Don Giovanni

I've waited since this 1st came out as a movie to have a decent reproduction of this performance (saw it 5 times). One may critique any number of aspects of the production &/or the video/audio quality as being short of perfection, not to one's taste, etc. However, the reigning superiority of this Don Giovanni lies in its sensibility: one may call it multileveled in social critique, of its own period &, more subtly, of ours; & its simultaneous acceptance of & sympathy with the very cultural dynamics, then & now, that Losey & his collaborators express here, cinematically. Again, given all comparisons, the music, voices, acting & directing are here at the highest level, & do not disappoint. The "messages" of lush visual as well as sonic beauty are woven into the opera's classic conflicts of love, pride, hope, anger, outrage, happiness, fear... Especially, the embodied tension in Raimondi of amoral erotic domination with a noble, dauntless courage, long noted as inherent in the Don, is presented with overtones of dissipation that reflect not just his personality, but his culture - & ours. By now a cliché, setting the opera within Palladio's architecture, as well as the openItalian countryside, is still an unsurpassed framework for da Ponte's plot, & its incomparable realization in the music of Mozart at his peak. In opera& ballet, more than other performance art, the supporting elements of setting, light, costume & gesture (embracing, laughing, dueling...) can, so tospeak, make or break the work. Here, all these combine brilliantly. Finally, in voice & acting: van Dam's Leporello is faultless in comic protest & critique; Berganza's Zerlina, likewise; Kiri Te Kanawa -always divine? - I once heard her very slightly miss a note (sharp) at the Met, & it almost brought a tear, as it made her actually seem mortal; Edda Moser quite wonderfully sings her passionate uncertainty about whether outrage & propriety are really enough to counter the force of Eros; Malcolm King was a wonderful surprise, raising Massetto above personality to a humble(d) force for justice; Kenneth Riegel defined Don Ottavio as both pure in voice & so pure in motive & devotion that he, even then, while not at all ridiculous, seemed almost out of place within the conflicted aristocratic standards he faced; & John Macurdy convincingly avoided presenting Il Commendatore as either a superstitious fiction or mere puritan avenger. Highly recommended.

The report that people must want is for the 2013 blu-ray disc quality. It is excellent. It's so magical that you have no chance to resist it. A non-opera nut passing by would stop. I have a fine video & sound system and the vision and sound caused zero disappointment. What, 34 years old? Technically, it looks new. It is so classically fine that it is hard to imagine such a project could happen now. The sound is excellent the Paris Opera orchestra is perfect. There are large numbers of people on screen at times... all looking real. The boat operators, glass blowers and intimate details of life had to be real. For example, I don't think that I have ever seen such elegant food storage in a kitchen on screen. I once worked in a restaurant that inspected each piece of fruit and stored it individually. They were famous for perfection. The humanity includes amazing beauty, a lot of it. The costumes are over the top perfect. You will be drawn into the sets. The sound of birds is a major component, as is the sound of water and rain. All of the singing is wonderful. There is elegance on the screen from first second to last. I have several versions of Giovanni, this moves up to favorite. English subtitles are very good, but I think I may go seat of my pants... without next time. I have several Olive films blu-ray discs, and I have been happy with them all. This movie is the one to use to infect others with the opera bug, but hard core old timers will love it as well. (On the star system... 5 stars. All my reviews are 5 star or 1 star. Don't write unless I love it or hate it.)

"Any man who is faithful to one is cruel toward all the others", casually retorts the reckless libertine Don Giovanni to Leporello (his man servant) when asked why trouble yourself to decieve them all (referring to Don Giovanni's conquest's). As master seducer and unrepentant purveyor of loose morals, Ruggero Raimondi as Don Giovanni brilliantly breathes life into Mozart's and Da Ponte's timeless masterpiece.Having been fortunate enough to have seen various stage adaptations performed internationally throughout the years, I can honestly say Joseph Losey's film adpatation of this operatic classic is perhaps the best most realistically engaging version i've seen to date. Vast scenic Italian villa countryside vistas with splendid venetian backdrops, so palpable that one could almost feel the moring dew and warmth of the rising summer sun along with Donna Elvira (one of Don Giovanni's recent conquests) as she strolls along the villa gardens. No less flabbergasted and shocked as she is, when Leporello reads off the vast number of the Don's romantic conquest's, we too are taken aback;(He basically says):""You are not the first and will not be the last""The Master (Don G.) has had women in every town, village, land, and country.""Italy 640""Germany 231""France 100""Turkey 91""Spain 1,003""Peasant girls, Maids, Servants, Wives, Sisters, Daughters, Countesses, Baronesses, Marquises , all sizes, shapes, ages, rich, poor, beautiful, or ugly, it doesn't matter.......the Master has had them all."Unknowingly, we too have succumbed to the seductive charms of this licentious lothario for a full 176 mins (DVD /Movie length) and Losey, being the brilliant creative cinematographer that he is, provides a visually stunning perspective on a classic narrative we are sure to always cherish and remember.

