Don Giovanni

[poliphilo]

Classical opera speaks a strange language.

If the soprano is doing lots of trill-embellished vocal gymnastics it doesn't mean she's a shallow drama-queen but that she's in the grip of some deep and disturbing emotion and I should be paying her close attention and not waiting for her to shut up so something more interesting can happen.

And if the baritone sings something simple and pretty, it doesn't mean that he's Mother Nature's Son; it means he's a heartless cheat.

Complexity = sincerity: simplicity = duplicity. It's a formulation that goes clean against my mid-20th century instincts.

We watched the Joe Losey film of Don Giovanni yesterday. This is Mozart made easy. If the piggy little romantic hero spends too long over his aria I can tune him out and enjoy the Palladian architecture instead.

This is Don Octavio I'm talking about. I don't know who the singer was, but he looked like Ernie Wise.

Otherwise the casting is splendid. Raimondo Ruggieri has eyes that shine in the dark. Kiri ti Kanawa is wonderfully demented as the madwoman in the attic.

My favourite character is the hermaphroditic page who acts as Don Giovanni's shadow. Yes, I know, s/he's not in the script. Dare I say that what I liked best about her/him is that s/he keeps her mouth shut?

Gorgeous music. Gorgeous and mostly over my head.

Like being confronted with a wall-full of hieroglyphics.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Ruggieri is not just a fine singer, he's got the kind of presence that lights up the screen.

I must watch more opera.

The production I really want to see Ingmar Bergman's Magic Flute.

[idahoswede.livejournal.com]

there's a lovely film version of "La Traviata", my personal favorite, also with Placido Domingo and Teresa Stratas as Violetta (tiny, beautiful, believably tubercular at the ending). Both Carmen and Traviata are also filmed as films, not movies of stage productions, so visually, they are quite splendid as well.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Seeing as how I'm movie-mad, it's probably the case that my best approach to opera is through cinema.

I saw Don Giovanni on stage once- about twenty years ago- and found it horribly static. I really liked the way Losey had people singing while walking through Palladian rooms or travelling through the marshes in boats.

Thanks for the recommendations.