Don Giovanni: treasure trove

Referring specifically to the very surprising new Sony recording with a crack cast and the maverick Teodor Currentzis conducting the Perm Opera Orchestra which goes by the name of Musicaeterna; and more widely to the succession of great recordings we've heard of the ensembles, duets and arias throughout the past six weeks of my Opera in Focus class at the Frontline Club (other choices here).


I hadn't heard the two previous instalments in Currentzis's Mozart-Da Ponte cycle, and approach him warily. Much of what he says in the booklet interview is plain wrong, facts included. And I don't buy it for a minute.

But, as with the Stravinsky Rite of Spring, which has embarrassing poetry by our polymath to accompany it, what matters -the performance - is amazing. Working my way through the opera scene by scene, I was constantly looking for the best, the liveliest, the most fine-tuned to this difficult drama. And though the Currentzis set only arrived unsolicited by the time of Class 3, I found myself pressing it into service time and again.

It was invaluable, in short, for the fizziest 'Fin ch'han dal vino' (as much for the orchestral bristling as for Dimitris Tiliakos), the funniest and most vivid representation of the three orchestras in the Act One finale - full of ornaments as well as pointedly sour tuning-up - and the earlier part of Act Two, with two mandolins participating in the Serenade. Most of the big set-piece arias have their moments, and interesting ornamentation in da capos, but perhaps only one is up there with the considerable best on disc - tenor Kenneth Tarver's 'Il mio tesoro'.

Here are both sweetness and Italianate ardour. It's also the only recording I know where the singer actually manages 68 notes in a row at the midpoint - albeit many of them semiquavers - in a single breath (Tauber actually breaks halfway through, despite received wisdom, though maybe McCormack does it - need to check that) and stylish adornments on the return.

That's now my absolute favourite. There are other clear front-runners for various highlights: Sutherland for Giulini in 'Or sai che l'onore', a fusion of Popp and Freni in the two Zerlina arias, Kiri te Kanawa for Davis in 'Mi tradi'. Nicolai Ghiaurov and Walter Berry are both essentially basses, so when you add Franz Crass's Commendatore into the mix, the Klemperer recording is jet-black vocally and hair-raising orchestrally. I've come back round to admiring that indomitable master's clarity and energy even in his later performances, so much so that I ordered up the big EMI box set of the symphonic canon which I loved so much at university. It's been a constant source of nourishment in these dark days.

Giulini, for all his slightly old-fashioned aristocratic stateliness, gives the best Act 1 Quartet and Finale Trio as well as the Act 2 Sextet; I always get shivers at the modulation to the Anna-Ottavio entry. Desert island tracks all, and with Schwarzkopf, no less, usually a bête (or should that be tête) noire of mine.

Tomorrow we conclude with the statue scene and its aftermath, enriched as much was last week by sideways looks at the Gazzaniga version with the Bertati libretto which Da Ponte used as his model. There's a very lively recording of that, sans recits, by Bruno Weil and his Tafelmusik ensemble. Then in sweeps the hero of the hour, and the year, Mark Wigglesworth, to cover Mozart, Berg and Shostakovich. If you'd like to drop in for this one-off - which may well be Mark's last talk as ENO Music Director - as he still is until the end of the Lulu run, at least in my books, just as surely as Obama remains in the Oval Office. There are comparisons to be made between the micro- and macrocosms.

Happy birthday, Quinquin

Herrgott in Himmel, I nearly forgot that my favourite opera of all time and certainly the one I know best from head to toe, Strauss and Hofmannsthal's 'comedy for music' Der Rosenkavalier, is a hundred years old today; it took Gavin Plumley's homage - albeit with a clip of perhaps my least favourite Marschallin after Schwarzkopf, the over-indulgent Renee - on his Entartete Musik blog to remind me. Silhouette of Strauss and Hofmannsthal above by Bithorn, from the time it was shown in the Strauhof Museum Zurich's excellent exhibition 'Das Libretto'.

This is not, as they sing in the opera, quite what we'd hoped: I'd thought an annotated Rosenkav might make an intelligent coffee-table book for 2011, but there was much dragging of heels from a certain quarter, and then it was too late. Nor is there any chance for the seasonal warming of winter cockles this year, at least in the UK (what were you thinking of, Covent Garden and Mr. Pappano?)

Still, it's a time for Marschyesque reflection: almost too many great performances on stage and screen to recall. I can't quite choose an overall favourite on disc, though I guess the palm would have to go to the classic Erich Kleiber version.


