Customer Reviews

Mozart: Don Giovanni (Great Recordings of the Century)

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I've wondered why two versions of this record continue to exist from the same label: a 1997 transfer and this 2002 transfer under the ART, or Abbey Road Transfer technology, part of the "Great Recordings" EMI series.

This review is mainly about sound quality. The piece itself is beyond reproach and opens your ears to Mozart in new ways--so the goal becomes getting the most spacious and finely transferred account, especially in this day of ever-increasing fidelity. The sound impacts how much the record sucks you in and keeps you rapt.

In this case, the older (slightly more expensive) version wins out. The new remaster goes a long way toward removing tape hiss. Sometimes it seems like removing tape hiss is the only goal of remastering. Unfortunately, the process used to remove hiss, to my ears, removes other details. It removes some of the "bite" of the recording; sounds are rounded off and deadened. The whole effect is mildly--but perceptibly--muffled. If you recall the way Dolby removed tape hiss in old cassette technology at the expense of overall clarity you'll get the picture. The placement of voices in space and the texture and even the emotional effect of the instruments and ensemble use some of the same sonic range that encompasses tape hiss. Like Dolby, the process removes ambient sounds that give the recording presence and immediacy. The result is recessed and less involving.

Personally, I think tape hiss is like a funky smell in your car. It's unappealing in the first few minutes, but sensory adaptation kicks in. Soon you fail to notice it -- especially if you're caught up in performances by Elisabeth Schwartzkopf and Joan Sutherland. It'd be a shame if the full detail of their singing were lost from here on out, and that just for the sake of less tape noise we could never recapture it.

Pay a little extra for the older remaster.

Usually the eccentric reviews at Amazon get balanced out, but for some reason there has been a pile-up of oddities here. This classic Don Giovanni has won the highest praise in every musical circle for five decades. The casting is wonderful, every role taken by a world-class singer in prime voice.

Some aspects of the casting are more than a little individual. Waechter is a biting, at times almost vicious Don. He is the opposite of the suave Siepi, who can be heard on at least four versions of this opera. The choice between a baritone Giovanni and a bass is legitimate--Waechter is lighter, more fleixble of voice than any bass.

Taddei is the ideal Leporello, a droll peasant with a worm's eye view of the nobility and a great deal of comic cunning. Luigi Alva uses his light, lyrical tenor to wonderful effect, making Don Ottavio's two arias a joy because he avoids all strain and actually sings with ease.

The women are beyond reproach. The young Sutherland is a stupendous Donna Anna, combining spectacular bel canto technique with dramatic weight and dead-on intonation--amazing. Schwarzkopf was the Donna Elvira of the age, and one can hear why in her characterization--here is a great vocal actress applying her art to convey desperate longing, vengeance, vulnerability, and fallen pride. Sciutti as a soubrette Zerlina (rather than a mezzo) is girlish and naive, and best of all her voice is entirely different from the other ladies. In fact the varying vocal colors of the principal singers is one of the great assets of this cast. You never mistake the Don for Leporello or Donna Anna for Elvira.

Finally, Giulini, who had never conducted the oprea before stepping in to replace an indisposed Otto Klemperer, sweeps the field. His conducting contains everything a great Don G. should have--the whole range from witty sophistication to pathos and terror. The Philharmonia plays in exemplary fashion.

The sound is dullish by modern standards but good enough late-Fifties stereo. All in all, no other Don Giovanni delivers as much sheer musical pleasue, drama, and depth of emotion. Barvo!

P.S. -- Two escellent period-style Dons have come along to challenge this classic recording, led by Daniel Harding and Rene Jacobs. I've reviewed both, for anyone who's interested.

Giulini's sparkling conducting is only the first pleasure in this wonderful recording that appears on most critics Top-Ten list of recorded opera. The ease with which Joan Sutherland floats throught the demands of Donna Anna shows the reason for her nickname "La Stupenda". Graziella Sciutti is a perfect Zerlina. Eberhard Waechter is an attractive, noble Don -- perhaps not quite as involved in the characterisation as the great Cesare Siepi, but enjoyable nevertheless. Alva, Frick, Schwartzkopf, Taddei (wonderful) are all fine in their roles. It's an indication of the depth of quality of this recording that the world-class bass Gottlob Frick takes the comprimario role of the Commendatore, and Piero Cappuccilli is Masetto.

If you have any interest whatsoever in fine singing, or the masterpieces of Mozart, you must have this recording.

This is a very good, very safe recording of what I think is the greatest work of art ever produced. I prefer a bass in the title role, and find Wachter's voice somewhat thin for the role, but that's my only real gripe with this set, and one gets used to it. Sutherland's Donna Anna may lack some of the fire of others', but she is otherwise very good; her tone is beautiful. Giulini's pacing is mostly excellent, and he takes care in his straightforward reading to bring out nuances of the score sometimes lost in the tumult of this epic piece; the Philharmonia Orch. is, as usual, fantastic. The remainder of the cast are very good as well (especially Taddei as Leporello), but the unquestioned highlight of this recording is Elisabeth Schwarzkopf's Donna Elvira. This crucial character speaks for the thousands of women wronged by Don Giovanni, and Schwarzkopf gives them an immensely powerful voice, pushing the dramatic limits of the role without ever exceeding them. From her entrance in the opera's second scene, her fiery performance is brilliant; her "mi tradi" aria and her part of the trio with DG and Leporello where her final appeal to DG is rebuffed are absolutely heartbreaking. It's hard to imagine a better-sung Elvira; this performance alone is worth the price of the set. If you're shopping for your first recording of Don Giovanni, this is a good one to start with.

