Don Cliffton

The central facts of this brilliant performance are the conductor's vision and energy, expressed through a virtuoso orchestra and a cast carefully selected for theatrical as well as musical skills. The feeling of unrelenting pressure in the music seems to be an externalization of Don Giovanni's compulsions, which are only thinly veiled by his aristocratic manner and Mozart's mellifluous but intensely dramatic music. Riccardo Muti's tempos are often fast, but not so fast as to interfere with the fine nuances of dramatic expression in the orchestra and the singers, and he makes the gritty realities underlying the often smooth surface of the words and music intensely clear at every point.

Don Giovanni’s special amalgam of dark drama and sparkling comedy is captured with startling immediacy by Carlo Maria Giulini. The Viennese baritone Eberhard Wächter faces a particularly formidable pair of noble ladies: Donna Anna in the form of Joan Sutherland (in one of her rare recordings for a label other than Decca) and the Donna Elvira of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.