THE REAL DRAMATISM
BRUNO WALTER . MOZART . DON GIOVANNI . OVERTURE
Let us begin by remembering the story of D Giovanni.
Don Giovanni is about a libertine and murderer who refuses to repent when given the chance. He is taken alive to eternal damnation. It is one of Mozart’s more shadowed works.
Don Giovanni is an Italian opera in two acts. It is about the character better known as Don Juan. The libretto was written by Lorenzo da Ponte anf the opera was first performed at the National Theatre in Prague on 29 October 1787, on the later years of Mozart. It achieved a great success.
The overture opens with a somber musical passage in D minor, typical in Mozart’s more dramatic music such as the D Minor Piano Concerto Nº 20 or the Requiem. This passage is also played when the statue of the Commendatore calls for Don Giovanni to repent at the end of the opera. A quick, bright section in D major follows this slow passage. It is not related to music in opera. It is spirited, vigorous, and robust. It quietly dies away as the curtain rises on the first act.
A lot has been said about the revival of XVIIIth century works such as Mozart’s operas.
The return to period instruments, to the original manuscripts, all this have certainly enriched our musical background. Still, when the audience reaches the performnace, it is our strong belief that a story must be told, as efficiently as possible. Walter’s live recordings, despite the fragile technical quality, are clear evidence of this. If you compare it with recent recordings where imaculate musical skill is carerfully retouched, one has a sense of a beautiful monotone atmosphere that clearly contradicts Mozart’s intends.
Let’s begin with the master, and then we will leave you three different recordings to compare with. – Zubin Metha; John Elliot Gardiner and James Levine at the very same spot as Walter, the Metropolitan Opera House. All of the are of the highest quality of maestros. But what Bruno Walter does , is to give us a sense of freedmon that is unmatchable. Like in great paintings, all the seemingly imperfections reinforce the intention of the artists’s mind. One has a sense of a conductor in full liberty followed by the musicians. This becomes even more vivid in the D major section. If we listen to this same meastro at Mozart’s Le Noze di Figaro, the soul is exactly the same.
In all three recordings, the one that seems to reach the same sense of life is problably Levine’s due to his regular presence of live performances at the Met. if we go deeper to bring back to the game the more recent discographic works of DG, EMI or ERATO, and we search in Herreweghe or Harnoncourt’s musical universe, all this becomes even more clear.
Next week we will proceed in this subject, bringing in a stunning recording of Toscanini Beethooven’s Pastoral at Salzburg.
WAIT FOR US! We will be back soon