Mozart - Don Giovanni / Furtwangler | Otto Edelmann, Elisabeth Grümmer

Mozart - Don Giovanni / Furtwangler | Otto Edelmann, Elisabeth Grümmer | I wish I could give this 6 stars

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Mozart - Don Giova...

	Mozart - Don Giovanni / Furtwangler Otto Edelmann, Elisabeth Grümmer Deutsche Grammophon, 2001 average customer review:based on 30 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

An Excellent Don Giovanni

This DVD of Don Giovanni is one of the best available today. Cesare Siepe is one of the greatest Don Giovanni's ever. His acting and singing are both excellent.He richly portrays the two sides of Don Giovanni: His flirtious side as in Finch'han del vino, and his loving side as in Deh, vieni alla finestra. Deszo Ernster is great as Il Commendatore, espically when he portrays the statue of himself. His deep, powerful bass voice can send chills down your spine. Donna Anna is richly portrayed by Elisabeth Grummer. Her "Mi tradi quell'alma ingrata" is beautiful. Anton Dermota has the lyric tenor voice required for the role of Don Ottavio. Listen to his breathtaking "Il mio tesoro" and you will hear it. Lisa della Casa, who substituted Elisabeth Schwarzkoph as Donna Elvira, is excellent in each scene. One of the best was Otto Edelmann, who portrayed Leporello. He is an excellent comic singer and actor, espically in "Madamina, il catalogo a questo". Zerlina is portrayed by Erna Berger, a small women with the voice to match. She is beautiful in her duet with Don Giovanni, "La ci darem la mano". Masetto, her lover, is played by a young Walter Berry, who sings beautifully. Wilhelm Furtwangler conducts the Wiener Philharmoniker beautifully. It is great that this DVD exists because it is one of the last remains of Furtwangler's career (since he died just after he made the DVD).

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I wish I could give this 6 stars

I wish I could give Furtwangler's DON GIOVANNI 6 stars, as it is a great performance. If you buy this, you are in for a real treat. The sound is 1954 mono, and the picture quality is very good for it's age. If the color looks a little washed out, one can always adjust the color and/or tint on their TV set. There is an audience present,applause when Furtwangler enters to conduct the overture, but they are very quiet through the opera, if they are present at all. There is no applause or curtain calls at the end.

The singers are terrific, especially Siepi, Edelmann, Della Casa, Grummer, and Berger. They work wonderfully as an ensemble and as soloists. Sound balances between singers and orchestra are also excellent. There are audio recordings of these same soloists working with Furtwangler in this and other operas during the early 1950s, so they were obviously quite used to working together. Della Casa, Grummer, and Berger are the best in the females roles that I have heard, and I have seven recordings of this work, between CD and DVD releases.

DG is to be commended for keeping this before the public, as are the video director of this production, and those who worked 51 years ago to preserve it for the ages. Highly recommended!

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BEST OPERA DVD EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Siepi is widely recarded as the Best Don Giovanni ever. And with good reason. His performance here is perfect in every way. His singing is beutiful, elegant, masculine and defiant. His voice has exactly the right timbre and every phrase draws a picture of a very well defined and thought out character. His acting is the very definition of taste, chraftsmanship and artistry.

All other singers in this cast are perfectly cast in their roles.The beuty of the singers voices comes very well across due to the fact that all the singers here have excellent vocal technique. Something that is very often missing in more recent productions.The orchestra is beatiful. And furtwangler's tempi are always right on the money.

So if you want to see a modern production with Don Giovanni happening on the moon then this is not for you.
If you like singers that sound bad due to lack of vocal technique then this is not for you.
If you like your acting over the top and vulgar than this is not for you.

However if you like excellent singing and tasteful artistry than this is not only the best Don Giovanni you will ever see. It is the best production of any opera ever.

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A glimpse of how Opera Singers sang

In that time a real bass baritone could sang Don Giovanni. Cesare Siepi is one of the best singers of all time, and easily one of the best 5 basses (to the people that doenst know him well, he usually sanged bass roles like Zaccaria, Fiesco, Phillip and Mephistofeles). His portrayal is amazing, with a powerfull voice, yet ellegant and very flexible, his acting is very good and he doent make the mistale many don giovanni does, that is, going to the extreme of look like a pervert or look like a metrosexual (for lacking of a better word). The other singers are awesome too, maybe i was a little dissapointed by the Commendatore, but nothing is perfect.
Furtwangler is nearly god, and the setting is quite charming.
Its not only a exellent version of the opera, is a reminder of how good the singers of 40 years ago sang, not only in the quality of their voices, but also in technique.

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50 years old just adds to its charm

This DVD is a slightly abridged version of the opera. It is rather a disappointment for it not to have 'Dalla sua pace.'
The set design, costumes and overall production are very good, and can put to shame the works of the last decades of the 20th century.
As for the singers: Don Giovanni is just so perfect; his smug look and great voice go along so well for his part. He has just enough guiltless humor for Leporello to complement him. Another fine performance there from his sidekick by the way, both pathetic and just a little bit annoying.
Everyone here sings good, but my favorite parts in the opera are sung by Donna Anna, and so it is her that I shall give special mention to. She may have funny looking teeth, but she acts her part so well without coming across as a victim. Beautiful voice.
Donna Elvira as well has just the right amount of cuteness and pitiful look to suit her character's contrasting convictions.
Speaking of contrast, the scenes of Zerlina-Masseto are so different from the intensity of Anna-Ottavio, but it all fits so well, in scenes such as the end of Act I. There is so much that is funny, yet this does not lessen the impact of the dramatic parts.
Furtwangler's conducting seemed slow to me at first, me being accustomed to faster versions. But in scenes like 'Non mi dir,' the brilliance of Furtwangler is very readily apparent.
Worth buying for any Mozart fan, if not for its collector appeal then simply for its musical sublimity.

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reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4, 5, 6

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