Don Giovanni

Carlo Maria Giulini, Conductor

Eberhard Wächter, Giuseppi Taddei, Joan Sutherland, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Luigi Alva, Gottlob Frick
Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Librettist: Lorenzo da Ponte

As of now, this is my favorite Don Giovanni recording because it gets the most stuff right. There isn't really one perfect recording of Don Giovanni, but this one comes pretty close - the "problems" I have with it are mostly tiny nitpicky things. Other albums may have a better performer in one role, but this has a really solid cast with a few gems.

Giulini's conducting is excellent; I like his fast-paced approach, but he has the sense not to rush things when he isn't supposed to. The score settles nicely into place and the music lines up emotionally with the libretto. Bravo.

I have yet to hear a Don Giovanni (the character, I mean) I actually dislike, so it's a little difficult to compare them! That said, Wächter brings a beautiful voice and a nice interpretation to the role and is definitely up there. For sheer vocal tone quality I prefer Raimondi (whose voice rumbles so delightfully), but in my list of "Top Dons" Wächter is a solid third, just barely behind Cesare Siepi.

Giuseppe Taddei's Leporello is good. In fact, he's very good, but I'm ambivalent about his performance because he would be close to perfect if he didn't try so hard to act. His voice is great and almost perfectly suited to the part, but he does such bizarre things to it. In places, notably "Notte giorno fatigar," he gets annoyingly nasal, and his "mille e tre" in the catalogue aria is barked out in a very overbearing and jarring tone of voice. I get a mental picture of him waving his finger at me emphatically that does not fit at all with the tone of the song. These are minor points however; on the whole, his approach works very well and emphasizes the comic aspects of the character.

Joan Sutherland is a really beautifully voiced Donna Anna, although at times she sings in a kind of detached way. In some spots she seems to be singing from completely outside the character. A little more emotion would have been nice, even at the expense of a few notes. I prefer the stronger performance of Elisabeth Grümmer or Edda Moser in this role. However, nobody else matches Sutherland's amazing purity of voice, so I guess it's a trade-off.

Elisabeth Schwarzkopf never seems to be the best singer to record a role, but she always delivers a solidly enjoyable performance, and her Donna Elvira is no exception. In her defense, it's difficult for anyone to live up to the powerful performance of Kiri Te Kanawa in the Losey film.

Luigi Alva is a wonderful Don Ottavio. He doesn't have the amazing technical abilities of Léopold Simoneau on the Mitropoulos album, but he still handles the extremely difficult "Il mio tesoro" as if it were easy. He also seems very much in tune with the emotional nuances of the song, and builds up all the right places. Again, he's right up there in the "best of" list.

This album's Zerlina, Graziella Sciutti, has a beautiful voice and a good sense of the role. She sings extremely well but still delivers enough emotion to be convincing. Her Zerlina is more naïve than others I've heard, but it works well.

Opposite her, Piero Cappucilli as Masetto gives a lively performance without sacrificing too much vocal beauty. His "Ho capito" snarls without growling, if that makes any sense at all.

The wonderful Gottlob Frick makes a great Commendatore, both in the death scene at the beginning and in his return at the end. If you look up "sonorous" in the dictionary you should find a picture of Frick instead of a definition.

Originally Reviewed:

13-Apr-03