Don Giovanni

Starring: Carolyn James, Thomas Allen Director: Jos MontesBaquer Dvd Release: 1st August, 2000 Number Of Discs: 1 Format: Colour, Full Screen, NTSC, Region 0 Encoding Subtitled In: English, Japanese

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Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart & libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte. It was premiered in Prague on October 29, 1787. Of the many operas based on the legend of Don Juan, Mozarts is the most famous & widely regarded as the finest. The opera was billed as dramma giocoso or funny drama, belonging to a genre neither completely comic nor completely tragic. In the original production the actors alternated between spoken recitative & sung aria, but most modern productions use the secco-recitatives composed by Mozart in place of the spoken text. A screen adaptation of the opera was made under the title Don Giovanni in 1979 & was directed by Joseph Losey. The garden of the Commander. Leporello is keeping watch outside Donna Annas house. Don Giovanni, Leporellos master, has crept into the house order to seduce Donna Anna. Donna Anna appears, chasing a masked Giovanni. She wishes to know who he is & cries for help. The Commendatore, Annas father, appears & challenges Giovanni to a duel. Giovanni stabs the Commendatore & escapes unrecognised. Posters Of Don Giovanni

Conlon conducts a skittishly dynamic performance of Don Giovanni that suits the promiscuous protagonists restless energy more than some more ponderous & serious productions. He relies on Thomas Allens tough Don to give the work much of its dark menace & on Holles terrifying Commendatore to provide the moral outrage, his job is to keep things moving, & he does. The exteriors, blank city spaces reminiscent of the paintings of Giorgio De Chirico, & moodily claustrophobic interiors mirror effectively the anguish of the orphaned Anna & the abandoned Elvira; this is a performance in which the two women victims of the Don function effectively as correctives to his libertine charm. Andrea Rost as Zerlina brings real delicacy to her role, reminding us that La ci darem la mano is a duet about her flirtation with Don Giovanni & not just a famous stand-alone moment. This is an admirable presentation of a fine performance. The only special features of the DVD are subtitles in the standard languages.

Sir Thomas Allen is a British opera singer. In 2006 Allen will have performed with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, for thirty-five years. He has sung over forty roles with the company. The twenty-fifth anniversary of his debut at the Metropolitan Opera, New York will also be celebrated in 2006. Allen has performed as Billy Budd, Pelléas, Eugene Onegin, Ulisse & Beckmesser. Additionally he has been praised for his execution of the Mozart roles of Count Almaviva, Don Alfonso, Papageno, Guglielmo and, of course, Don Giovanni. Recently he has appeared as Eisenstein, Don Alfonso, Ulisse & Don Giovanni at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Yeletsky Sharpless & the title role in Sweeney Todd at the Royal Opera House, Eisenstein at the Glyndebourne Festival, Don Alfonso at the Salzburg Easter & Summer Festivals, Forester at the San Francisco Opera & Beckmesser at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Allen also appears in recital in the United Kingdom, throughout Europe, in Australia & America. Posters Of Don Giovanni

Editors Choice: The Peoples Passion, The Cunning Little Vixen, Janacek, Don Giovanni, Mozart, Billy Budd, Die Fledermaus, Glyndebourne, View DVDology

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