Mozart - Don Giovanni - Terfel, Fleming, Murray, Pertusi - Solti, 19963CDs - DDD - 163min.
DECCA 1997
Performer: Monica Groop, Mario Luperi, Michele Pertusi, Ann Murray, Bryn Terfel, Renée Fleming, Roberto Scaltriti, Herbert Lippert
Conductor: Sir Georg Solti
Orchestra/Ensemble: London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Voices
Date of Recording: 10/1996, Live Royal Festival Hall, London, England
Operatic superstars Renée Fleming and Bryn Terfel lead the cast of this 'Don Giovanni' under Georg Solti. Terfel is a rarity among baritones not because he has committed 'Don Giovanni' to compact discs three times, but because in each of the three he performs a different role. He was Claudio Abbado's Leporello on Deutsche Grammophon, and Arnold Östman's Masetto on L'Oiseau-Lyre. Here he presents a Giovanni who truly revels in his own ill-doings, unrepentant to the end, and hardly as horrified as others by the flames of hell springing up in his dining room.
Michele Pertusi is an agile, full-voiced Leporello, vocally believable in disguise as the Don. The Commendatore of Mario Luperi is suitably menacing and ghostly as he arrives to take Giovanni to dinner in another world. And Fleming, Herbert Lippert and Ann Murray fill out the smug trio of characters whose lives Giovanni had broken.
London's engineers captured the live performances from which this set was assembled in warm, studio-quality sound.
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