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The unique nexus of talent
Mozart - Don
Giovanni / Furtwangler (DVD)
June 30,
2002
Opera performance
involves many people. It is an extremely rare event when
each of these people is in the right place at the right
time. Furtwaengler's "Don Giovanni", recorded in Salzburg,
offers more than that: the lost art of making real music
without being vulgar or pedantic, the triumph of taste and
experience over modernist pseudointellectuals, the ease of
accomplished virtuosity, the impeccable quality of singing,
compared to which any Metropolitan opera performance
recorded during the last 30 years sounds like an amateurs'
rehearsal, compared to which Parteigenosse von Karajan
simply fades out of memory like the bloodless, lifeless
ghost, inflated to the extent of invisibility. I am not
afraid to use the strongest expressions: this is, probably,
the best opera performance ever recorded, and it shall stand
forever as one of the highest human achievements, putting to
shame and tormenting every envious follower of the ephemeral
fads and perversions. I am very glad that this recording has
been issued on DVD, which substantially improves the quality
of sound and image. This DVD is also reasonably priced.
Previously, I've cherished a very expensive ($80) and rare
VHS tape, somewhat blurry in both sound and image. Now I am
given a bliss of seeing it again in sharp and bright colors
on wide screen, as if I've been sitting right there, in the
orchestra pit, beside good old scary Furtwaengler, breathing
the fresh evening air of that miraculous night in Salzburg,
watching Don Giovanni, that archetype of modern
irresponsibility, being consumed by the flames of confusion
and pain he caused to others. Curiously enough, when I was
very young, Don Giovanni seemed to me a hero rejecting
prejudice and irrationality; the older I became, the uglier
stood this freak who flouts prejudice only because he is
full of it, because he has challenged the mediocrity not
from above but from below. Self-destruction never comes
uninvited: "M'invitasti, e son venuto." Alexander Feht
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