being assigned the Home Vision leadership).

Accordingly, Livengood sounds ambitious. Especially for someone who’s moved only about 2,000 copies each of his best-selling tapes (on artists O’Keeffe, Wyeth, Van Gogh and Manet).

“That figure doesn’t mean much in the big video world,” Livengood admitted, “but it’s enough of an early response for us.” And when you realize that HV’s cassettes have suggested list prices generally ranging between $40 and $60 each, you can believe it.

Livengood figures there are enough up-scale (“please,” he pleaded, “not ‘yuppie’ ”) buyers out there who’ll want his tapes when they become aware of them. So far promotion, including ads on a Chicago classical-music station, has been relatively limited.

His list of potential customers includes “everyone from college professors to college students,” plus “libraries, schools, retired people, ballet and opera fans and people who buy art books.”

If Home Vision has big eyes for such a new, small video company, the NVC contract may be the biggest reason. Previously, NVC supplied Thorn/EMI/HBO with its highly regarded operas; now HV has an exclusive deal. It’s even distributing several of the Thorn operas, along with seven from Kultur. (Only the HV versions have English subtitles.)

Livengood makes no secret that he’d like to make similar arrangements with other cultural-video companies, such as Video Arts International. Not just that--he’s hoping Home Vision “can become a one-stop distribution center for retailers” as they become more interested in culture-oriented video.

And Livengood is certain that they will.

“Our salesmen are out there with all the other video salesmen saying, ‘We have the best product in the world.’ Only, in our case, we really do .”

Information: (800) 323-4222.