There are things to enjoy in this
Don Giovani but it isn’t a
classic performance. It’s one of those issues that made me wonder why Orfeo
bothered, save that it was taking up space in the warehouse. Ruggero
Raimondi is an unequivocally bass Don Giovanni, and that gives him a depth
and nobility that is very impressive. In fact it is, I suspect, to admirers
of Raimondi that this set will principally appeal. He sounds an awful lot
more comfortable here than he did for Lorin Maazel in the Paris set that
served as the soundtrack for the — widely accepted as awful — film version
by Joseph Losey 1979. He isn’t above a tendency to squawk in, for example,
the Champagne Aria, but he sounds truly great in the Commendatore scene. For
once, in fact, it sounds as though the Don can stand up to the Ghost, and
when the Commendatore is someone of the booming stature of Kurt Moll, that’s
saying something. These two protagonists, combined with the steady,
tension-building conducting of Wolfgang Sawallisch, make the damnation scene
truly volcanic, certainly one of the best that I’ve heard on live sets. The
curious should dip into this as the highlight of the set.
Elsewhere, the finest singer is Margaret Price, whose aristocratic Donna
Anna radiates wounded dignity and soaring nobility. There was a lovely bloom
on Price’s voice at this stage in her career, and she sounds magnificent,
fully inside the character, both in her great arias and in the way she
crests the top of the great ensembles.
Elsewhere, things aren’t so happy. Hermann Winkler makes heavy weather of
Don Ottavio, sounding nasal and pressed, and the runs of
Il mio
tesoro are too much for him. We don’t get
Dalla sua pace, and
perhaps it’s just as well. Julia Varady sounds rather squally and under
pressure as Elvira, and she continually rushes ahead of the beat in
Mi
tradě. Stafford Dean is an acceptable Leporello, but his bass voice is
too close to Raimondi’s and their duets risk sounding monochrome. Lucia Popp
makes for a nice Zerlina, with a lovely
Vedrai carina, but Enrico
Fissore’s pitching is rather wide of the mark in places.
The live occasion doesn’t really help much either. The audience are mostly
well behaved, breaking into applause only occasionally, but the stage noises
and movement can be intrusive, and the quality of the stereo really isn’t
very good. In short, this set is an interesting curiosity, but no match for
the other great sets. It’s still
Giulini that rules the roost.
Simon Thompson
