Don Giovanni

Wilhelm Furtwängler, Conductor

Cesare Siepi, Otto Edelmann, Lisa Della Casa, Elisabeth Grümmer, Anton Dermota, Erna Berger, Walter Berry, Deszö Ernster
Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Librettist: Lorenzo da Ponte

I consider this the best all-around production of Don Giovanni available on video. While it does have a few flaws, the overall effect of the video is really fantastic.

Furtwängler's tempi are a bit on the ponderous side, certainly, but they are in keeping with the atmosphere. This is unquestionably a dark Don Giovanni, with a heavy emphasis on the part of the bass instruments in the orchestra.

Cesare Siepi is a great Don. He is capricious, menacing, and completely self-absorbed, yet still compellingly attractive in a dangerous way. This is the perfect interpretation of Giovanni under a conductor like Furtwängler - dark and glowering.

I've heard mixed reviews about Lisa Della Casa but I for one love her in the role of Elvira. The anguish she conveys is very real, and you can clearly see the struggle between her desire for justice and her terrible love for Giovanni. Her voice is beautiful, with a slightly heavy tone to it that suits this serious and passionate role.

Elisabeth Grümmer is the best Anna on video, hands-down. Not only does she have a beautiful voice and handle the coloratura well, she gives the warmest, most human, and most sympathetic interpretation of the role I have seen. Anna Tomowa-Sintow and Edita Gruberova both take a somewhat histrionic approach to the role - their Annas are almost too crippled by grief, too weepy, and too demanding of their Ottavio's. (Although in Gruberova's case I rather think this was a deliberate interpretation - watch Francisco Araiza's face during "Non mi dir"...) But Grümmer in the same role is none of these things - instead she is a real, likeable woman struggling valiantly with grief and hanging on for dear life to the one thing she has left - her love for Ottavio.

Speaking of Ottavio, there just plain is no better one than Anton Dermota. We're lucky that at least one of his performances was captured on video, because he was one of (if not the) best tenor interpreters of Mozart ever to live. You might even remove the qualification "tenor." This is the performance that in my eyes forever negates any possibility that Ottavio should be played as a bland whiner. If he can be played like this, with this much feeling, and this much nobility, than he should be. His "Il mio tesoro" is moving in the extreme, as are his reactions during "Non mi dir" - which I tend to consider just as important as his arias in the interpretation of the character.

Otto Edelmann's buffoonish Leporello is almost out of place in this gloomy performance, but he doesn't quite overdo it (except for that odd trick he has of rolling his eyes all the time) and his lighthearted approach only sets the tragic parts of the opera into a starker relief - the momentary chuckle you may get from him makes the downswing to Della Casa's pain and Siepi's cruelty that much more dramatic.

The young Walter Berry is a sweet and endearingly simple Masetto, spurred to jealousy at the drop of a hat but won over just as easily by Zerlina's "Batti, batti." "Ho capito" is a great moment. You feel genuinely sorry for him when Siepi beats him and touched by the innocent way he responds to "Vedrai Carino."

Erna Berger may have been a bit old for the role of a young peasant girl, but she didn't let it stop her from giving a great performance. She gives a fairly convincing impression of youthfulness, but her Zerlina also has a kind of gentle intelligence about her that works well opposite Berry's simpleton. Her voice is quite beautiful.

Deszö Ernster is quite passable as the Commendatore. It's difficult to get a good impression of a character who dies in the first ten minutes and then returns for the last half hour as a ghost. But he sings well and looks appropriately menacing in his stone armor.

This opera wins full marks for the staging. The set is traditional and quite elaborate but somehow doesn't distract, possibly because it changes only superficially througout the opera.