Word: ottavio
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...oathing gets overdone is that it is so inherently dramatic, even a form of fanaticism, a way of connecting (spuriously sometimes) to the Absolute. Knights, crusaders, saints and opera singers are forever swearing: it is a lovely plot device. Ahab swears his vengeance on the whale. In Don Giovanni, Ottavio vows to avenge the Commendatore by raising his fruity tenor to Donna Anna: "Lo giuro, lo giuro/ lo giuro agli occhi tuoi/ lo giuro al nostro amor" (I swear it, I swear it/ I swear it by your eyes/ I swear it by our love). Was there ever a prettier...
...other roles run from the accomplished but not overdone leporello of Jose van Dam to Kenneth Riegel's wooden Don Ottavio. Among the women, Kiri Te Knawa's Donna Elvira stands out as the most musically agile and dramatically subtle. Edda Moser afflicts Donna Anna with an unfocused voice and the worst of operatic mannerisms--especially ludicrous with instant translation in English subtitles. She shrieks and sways--the subtitle reads, "I'm fainting." She shrieks once again and staggers to embrace a marble column--"I'm dying...
...with cheerful disregard for law or morality. After forcing himself on a noblewoman, Donna Anna, he duels with her father, the Commendatore, and kills him. Then, while the Don busies himself mostly with trying to seduce the peasant girl Zerlina, Donna Anna joins forces with her fiancé Don Ottavio and another of the Don's conquests, Donna Elvira, to hound him through a series of comic entanglements, disguises and escapes. When a statue of the slain Commendatore comes to life and challenges the Don, he defiantly invites the statue to supper. Threatened with damnation, he remains unrepentant...
...down the steps of his house and out into the garden; but José Van Dam's engaging Leporello is scarcely allowed to become the buffo scalawag that Mozart and Da Ponte had in mind. Edda Moser as Donna Anna, Teresa Berganza as Zerlina, Kenneth Riegel as Don Ottavio, all throw themselves into their roles with intensity, but only the exotic Kiri Te Kanawa, as Donna Elvira, manages to shake off some of Losey's heavy seriousness. Missing are the wit and verve, the "elate darting rhythms" with which Shaw said Mozart conveyed the spirit of the work...
...wind or rain, we hear the souped-up ambience of the recording studio. The result is that characters who ought to be interacting lose touch with each other and finally with the sense of the libretto. The most absurd example is II mio tesoro intanto, in which Ottavio, supposedly at night, exhorts his friends to console Donna Anna while he goes in search of the authorities. Losey sends him strolling up and down a sunlit lawn, singing to nobody in particular, while pausing occasionally to nudge the sleeping form of some peasant sprawled in his path...