Mozart Don Juan Pynkovsky

As early as 1761, a year before his masterpiece Orfeo ed Euridice, Gluck largely renewed another musical genre, the ballet, with his adaptation of a work by Molière for Viennese audiences: Don Juan. Another work, Sémiramis, followed a year later. These two works are innovative in that they offer, for the first time, a coherent narrative in which all the resources of the orchestra are put at the service of expressiveness. Jordi Savall and Le Concert des Nations bring out all the nuances of these scores, reminding us that a quarter of a century before Mozart, the stages of Europe were treated to all the evocative power of music by another outstanding figure: Christoph Willibald Gluck.

Mozart: Don Giovanni - Furtwängler, Wiener Philarmoniker
DVD9 | 2:57:05 | MPEG2 | NTSC | 720x480 | 4:3 | 29.97fps | PCM Mono | 7.4GB
Language: Italian | Sub: Italian, English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese
Classical | Opera | Deutsche Gramophon | 0730199

In 1954, Furtwängler wanted to make of this Don Juan his musical testimony (he died less than 1 year efter this recording), in a "metaphysical ", reserved but alive version, of a unique dramatic strength.
Thanks to the technique still in its beginning of the Movie-opera, we discover in Siepi a Don Juan full of liveliness and in the physical appearance of Hollywood actor, Della Casa so beautiful wasting away in Elvire, or divinely moving Grümmer.
And at the end there is Furtwängler's equally unfashionable reading, romantic and big-honed, taking its time to unfold the drama. Furtwängler definitely tilts the Mozart's "Dramma Giocoso" towards "dramma" aspect, making this performance the most riveting ever seen.
Even if the recording suffers from the technical limits of time (a little faded colors Technicolor), the correct conditions allow us to discover what the spectators of 1954 had seen: a old-fashioned and traditional but alive performance, which gives substance to one of the most mythical and of the most tremendous recordings of Don Giovanni.

Maybe the best Don Giovanni on DVD.

The overwhelming success of the Prague performance of Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) in December 1786, led to the commissioning of a new opera. Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte turned to the Don Juan theme, making this promising material the basis for their new opera. In the spring of 1787 Mozart began to compose it in Vienna, and was able to complete it in Prague by the autumn of the same year. Don Giovanni received its first performance, under the composer’s personal direction, on 20 October 1787 at Prague’s Count Nostitz National Theatre.

The overwhelming success of the Prague performance of Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) in December 1786, led to the commissioning of a new opera. Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte turned to the Don Juan theme, making this promising material the basis for their new opera. In the spring of 1787 Mozart began to compose it in Vienna, and was able to complete it in Prague by the autumn of the same year. Don Giovanni received its first performance, under the composer’s personal direction, on 20 October 1787 at Prague’s Count Nostitz National Theatre. This production of Don Giovanni at the Zurich Opera House was staged by the highly creative team of conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, director Jürgen Flimm and set-designer Erich Wonder. Rodney Gilfry and Cecilia Bartoli lead a first-class group of singers.

More than two centuries after its creation, the emotional pull of this supreme opera remains absolutely intact. Dmitri Tcherniakov duly revisits the myth and makes the seducer of Seville a ‘man without qualities’, a cipher whose words have a hypnotic power over women. His words will disrupt the proprieties ruling the Commandatore’s family. His words are also what makes Don Juan such a subversive figure and the embodiment of one of the most powerful modern European myths. Leading the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra is one of the best Mozart conductors, Louis Langrée. Bo Skovhus portrays a dispirited Don Giovanni, old playboy and anti-hero. Kyle Ketelsen is his servant Leporello, currently a shoe-in for this rôle. The superb female trio is composed of Marlis Petersen (Donna Anna), Kristine Opolais (Elvira) and Kerstin Avemo (Zerlina).