Search - Laerte Malagutti, Giuseppe Gazzaniga, Herbert Handt :: Gazzaniga: Don Giovanni, o sia Il Convitato di Pietra

A mediocre work, with an even more mediocre performance

Zaida | Bremerton, WA | 08/15/2008

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Gazzaniga wrote his 'Don Giovanni' less than a year before Mozart saw the premiere of his opera of the same name in Prague. As one might expect, Gazzaniga's opera ranks far below anything by Mozart, Haydn, or even lesser known contemporaries such as Salieri and Martín y Soler. It isn't even on the level of Paisiello's one-act farce 'Pulcinella Vindicata', whose excellent performance by Florio makes enjoyable listening, if nothing else. To add to this, the performance is rather bland, not to mention done on modern insruments. And the recording itself is even worse. Just because it was done in the 1960s doesn't give it an excuse to sound this bad, many earlier recordings are far better than this. The presentation feels cheap for some reason, and Nuova Era didn't even bother to include a translation. If you want to hear Gazzaniga's version of 'Don Giovanni', which is neither exciting nor atrocious, go for Weil's recording on Sony. It was done with period instruments and decent recording technology."