Word: giovanni
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Since it was established in 1899, Fiat, the second biggest automaker in Europe and the fifth biggest in the world, has had only two chairmen: Founder Giovanni Agnelli and, since 1945, Vittorio Valletta. Last week, at the age of 82, Valletta turned the wheel over to Gianni Agnelli, 45, grandson of Fiat's founder and a charter member of the international...
...conductor Isaiah Jackson and producer Santiago Leon wished to produce merely another sure-fire opera bluffa, they would have made the obvious cuts, livened up the staging and broadened the comedy even further. Instead they offered a Don Giovanni of traditional proportions, and the production must be judged as such...
Opera cynics today occasionally claim that successful productions are necessarily about 80 per cent staging; but if that dictum held last night, Giovanni would have been a disaster. Designer W. E. Schroeder was faced with the sizeable challenge of eight sudden and radical scene changes, and totally cowed, he reverted to a single homely, primitive set, which remains essentially unchanged for three and one-half hours. Nor were the ideas of Luiz-Lopez-Cepero of much greater ambitiousness; both the overall blocking and the dance sequences remained clumsy and often unconvincing...
Thus the virtues of this Giovanni resided almost solely in the cast, despite the presence of only two genuinely operatic voices: the Don of Sean Barker and the Donna Anna of Donna Roll. Barker displayed all the necessary magnetism and menace, but without the grand air of defiance appropriate to his eventual damnation. His Champagne Aria was most exuberant, if a bit breathless; and the Serenade was one of the few instances all night of fine sotto voce singing. Roll's soprano, while raw and occasionally off-pitch, was clearly the biggest voice of all, and was used to best...
...often the care, the audience's favorite was Zerlina, sung as soubrettishly as bearable by Spring Fairbank. Although her two charming scenes with Masetto were flawless, perhaps the most stylish singing came in the "La ci darem" duet with Giovanni. Bass Tom Weber, while rather dry-sounding and somewhat strained, made the most of Leporello's varied moods and tasks, though perhaps not with the same hilarity of his Don Alfonso (of last year's Cori). Less satisfactory were the nasal tenor of August Paglialunga, a peculiarly huge Don Ottavio, and the half-sung Masetto of Don Meaders...