Customer Reviews

Mozart: Don Giovanni / Allen, Vaness, M. Ewing, Gale, Lewis, Van Allen; Haitink

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I've listened to many and nobody captures it better than Thomas Allen. Everything else around him shines as well, but seems peripheral compared with the majesty of his interpretation. Powerful in voice and in dramatic rendition he uses the aggregate of his talents to assure him a place above others like Ramey, Siepi and Wachter. Listen for his scream at the end as he is dragged down to hell for evidence of his dramatic prowess.

This 90's recording is modern in that the voices are not traditional picks for the Don Giovanni cast. Thomas Allen is a British baritone who sang in Gilbert and Sullivan though this was not his only repertoire. Carol Vaness is a different breed of soprano- a modern lyrico-spinto with lyric vibrant tones but with enough dramatic heft in her voice to essay such juicy roles as Lady Macbeth, Puccini's Tosca and Verdi's Leonora in Trovatore. Maria Ewing, herself a dramatic soprano who has taken up roles such as Salome does a fine job with the melodramatic role of Dona Elvira. The sound is great and the orchestra under Haitink is superb. This recording should be in your list of great Don Giovannis on record. Among my favorite are Ruggero Raimondi/Jose Van Dam/Edda Moser/Kiri Te Kenawa and Ramey/Sintow/Battle as well as Dieskau/Jurinac. This one though is really something to admire.

Thomas Allen masters the role of Mozart's dark hero. As the Don, he is devil-may-care, elegant in his Italian phrasing and sinister. I think his Don is the most relaxed, when compared to Ruggero Raimondi's true despicable qualities or Samuel Ramey's similar style and lacks the heft and vigor or Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's Don. He is doing a terrific job though and Allen is perhaps the greatest interpretation of the Don along with Rodney Gilfry's. I love Carol Vaness' Dona Ana. She has enough flexibility to breeze through the coloratura parts and enough invenctive stentorian tones for the dramatic parts. Maria Ewing is a fine Dona Elvira, though she makes the role more fiery and less harlequin than most. The others are superb- especially Richard van Allen as the Commandatore whose voice is grave and frightening. I really enjoyed this recording and highly recommend it.

I've been listening to many executions of Mozart's Don Giovanni, both recorded and live.
This CD however is absolutely outstanding. The performers are simply the best I've ever heard. On many other executions there always is someone whose voice is weak, but not on this.

The only risk is that after listening to it you won't like anything else.

I agree with one of the previous reviewers. Yes, you will not like anything else after this one! I do not own the album myself (since it is so hard to find or when you find it is extremely expensive) but I borrowed it from a friend once and listened to it enough to say that this is arguably the best Don Giovanni I have ever heard. You do not listen to any music here; you listen to THE story Mozart wanted to tell and this was made possible by Allen's incredible interpretation as well as the harmony of the rest of the cast. You might bring the best singers of the time together to sing an opera but to find the ones that harmonize this well is very rare...

I read all of the other reviews carefully and am in agreement mostly about the singers and orchestra. They are all good to great, and Thomas Allen particularly is excellent. And yet . . .

I have owned this set since it first came out and probably have listened to it dozens of times, but I also own two old LP versions of Don Giovanni that always pleased me a lot more than this one. The root of my problem with Haitink's version is that this great work is serious and hilarious, moralistic and lighthearted, all at the same time. Haitink, and he's not the only conductor and director to do this, seems to want the DG to be a heavy work. As I listen to it, the funny parts aren't very funny. Dare I say it, it's even a little boring. If something is a real tragedy or love story stem-to-stern, you can go all out for the drama and tragedy (think Tristan und Isolde) because there's nothing really humorous in the libretto or the music. Don Giovanni, however, is VERY funny in places, both in the words and in the music. I just don't hear a balanced portrayal out of this version, in spite of its numerous virtues in singing and instrumental performance.

So to me this is 2/3 of a balanced view of the work, with the drama and black parts very good to excellent, with the humor dropped on the floor. Too bad . . .

But, many here do like it, so to each his own. :- )

The review below was written as a dissent on the lavish acclaim garnered on the Giulini set, one of the more overrated sets in history. But it contains sufficient information on the Haitink set to be included here as well. I must add a preface that in the end all opinion is subjective. Nonetheless, this one deserves to be rescued from the comparative oblivion to which it is heading...... so here goes..

I 'learned' the piece (Don Giovanni) through Bernard Haitink's Gramophone award winning recording of the 1980s, and since then acquired many other readings including this Giulini, period-instrument sets by Harding and Gardiner and other important ones by Klemperer, Krips and Furtwangler.

Nothing comes close to the grandeur of Haitink's reading. His voices do not equal those on the Giulini set, and his conducting also is typically Haitinkian - never seeking to draw attention to itself - unlike Giulini who regularly tries to 'show off' orchestral details and brilliance. But I can not bring myself to actually listen to more than a couple of numbers on the Giulini set - it simply bores me - nowhere in his reading is the drama, the passion, the tragedy, the pain as well as the indifference to it by Giovanni and the orchestral music, which is Mozart's comment on the nature of this world, where tragedy and comedy are different views of the same experience (eg. animals who are brutally slaughtered are then enjoyed by those who eat their flesh), or where wannabe war-criminals in America make jokes about bombing Iranians.

Listen to the heart-rending 'mi tradi' by Maria Ewing, or the poignant 'il mio tesoro' by a Don Ottavio whose name I don't even remember - their more illustrious counterparts on the Giulini set merely skate on the surface by comparison. Or the titanic scene between the Commendatore and the Don, where Haitink and his cast capture everything - the terrifying pomposity of the statue, the terror of Leporello, the fear and noble courage of the Don, the horrifying chorus from hell - nothing on Giulini achieves this - Giulini plays it like a farce.... come to Haitink for the reality. From the magnificently played overture which is better than Giulini's rendition, to the superlative sequence from the attempted rape to the duel with Donna Anna's father, and the electrifying duet where Anna demands and Ottavio swears revenge (che giuromento o dei, che barbaro momento) to the scene where Anna realizes Giovanni is her father's killer (no other reading I have heard achieves the depth and pathos Haitink produces).

As often though in the history of art, greatness goes unrecognized.... critical light on the Haitink set is fading as the Jacobs and Gardiner sets achieve acclaim. They are fine and better than Giulini, but they do not approach the Haitink, which however will disappear from view in a year or so.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - music
Lorenzo Da Ponte - libretto

Bernard Haitink
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Glyndebourne Chorus

Thomas Allen - Don Giovanni
Carol Vaness - Donna Anna
Keith Lewis - Don Ottavio
Dimitri Kavrakos - Commendatore
Maria Ewing - Donna Elvira
Richard Van Allan - Leporello
John Rawnsley - Masetto
Elizabeth Gale - Zerlina

While Mozart and Da Ponte wrote a `comic-drama' with supernatural elements, the modern performances have increasingly emphasized the darker elements. This performance conducted by Haitink is very dark indeed. This is not necessarily a bad decision, it is simply a decision of style, but it makes an otherwise great performance into an alternative Don Giovanni rather than a definitive Don Giovanni. Still, this is a very entertaining performance and is certainly worthy of Four Stars (4 ½) as it would not be my choice as the sole version to rely on.