I remember watching this film as a student, and on a fresh watching it does lack something. Moving the setting from Seville to Venice and its lagoon was inspired, and the photography is stunning. The performances are strong musically.However, this isn't my ideal Don. Raimondi (Don Giovanni) is mincing in Act I rather than menacing; he is more convincing in Act II. Some of this is the director's fault: e.g. he acts scared in the Act I finale which doesn't work for me. Te Kanawa (Elvira) stands and delivers too often. The biggest problem with the acting, though, is that the singers mime when singing, and some of them, frankly, can't: Don Ottavio and Masetto, in particular, gurn their way through their arias.The recitatives are performed direct to camera and are better acted, but that leads to the other fault: the musical numbers are studio recorded and the change in ambience from recitative to aria (often, midway through the last line of the former) is obvious and jarring. Perhaps this is something that the newly remastered recoding only accentuates?

This is really wonderful. The singing is absolutely beautiful and finely dramatic (such great singers and orchestra!). Musically, it is a treat, The film itself is also a really lovely, idiosyncratic interpretation. Just great acting, and scenery, Palladian villas, waterways and countryside. Possibly slightly over-frilly in the costume department for me, but the production is a lovely balance of the realistic and the obviously operatic, in style. The finales to both acts are truly amazing - exciting and completely mesmeric. The sound is wonderfully good too, a bit of a marvel, really, the blend of 'live' recitative and 'recorded' arias, and the 'background' extras, like birds tweeting and rustling of the breezes and gentle roll of the water. (The story about the 'sound journey' is really fascinating - a dvd extra). You will find a lot more modern stagings of this great opera, stagings that are more hard-edged, gritty, realistic, and much less florid than this one. But this is completely seductive and poetic film. It is both Mozart, wonderfully realised, by some of the greatest singers and an amazing conductor; but it is something more too: a filmic experience, each shot like a picture, with a painter's attention to visual meaning, which, if it fits your taste, you might find as rich and hypnotic as I do.

In the early 1980s I was fortunate to attend a performance of Don Giovanni at Covent Garden. Splendidly attired in a gorgeous green dress with matching hat Kiri Te Kanawa's Donna Elvira made an enduring impression. The 2006 restoration of Joseph Losey's celebrated film contains many such moments. Filmed at the Villa La Rotonda and in the Veneto region the cinematography is stunning. Two memorable examples are the first aria of Don Ottavio which is set on board with surrounding reedbeds and the arrival of the three masks at the Don's palace. Both the playing and the singing are now first rate and this restoration has made a masterly job of the syncretization that is so often a problem with opera films.Provided the singing is as expected advancing age is not a problem in the opera house where a fifty plus Mimi can be received with thunderous applause. Things are rather different on film and here, despie fine singing, the vicissitudes associated with advancing age are evident in a too explicit and unnecessary romp between the Don and a far too eager Zerlina.The film is blessed with two unusual departures. On stage Leporello is often portrayed as a cringing buffoon. Such is not the case here for this smartly dressed servant comes across as a far more robust character. That said he can never best the Don who knows the value of coin when re-establishing some semblance of loyalty. The second is the clever introduction of of a character described as "a valet in black". Essentially an observer at the feast this unsung addition to the cast leaves much to the viewer's own interpretation. A master stroke.This film is a valuable addition to any opera library and has the capacity to give continuing pleasure. There are several stage versions available on DVD and here the fine baritone Thomas Allen is justly famous for his interpretations of the Don. Particularly good is the project masterminded by Herbert Karajan with Samuel Ramey as a deadly combination of charm and nefarious intention. Kathleen Battle makes an excellent Zerlina. Flattered but unrelenting.Trottman

I bought this DVD a while back stacking it among the 15+ recordings I have. Since it is a DVD i watched it then, and returned afterwards to the Decca Siepi/Krips recording.Having that said, I upgraded my audio equipment last year to a line that supports full HD Audio, 24 bits/96 KHz, not paying attention that this release has a DTS 5.1 HD Audio channel (my old equipment did not support HD Audio). The other day my 7 year old son picked up this release and said: "I want to listen to this", because he likes the last scene where Don Giovanni burns, and I played it. When I switched to the 5.1 HD Audio track I was blown away and finding myself listening to a recording I had "never" listened to. I could not believe it, that this was catching dust for such a long time. An experience that one must go through in order to realize. The clarity of the tones, the richness and warmth of the sound is amazing. It drags you in, making you a part f the experience.The recording itself is fantastic, everything in place and where it should be, and the other comments have said enough.This has climbed the ladder in my ranking and will be at the top where it deserves to be.Highly recommended!!!

Possibly the best DVD of Don Giovanni, although in this version the German subtitles sometimes seem to clash with the sung Italian. I don't know if the sound was remastered for this 2006 DVD, but it's excellent. The filming around Vicenza and Venice is amazing.I have the original 1979 VHS, with English subtitles, but I haven't yet compared them. There's now a TEAC amplifier between the TV and external speakers, which I selected after exhaustive comparisons at Unilet, so any defects will be exposed.