14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
best modern don giovanni, April 9, 2004
This review is from: Mozart: Don Giovanni / Allen, Vaness, M. Ewing, Gale, Lewis, Van Allen; Haitink (Audio CD)
This is a superb recording, in every way. The singers are excellent, in top form, and completely immersed in their roles. The voices are highly individual, in perfect balance with each other and the orchestra. The sound is warm, spacious, clear, with every detail present. However, the top honors should go to Haitink. Under his baton, the marvelous orchestra unfolds the drama with great sensitivity, precision and strength. Despite the relaxed tempi there is not a moment of slack. The whole performance carries sense of unity, rarely matched in other recordings. This set is at the very top of the huge Don Giovanni discography, together with Bohm's German version on RCA, Furtwangler's Salzburg 1953 (newly remastered on M&A), and few others.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Among the best, November 27, 2004
This review is from: Mozart: Don Giovanni / Allen, Vaness, M. Ewing, Gale, Lewis, Van Allen; Haitink (Audio CD)
If a case could be made for Don Giovanni as a conductor's opera, then this recording does it; whatever the merits of the (very solid) cast, it is mainly due to Bernard Haitink and the LPO that the performance is able to stand comparison with the best available. Haitink's tempi are generally quick and sprightly, but the attention to detail is remarkable-listen to the woodwinds at the end of Zerlina's first aria as an example. He conveys the feeling that this is an opera to be enjoyed more than anything else, and he elicits unfailingly elegant, cultured playing from the LPO.
His cast may not be as luxurious as on some rival sets, but none of the singers fall below an acceptable standard, and all of them are dramatically committed. The two standouts are Thomas Allen, as the Don, and Carol Vaness, as Anna. Allen's voice is perfectly suited to the part (his serenade is very seductive), and his portrayal is unusually multifaceted. (He also has the best death scream). Vaness may not be as imaginative as the other singers in the cast, but she is vocally magnificent: the soft singing in the recitative before the vengeance duet is lovely, "Or sai chi l'onore" is both powerful and firm, and the coloratura at the end of "Non mi dir" is very agile. The rest of the cast ranges from very good (Richard Van Allan, Keith Lewis) to slightly disappointing (Maria Ewing and Elizabeth Gale are both rather hard-edged). Any reservations about the singing are completely swept aside by Haitink and his orchestra.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A man of good heart ;), July 10, 2010
This review is from: Mozart: Don Giovanni / Allen, Vaness, M. Ewing, Gale, Lewis, Van Allen; Haitink (Audio CD)
Before I go into detail on this recording, I want to correct something in another review. Thomas Allen is not merely "a British baritone who sang in Gilbert and Sullivan," although the statement at face value is accurate enough. He is one of the most important opera singers of the last thirty years, certainly one of the greatest Mozartians, and one whose acting skills put him in quite another category from most opera singers. He is also far from a "not traditional pick" for the role of Don Giovanni. This was the role that put him on the map, at Glyndebourne in the late '70s, in a production by Peter Hall. This recording endeavors to reconstitute that performance, at a few years remove, in the studio.
The other singers, too, were far from being "untraditional" casting. Richard van Allan, the Leporello, had a career full of intelligent and elegant Mozart singing, and Carol Vaness went on to become a highly-regarded Mozart singer, singing both Anna and Elvira on many occasions. Rawnsley later became an acclaimed Rigoletto, but was an agile interpeter of Mozart and Rossini.
This whole, under Haitink's masterful direction, audibly benefits musically and dramatically from the cast's thorough familiarity with the piece, with Haitink, and with each other. Haitink's tempi keep a sense of restless forward motion, without strangling his singers (the Muti effect).
The cast of British and American singers are as comfortable as a repertory company, and it shows, or rather sounds, in the canny interactions, and the fleet, yet perfectly distinct recitative. Allen and van Allan, are particularly virtuosic, yet relaxed and natural-- their recitative exchanges, far from boring, are downright fascinating, like two seasoned actors spitting out Shakespearian verse. Giovanni's victims, Anna (Vaness) and Elvira (Ewing) both sound fresh, girlish and vulnerable. Vaness makes a particularly touching impression; many Annas seem to petrify after Act I, sc. 1. but hers remains wonderfully alive and anguished. Ewing is not the Elvira of my dreams, but her voice was still fresh and flexible, and she sang simply and directly, free of the affectations she later developed. You feel mightily sorry for her in her dubious encounters with Leporello, and she goes out in a blaze of glory in her fiery final confrontation with her errant lover. The peasant couple, Rawnsley and Gale, are earthy and expressive-- Rawnsley's touch here is a bit lighter than most Masettos', but that makes a good match with Gale's fluid, fluent, not-too-naive Zerlina, a girl who can clearly take care of herself.
Of the women, she proves most equal to the challenge of Allen's quicksilver Don, a man who goes from seduction to violence and back in a flash. His veneer of gentility takes in the listener, as well as the girls, and the libidinal undercurrent is ambiguously intriguing. Allen brings the Don his compound virtues of a flexible, darkly virile and beautiful voice, stylistic sensitivity, remarkable clarity of diction and articulation, and intense dramatic conception.
His scenes with other singers are electric. The relationship with Leporello is really Giovanni's primary one, and special note must be made of the seamless, bang-bang, acrobatic act pulled off by Allen and van Allan in establishing this fraught, ambivalent association. Leporello is the only one, including Giovanni himself, who has an inkling of what Giovanni is going to do before he does it. Giovanni, of course, has no clue, and less interest in Leporello except as a means to his ends. He also enjoys tormenting Leporello, inasmuch as it's possible with the servant's studiedly cultivated thick skin. It's also a treat to hear van Allan, the purveyor of so much suave elegance, play-- wonderfully-- the harassed, disgruntled underling. They are terrific in the scene in Act II where they switch clothing, and "voices"- van Allan matching Allen's leisurely, melting pace and silky, drawn-out "s"s when addressing Elvira, and Allen darkening his vowels and wickedly nailing van Allan's nervous buffo patter.
The weak link, character-wise, I am sorry to say, as it so often is, is the Ottavio. He sang beautifully, but how much can Ottavio do with his thankless role? I have heard of, but never seen, the reportedly feisty Ottavio of Robert Tear; the Welshman would have been absolute luxury here.
But this does not significantly effect the dramatic sweep and effectiveness of the whole, from the coiled springs of the first tense chords to Allen's final, unearthly scream (by far, the most horrifying one on record). If you have any doubt, just listen to "Deh vieni alla finestra." This Don can certainly pull.
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