MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2023
Approaching 60,000 reviews
and more.. and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


CD REVIEW

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

alternatively
Crotchet

 

Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART (1756-1791)
Don Giovanni (1787) [175.26]
Don Giovanni – Cesare Siepi (bass)
Donna Anna – Eleanor Steber (soprano)
Don Ottavio – Jan Peerce (tenor)
Donna Elvira – Lisa Della Casa (soprano)
Leporello – Fernando Corena (bass)
Zerlina – Roberta Peters (soprano)
Masetto – Theodor Uppmann (baritone)
Commendatore – Giorgio Tozzi (bass)
Orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera House/Karl Böhm
rec. live, 14 December 1957, Radio Broadcast from Metropolitan Opera House, New York
WEST HILL RADIO ARCHIVE WHRA6011 [3 CDs: 75.37 + 79.03 + 20.46]
Experience Classicsonline


At first sight this set has the potential to be profoundly rewarding. It is a recording of the 1957 revival of the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Don Giovanni. It was a production which had been new in 1956 with Karl Böhm as conductor both at the premiere and on this recording. The production had debuted shortly after Böhm’s problems at the Vienna State Opera.  Böhm received excellent reviews for the production.

The cast is headed by the Don Giovanni du jour Cesare Siepi, supported by the Leporello of Fernando Corena - despite his name he was Swiss-born with a Turkish mother. The Don’s trio of ladies was Eleanor Steber, Lisa Della Casa and Roberta Peters.

Listening to the overture I was struck by two things, first the speed and fluidity of Böhm’s reading, and second the awful boxiness of the sound. Further listening did little to dispel these impressions.

Apart from one or two slow passages, Böhm takes a quite modern view of the work with speeds which would be quite acceptable nowadays - his is certainly not a grand, monumental view. The fluency of the pace is accentuated by the quite rapid speed at which Siepi and Corena exchange dialogue in the recitative; something which might annoy on further listening but which was probably exciting when heard live.

The boxiness of the sound never really changed either and though my ears grew accustomed to it, I felt that the sound quality did not do the singers any favours. It does not help that the singers sound a little recessed, to say nothing of the occasions when particular singers go cantering off into the depths of the Met stage and get even more distant.

On the plus side this does sound like a real live performance, full of drama and perfectly involving. Certainly none of the cast phoned in their interpretations and the recitatives are full of fine interplay.

But a live performance at the Met means that the audience applaud at the end of each aria; they applaud once the singer has finished irrespective of where there is a closing Ritornello. And the Zerlina, Roberta Peters, must have been something of a house favourite as her entrance got a round of applause as well. Some people might not be put off by this, but I just know that I would be annoyed on repeated listenings.

And what of the singers? Well Siepi sings with a wonderfully dark voice, grainy of texture but with a nice sense of line. However I can find little of the seductive tones that I read about, neither the Serenade nor La ci darem da mano would seduce me I’m afraid.

Corena, similarly, though fluent seems to sing the role without a smile in his voice. The patter moments are all there and, judging by the stage noise, there was a degree of stage business. But all this seems to take place without humour or warmth in the voice.

Steber’s Donna Anna rather surprised me. As displayed here, Steber did not have the unyielding voice commonly associated with the role. She opens with rather fluttery tones and continues in this mode for most of the opera. There is no question that she sings quite beautifully but it is not a version of Donna Anna that I am used to.

By contrast Lisa Della Casa can sounds rather steely as Donna Elvira. Della Casa does not seem to have been having a good day. Her voice sounds squeezed out and glutinous and at times at the top a certain hardness enters her vocal palette. She, like many othera in the cast, is less than ideal in the fioriture.

Jan Peerce makes a slightly more robust Don Ottavio that we might expect today. The down side of this is that in one or two places he sounds a little effortful.

Roberta Peters does impress as Zerlina. She has a bright, forward tone and captures Zerlina’s flirtatious manner perfectly. Peters is the one singer whom I could wholeheartedly admire on this recording. Theodor Uppman makes a decent Masetto, though this is not a role by which a performance of Don Giovanni can stand or fall. Similarly Giorgio Tozzi impresses as the Commendatore.

Judging by the photographs of the production, it is not one which would have aged well and the large painted flats look excessively elaborate and dated, as do the rather over-fancy costumes.

The CD booklet includes reasonable background material on the production, the singers and the opera along with the production photographs. There is no synopsis and no libretto, people are presumably assumed to know the opera well enough.  The opera has to be spread over three discs, with 12 minutes of Act 1 on the second CD and the final 20 minutes of the opera on the third. I can’t help thinking that they could have found a slightly better way of splitting up the opera.

If you are particularly interested in members of this cast then there are a number of alternatives for you.  Siepi occurs in a number of different Don Giovanni discs, many of them live recordings. But he also made a studio recording with Solti which is perhaps the best way to hear him even though it was recorded later than this live recording.

If you want to hear Steber singing Mozart then you have to resort to one of these live recordings. The current catalogue seems to have no trace of any studio recordings she made. Böhm for one was very impressed with her Mozart, though nowadays she is more associated with the title role in Barber’s Vanessa. With Della Casa you are on better ground as there are a number of studio recordings of Mozart operas and quite a few live recordings from Vienna besides the Metropolitan ones.

Apart from historical curiosity, I cannot really see much reason for buying this disc. If you are seriously interested in the singers involved, I would advise investigating other sets available before committing yourself.

Robert Hugill


 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.