Mozart - Don Giovanni - Pinza, Rethberg - Bruno Walter - 19372CDs - Mono ADD Andromeda 2008
Ezio Pinza, Elisabeth Rethberg, Dino Borgioli, Luise Helletsgruber, Virginio Lazzari, Margit Bokor, Karl Ettl, Herbert Alsen
Cond. Bruno Walter, Wiener Philharmoniker
Salzburg, August 2, 1937
As much as I love the Don Giovanni performance with Pinza and Walter from the Met 1942, this performance tops it. I do love Kipnis' very comical Leporello and Sayao's very charming Zerilina at the Met performance, but on every other aspect is this performance even better. Pinza is as good as ever as the ever charming and devlish Don. Virginio Lazzari's Leporello is also wonderfully funny, but it is the performances of Elizabeth Rethberg, Luise Helletsgruber and Dino Borgioli as Donna Anna, Donna Elvira and Don Ottavio that stand out here. I do admire Charles Kullmann's performance at the Met, but he can't hold a candle to Borgioli's very stylish and noble performance. Rethberg did such an exciting performance here in one of her best roles.
The Vienna Philharmonic seems to reponds much better to Walter's conducting that the Met orchestra did 5 years later. The sound is suprisingly very good. There are some places that the sound has a boxy sound, but that passes very quickly. The sonics are very good for a recording made by Austrian radio in 1937, the same as Toscanini's Falstaff, Zauberflote and Meistersinger. It doesn't have any surface noise, but still is very clear. --Amazon customer