Don Giovanni is an opera in Italian about a notorious Spanish libertine and whose music was composed by an Austrian and premiered in the Czech city of Prague. Of the Western culture's notorious libertines, Lothario is fictional, Casanova was a real person (and even gave some advice to Da Ponte, the librettist, in the preparation of this opera), but we don't know if Don Juan (Giovanni) was real or fictional. In any case, the traditional story of the Stone Guest built up around him is clearly a fiction. While people relish in the re-telling of the Don's misdeeds they also like seeing him punished in the end.

As the opera opens, Leporello is pacing in front of Donna Anna's house and complaining about his master, Don Giovanni. A commotion interrupts him as the Don tries to escape his attempted rape of Donna Anna, but she won't let go of him. Her father, the Commandant, enters and challenges the assailant to a fight. The Don resists the fight, but finally engages and kills the old man. Just this quickly the opera is underway.

Soon we meet Donna Elivira who refers to the Don as a monster, a criminal, and a pack of lies. She is one of his past conquests who took seriously his promises of love and fidelity. Elivira is the most determined to unmask and thwart the Don, but in the end she would take him back and forgive him if he would just turn to her alone.

Leporello, the Don's servant, has many just complaints against the Don and is rightly critical of his seduction and rape of two thousand women in a variety of countries, but when he has the chance to take advantage of a woman, he proves that his own lusts are stronger than his convictions.

Donna Anna and her finance, Don Ottavio speak many threatening words to avenge themselves against Don Giovanni, but are strangely impotent and hesitant to do so. Ottavio swears to avenge Anna's honor and her father's death, but when offered an opportunity to act, just can't be sure enough to actually risk action against Giovanni.

The peasant couple Masetto and Zerlina are another incarnation of the human condition. The Don sees them on their wedding day and decides to have Zerlina. He arranges to be alone with her, much to Masetto's anger. While alone, he woos her and finds her willing to betray Masetto in favor of the Don's promises of love and marriage. Clearly, she understands that money may not be everything, but it sure can tip the balance.

To say that Don Giovanni is brazen is not enough. He is endlessly for his own appetites. He is so diseased that he considers it sport to betray and defile. At one point he says that to be faithful to one would be to deprive all the rest of his benefits and that it is a sign of weakness for women to claim betrayal or to demand fidelity. Nothing deters him from his course, he is never afraid to stand up to anything. Even when he feels to cold hand of death upon him, he cannot realize the need to change and repent.

Yes, there is irony and lots of wit about human duplicity and weakness, but there is also a deeper sense of real humanity and horror in this opera. The libretto is quite excellent, but it is the transcendent genius of Mozart's music that adds the depth and human heart to each character in this, one of the greatest of all operas. Each aria reveals so much about each character that we marvel at the power and beauty of the music. Even so, the ensembles reveal even more about the characters and each situation. Even the recitative, normally barely endured, is delightful in this opera. Mozart is even able to recast the ridiculous ending of the story into something of weight and even horror through the brilliance of his musical setting. It is a magnificent achievement.

It is true that Beethoven preferred the ideal of the male and female relationship in "The Magic Flute" to the hedonism of this opera, but tradition also says he kept the trombone parts of the second finale on his writing desk. Even during the height of the Wagnerian revolution that eclipsed the work of so many composers, Mozart and especially this opera were always performed and held in the highest regard. Rossini, with his hand on the autograph score of this opera, called Mozart the master of them all and the only composer with as much genius as science and as much science as genius.

This opera was begun in early 1787 to capitalize on the tremendous success of his "Marriage of Figaro" (the beginning of that overture is even quoted in this opera). Da Ponte, who was in great demand as a librettist, had other projects underway. He either wrote "Don Giovanni" with superhuman speed or adapted something that he already had on hand. In any case the first performance was in Prague on October 29, 1787. Mozart composed at a furious pace as the premier approached. He was so late with the overture (which he wrote in the night before the opening while his wife plied him with coffee and stories to keep him awake) that the orchestra had to read it on sight without any rehearsal.

When they took the opera to Vienna some changes were made to suit the available singing talent and a moralizing ending was tacked on. Most people agree that the real end of the opera is the descent of the Don into the flames of hell and that the silly statements to tie things up actually detract from the drama of the piece. Stravinsky consciously copied the same double ending in "The Rake's Progress" with similar anti-climactic results.

This recording has been in print for more than forty years and that speaks volumes about its quality. Yes, there are things to pick at here or there, and there are probably better singers for the Don the Waechter. However, we get to hear Joan Sutherland (Donna Anna) and Elizabeth Schwarzkopf (Donna Elivra) at the height of their powers. It is all quite fine and a glorious musical achievement.

