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

[qatsi.livejournal.com]

Baroque opera is no less confusing by modern standards. I went to see Handel's Julius Caesar at the Proms this year. The title role originally went to a castrato, now sung by a mezzo-soprano. It doesn't sound very butch or heroic at all (though having the libretto - and its translation - to hand helps there) and the gender confusion tends to make it more comic than intended, or perceived by its original audiences.

[idahoswede.livejournal.com]

I love Raimondo Ruggieri, I've got him singing Escamillo in Carmen. You should get the DVD of "Carmen" with Domingo and Julia Mignes-Johnson in it. It's really HOT and if you don't like the singing, you can watch her move and understand how a man could toss away everything for a sexy woman (well, at least as far as in an opera).

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

My little Japanese student, Fumi, is very much into opera and was trying to tell me about Don Giovanni a few weeks ago. In her enthusiasm, she can't quite bridge the gap between English and Japanese. She's excited that she's going to New York City in November and going to the opera...Carmen, she told me.

Fumi is just 19. She says she is only now getting old enough to appreciate operas like Don Giovanni.