I have a special affection for the Philips set, where the score is conducted like chamber music by Edo de Waart and Flicka shines as Octavian, and for the super-sumptuous if super-slow Bernstein offering. On DVD, there's no Marschallin more gorgeous and intuitively wonderful than Kiri's, though Gwyneth runs her close in the old Bavarian State Opera film: silence, you text-scoffers, and tell me in the following snippets if our often indolent Kiwi is slapdash or lacklustre with the meaning. Then along came Anne Schwanewilms's angry-beautiful redhead, and we all fell in love, I think, with that performance in an otherwise less than top-notch Dresden-in-Japan production. Sadly it's not snippeted decently on YouTube.


Best Octavians? For me, Fassbaender and Troyanos on DVD; on stage, a young Garanca in Vienna, terrific against Martina Serafin's gorgeous Marschallin - another redhead - though the creaking rep production left everyone to their own devices (lovely lady FLott said that the first time she met one of her Octavians at the Staatsoper was when she woke up in bed beside him/her). And the rest are usually good, with few matching the visual and vocal ideal of a young Sophie so well as Barbara Bonney, who seems to have stayed the girlish course for longest. I never thought Kurt Moll would make such a funny Ochs, but he does in the Met DVD, though for sheer classy delivery, dare I once again mention my good friend Peter Rose?

So what do we have that's worth seeing on YouTube (remember, to get the full picture on each of the below, you'll need to click on the moving image)? Kiri with Solti when the Schlesinger Covent Garden production was still fresh, ravishing and, yes, thoughtful in the Act 1 soliloquy:



Then let's switch to Gwyneth and Fassbaender in that classic Munich production, superlatively well conductor by Kleiber junior:



and back to Kiri, this time in a tired old Met staging which has just been issued on CD, and the fustian doesn't matter since the four leads find such meaning in interacting with each other. And though Levine has been quite a grand conductor of the score, his lavishness never holds up the proceedings like Thielemann's. The Sophie is Judith Blegen, no ingenue but still vocally very fine. Shame the whole thing stops at the end of the trio.



So raise a glass of old Tokay if you would to a complex masterpiece that's kept all the moaners on the run for a century now and retained its central place in a warhorse repertoire against the odds.

29/1 Very much on a related note, and as I mentioned in the reply to Jon below, the most beautiful Mozart/Strauss voice ever, Dame Margaret Price, died yesterday at the age of 69. I've written a brief tribute on The Arts Desk, and may add more here over the next few days. As always with these losses, such balm to be able to listen to her greatest recordings - and they are legion - by way of response.


I'm impressed that the BBC News website has a tribute among its headlines - as, of course, it should, but that kind of thing hasn't been happening recently. Are opera and classical music returning centre-stage as newsworthy?

Djenne Djenno comes to London

She's here, the Grand Sophy(ie) aka La Sarina, godmother to this blog when she set the example by putting her own much more exotic life as a Malian hotelier on line. A couple of weeks ago she was excurting on her beloved Maobi to one of the villages near Djenne we didn't see on our trip


and only last week stroking mythical horn-less unicorns on a riding course in Seville.


And there she is up top, our remarkable Sophie Sarin, happily blasted by Gergiev's Stravinsky (stunning Mariinsky disc of Oedipus Rex and Les noces) at home here as she settled down for a good read. The book is on the master masons of her town by a chap who left just before she arrived. He has an exhibition of photos at RIBA which we must go and see.

Today London decamps to Glyndebourne and Seaford while Djenne Djenno stays put. I linger on the airwaves via four minutes' chinwag with kindred spirit Jonathan Swain on Mahler 7 (available on the iPlayer until next Monday - chat comes after David Matthews's beautifully orchestrated, substance-wise take-it-or-leave-it Seventh Symphony at about 30'40) and on Saturday at 6pm at long last they're broadcasting Prokofiev's The Gambler - the Royal Opera performance in which Andrew MacGregor and I sat in a box and chatted quasi live. I'd put up a pic of the production but the Royal Opera's ludicrous ban on using photos on blogs - inconsistently applied - forbids.

Should just mention that this is being flagged up as part of the big BBC opera season. Don't miss Pappano's telly programmes on Italian opera starting next Monday - those should be rare quality - though do what you like with S Fry and slebs. One amusing outcome was that splendid Dame Kiri, the Beautiful Voice of the late 20th century alongside Margaret Price and hosting what sounds like a well-backed voice competition on Radio 2, has been speaking common sense on S Boyle, A Bocelli and the like in interview. This is badly written up and trails a load of illiterate, venomous trolls in its wake, but the lady spoke wisely, I think.