There are 58 different reviews of this recording at the prior reissue's listing, so this recording does strike an emotional chord in many listeners. I own the "Great Recordings" version, so I don't know if it is sonically inferior to the prior reissue, as some listeners claim. In any event, the sound, while lacking the depth of more modern digital recordings, is good enough, with a burnish glow at times, thanks to Giulini's conducting.
Suffice to say, I have owned at one time or another, five complete recordings of this work. I have heard the Krips/Decca recording over the radio, have seen two Metropolitan Opera performances over the TV, have seen two film versions over the TV and have attended two performances, one at the Met and the other at the NYC Opera.
I consider the Giulini recording to be the finest performance of this sublime masterpiece, that I have ever heard. True, certain performers in other recordings are slightly better than these performers. Siepi in the Krips and Leinsdorf recordings, brings more panache to the title role than Wachter; Valletti in the Leinsdorf recording, is in my opinion the finest Don Octavio ever recorded and Guedon as Zerlina in the Krips recording is unsurpassed.
With the Giulini recording however, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And this is due to Giulini's magnificient conducting. He molds a performance that grabs you and then sweeps you along down the dark road leading to the Don's demise. The Philharmonia's playing is superb and there are many moments of truly beautiful singing. The young Joan Sutherland, just beginning her illustrious career and Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, particularly stand out.
If you have to choose one recording, this is the one to get. You will not be disappointed.

I happen to disagree with the reviewer below. I think that this Don Giovanni is absolutely miraculous. Considering that it was studio made, it's miraculous that there is so much sense of theatre going on, as if it were a 'live' performance. This is one of those opera sets you have to have together with Klemperer's Fidelio.

It is a lot of fun to hear different performances of DON GIOVANNI, as it is an opera that is open to an infinite number of different interpretations. Each time one hears a different maestro conduct the opera, or a different perfomer in one of the main roles, one hears something new in DON GIOVANNI. Some questions we might ask ourselves as we listen to the opera are,
Is Leporello proud of his master or ashamed of him? Should Donna Anna be portrayed as angry or as pathetic, and was she actually raped by the Don or just sexually "awakened"? And who IS Don Giovanni? A lover? An egoist? The devil in disguise?
In this recording Don Giovanni, sung by Eberhard Waechter, is clearly a demon in aristocrat's clothing -- yet he can also sound loving and sincere when wooing Zerlina ("La ci darem la mano") or Donna Elvira's maid ("Deh, vieni alla finestra"). This Don knows that time is running out on him: in the banquet scene, one senses that he is trying to fit a whole lifetime's worth of pleasure into a few minutes (and Giulini's fast tempo contributes to this feeling). Giuseppe Taddei plays Leporello as though he is Don Giovanni's court jester: he speaks the truth about his master's bad behavior, but in such a humorous way that the Don can't really punish him. Taddei's frustration during the "disguises" scene with Elvira is very funny ("Che imbroglio!"), and his pleading in "Ah, pieta signori miei" is actually touching. At times, Taddei does get a bit too "hammy" for my taste, but he is always lively; he also has a wonderfully rich bass-baritone voice.
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf's Donna Elvira is a classic portrayal: larger than life and very funny. Joan Sutherland is in her most youthful voice as Donna Anna. Her voice shines out like a knife in "Or sai chi l'onore," and she sings "Non mi dir" with tenderness and warmth; the final coloratura section of the aria is sung flawlessly, with crystalline clarity. Some may find Sutherland's characterization too restrained, but with such an all-out interpretation of Donna Elvira from Schwarzkopf, it makes sense to have a more delicate Anna for contrast. Luigi Alva sings Ottavio's music very gracefully, although I personally would prefer either a slightly sweeter or a slightly purer tone in the role. The other standouts in the cast are Graziella Sciutti's adorable Zerlina, Piero Cappucilli's firm voiced and bumpkinish Masetto, and Gottlob Frick's larger-than-life Commendatore.
Carlo Maria Giulini's conducting is simply brilliant -- a masterpiece. The early stereo sound is warm and well-balanced. This DON GIOVANNI is a classic recording that should be in everyone's collection -- no matter how many other recordings of this great opera you may own.

This is the same as the other set at full-price. At mid price, this set is invincible.

While I won't go so far as to rank others above it (this is my 5th Don), I will say that this is the most overhyped recording I've ever heard. Some have called this the greatest opera recording ever made and I guess those people have not heard other Dons let alone the Callas/DeSabata Tosca which does deserve its title as the greatest opera recording ever made.

What it comes down to is that while Guilini's treatment of the instrumental score is near perfect, the singing is erratic in that the players, while all top-notch singers are miscast(or rather misplaced), with the exception of Schwarzkopf and somewhat Taddei. It is almost like if you took Taddei and made HIM the Don and made Wachter play Masetto, and made Sutherland sing Zerlina and Scuitti into Donna Anna, etc....Then the opera would have been perfect. As it is, it sounds like good singers singing to a GREAT soundtrack.

This is more than worth the $17 I paid, but nowhere near the prices being asked on Amazon.