Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A highly rated and universally admired classic recording., 15 Aug 2001
For as long as I can remember, this recording made at the then newly-built opera house on John Christie's country estate at Glyndebourne, Sussex, England, has been highly rated and universally admired. Critics and reviewers in recent times have generally rated it as indispensable, even though it was recorded more than seventy years ago. I believe it was the first complete recording of the opera. It was made over a period of one week while the opera festival was in progress. Now comes this excellent Ward Marston restoration on the super budget Naxos label to a newer listening public in the C21st. Keith Anderson, in the accompanying notes, provides an explanation for the greatness of the Mozart opera productions that opened the Glyndbourne opera house in the 1930s. They were strong ensemble productions. The conductor was Fritz Busch. The producer was Carl Ebert. Rudolf Bing became involved also in 1936. As has frequently happened in subsequent productions, the cast of singers is drawn from many countries - almost as many as Leporello mentions in his catalogue aria. The don is an Australian, Leporello an Italian, Anna an American, Elvira an Austrian, Zerlina is English, Ottavio is Hungarian, and Masetto is Scottish. Outstanding amongst them is Salvatore Baccaloni as Leporello. He encompasses the vocal part with ease, he colours his voice with skill, and he delivers the recitatives at a spanking pace. John Brownlee is noticeably slower in the latter requirement. His singing always has the stamp of the aristocrat, suggesting a don destined for life-long partnership with a Spanish infanta rather than a don responsible for a catalogue of seductions. Ina Souez, powerful of voice and well in command of her difficult music, suggests a donna well able to defend herself from molestation, with or without the aid of Don Ottavio. Kolomon von Pataky sings eloquently throughout. Although the conductor favours fast tempi generally, Ottavio's two arias are taken slowly, preventing Pataky from attempting the "all in one breath" feats that many tenors achieve in these arias. Roy Henderson brings a few welcome touches of characterisation to the minor part of Masetto. It is of course in the ensembles and the Act One finale that the opera's greatest sequences occur. Happily, these sections are wonderfully well-realised in this production. Indeed, the sense of ensemble and company interaction is perhaps the greatest strength of this classic recording. As an appendix, Naxos provides excerpts from "Don Giovanni" performed by what they call "golden age singers" - including Chaliapin, Leider, Tauber, Pinza, and Elisabeth Schumann - in recordings made between 1926 and 1939.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent and historic set at a bargain price, 17 Mar 2005
This famous performance of Don Giovanni lives up to all memories and expectations. Considering its venerability, the sound is amazingly good. The conducting achieves heady heights otherwise known only to the great Furtwaengler, himself, while nevertheless taking an entirely different slant. The cast is an extremely well-balnced ensemble, the like of which would be difficult or even impossible to assemble today. Outstanding among them is the finest account of Leporello ever recorded. John Brownlee, if not quite the greatest of all the great Dons, is far and away the smoothest and most elegant of them.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
historical recording, one of the best ever heard, 4 Jul 2009
Don Giovanni, as almost everybody knows, is considered one of Mozart's master-pieces, and proportional to its greatnes is dth difficulties that it imposes over directors and singers (not to talk about players).
This recording captures a very unique interpretation of Fritz Busch's, one of the most acclaimed conductors of the golden era. But that's not at all all of it worth. You have here a breat basso who was renouned for his basso buffo roles, that is to say Salvatore Baccaloni. He shows a great voice, a strong understanding of the comic side of his role and a thecnique which was hardly matched then and it is completely unriched now adays (for example, listen to his Barbiere di Siviglia and you'll be astonished). The other great singer is Coloman von Pataky. The ungarian singer had a brilliant voice, so pure and dinamic that you can hear no nobler don octavio on recording. His role, so, is conveyed with such a great understanding of the part that you shall never forget it. As to Don Giovanni, Browle is a rather detatched libertino and his singing does not always fullfill the depths of his part. The same could be said about donna Anna, who is slightely more interesting to my ears. Zerlina has a terrible diction and her characterizing is not filrtatious enough and to childish to my understanding.
As a whole, I would warmly recommend this record because, even though it as some wick points, it is an absolute reference, a long with Bruno Walter's 1940ies recording (with Pinza Kipns and Novotna) and Furtwangler late version with SSiepi and Schwartzcopff.
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~ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
![Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro [Recorded 1934-5]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/613tLE079oL._SL500_SS90_.jpg)
~ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
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