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
