'In this life scoundrels always receive their just desserts': Now that we know the lesson of Don Giovanni, how does it square with the lesson of Fidelio?

(And say, what fate exactly did Don Giovanni deserve?)


AND NOW, THE MORALS OF OUR STORIES



THE MORAL OF OUR STORY NO. 1:
from the six survivors of the fiery demise of Don Giovanni

"This is the end that befalls evildoers,
and in this life scoundrels
always receive their just desserts."

Claire Watson (s), Donna Anna; Christa Ludwig (ms), Donna Elvira; Mirella Freni (s), Zerlina; Nicolai Gedda (t), Don Ottavio; Walter Berry (bs-b), Leporello; Paolo Montarsolo (bs), Masetto; New Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. EMI, recorded June-July 1966

THE MORAL OF OUR STORY NO. 2:
from Florestan, Leonore, and the rest of the Fidelio crew

"He who has won such a wife
may join in our rejoicing.
Never can we too much hymn
the savior of her husband's life."

Jon Vickers (Florestan), Sena Jurinac (Leonore), et al., with Otto Klemperer conducting, Covent Garden, February 1961

by Ken

We've put in a fair amount of effort, first in the June 14 post "If you're just dying to know, is Don Giovanni a comedy or a tragedy?, you've come to the wrong place," then in last week's post, ("Homing in on that moment in Don Giovanni when 'Everything returns to normal' -- or should we say 'the new normal'?"), to extract the moral of da Ponte and Mozart's Don Giovanni, which is so tidily contained in the opera's final lines, as we just heard them again above, in a form described as "l'antichissima canzon" (which I've been translating as "the most antique refrain," even though a canzon is really just a song) by the incantators themselves -- as we've heard previously, and are going, by gosh, to hear again.

As I mentioned last week, the episode of homiletic moralizing that follows hard upon the tumultuous scene of Don Giovanni resolutely consigning himself to a descent into the fires of hell, brings this epic tale to a seemingly incongruous end -- and we know that in the early decades of the opera's performing history the whole postlude was often simply lopped off, sending audiences off on a more satisfyingly cathartic note.

I also suggested that this wielding of the editorial hatchet seems to me a truly ghastly idea, and that the issue arises again with the homiletically moralizing ensemble that will in time draw Beethoven's one and only opera, Fidelio, to a close.


IT'S CERTAINLY TRUE -- ISN'T IT? -- THAT "IN THIS LIFE
SCOUNDRELS ALWAYS RECEIVE THEIR JUST DESSERTS"?

Homing in on that moment in Don Giovanni when "Everything returns to normal" -- or should we say "the new normal"?

CAUTIONARY NOTE (MONDAY): Maybe it was just supercharged enjoyment of the bounties of Internet Archive on a Pandemic Summer Sunday, but yesterday I had a dickens of a time both uploading audio clips and getting them to load in posts. If they aren't loading for you, try refreshing once or twice (or ----). Sometimes it helps.

JUST-POSSIBLY-FINAL UPDATE (MONDAY): We now have our answer to the question: What happens after Don Giovanni is dragged down into the flaming underworld? We didn't get to the related destination I intended, as explained in my "STILL TO COME" note, but for now, back to Don Giovanni.

FINAL UPDATE (WEDNESDAY): The music was all ready to go, with the Fidelio part of the project seemingly well in hand. Until, alas, it began expanding, the way these things usually do, and I've decided to let it do so, because this is, you know, a piece so close to my heart. So what do you say we just reconvene on Sunday, then start with some Don Giovanni review and proceed to Fidelio? I'll just give you a tease at the end.


Is there anything more miraculous than the way
this monumental opera ends? A mere 12 seconds:



New Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond.

Or, to back up just a bit . . .

This is the end that befalls evildoers,
and in this life scoundrels
always receive their just desserts.

Claire Watson and Mirella Freni, sopranos; Christa Ludwig, mezzo-soprano; Nicolai Gedda, tenor; Walter Berry, bass-baritone; Paolo Montarsolo, bass; New Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond.

by Ken

We've already heard (first in our John Macurdy remembrance, then again last week) -- which isn't going to stop us from hearing it again! -- that amazing scene in which the statue of the Commendatore shows up at Don Giovanni's place for that Last Supper he was invited to, the whole shebang ending with the Don being dragged down into the flames of Hell.

We always read that in the early history of da Ponte and Mozart's Don Giovanni -- let's call it the first century -- this was where the curtain was rung down, and a mighty impressive final picture and sound it must have made. It's not hard to see the logic of it. After all, there's only about seven minutes' worth of music still to come, and none of it can begin to compete for sheer drama with what we've just witnessed. At the same time, though, how bone-headedly wrong!

My original plan was to really do up the opera's final scene right, going back first to the portion we skipped over when we first heard Don Giovanni's dramatic (to put it mildly confrontation with his invited and yet still hardly expected supper guest, and then work our way through to the end. My second thought was, yes, to rehear that great climactic scene, but from there just to pursue those final seven minutes, where we take leave of the six other characters we've seen interacting with the Don in the final plot arc of his life.


WE CAN CONSIDER THE "FORM" OF THESE FINAL MINUTES
LATER. FOR NOW LET'S JUST HEAR THEM -- IN THREE PARTS

If you're just dying to know, is Don Giovanni a comedy or a tragedy?, you've come to the wrong place

REVISED VERSION: In addition to inserting texts, I've rejiggered the post to make a bit more sense. (I also added a few performances, including a couple that were always meant to be here.)


Most often a statue won't come to supper even if you ask nice. Other times you may wish, like Don Giovanni above, that the statue didn't come. (Here we see Miklós Sebestyén and Gavan Ring at Welsh National Opera, 2018.)


YOU REMEMBER THIS SNATCH OF DON GIOVANNI, RIGHT?
THIS TIME WE'RE HEARING SOME EXTRA PERFORMANCES

STATUE OF THE LATE COMMENDATORE:
"Don Giovanni, a cenar teco
m'invitasti, e son venuto"
("Don Giovanni, to sup with you
you invited me, and I've come")

John Macurdy (bs), Commendatore; Orchestra of the Theâtre National de l'Opéra de Paris, Lorin Maazel, cond. CBS-Sony, recorded June-July 1978

Giorgio Tozzi (bs), Commendatore; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Karl Böhm, cond. Live performance, Dec. 14, 1957

Kurt Moll (bs), the Commendatore; London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded Oct.-Nov. 1978

Matti Salminen (bs), Commendatore; Berlin Philharmonic, Daniel Barenboim, cond. Erato, recorded April 1991
[REVISION NOTE: We were always supposed to hear Kurt Moll here. Don't know what happened -- maybe I didn't realize the audio clip was already made! Still, aren't you happy to hear him now?]

by Ken

In a moment for just a single time [REVISION NOTE: now just two times] this week I'm going to let the scene run on (we've actually heard it to the end, a few weeks ago), so that we'll have it all in our ears for what we're going to hear next, which may surprise you -- or then again may not. (It involves going backwards, and in case you weren't aware, doing things backwards is almost a way of life here at Sunday Classics.)

First, though, I have to explain that I was pleasantly surprised by the number of folks who seem to have at least dropped in on the post in which we previously heard the final scene of Don Giovanni, as part of a sampling I offered of the work of the stalwart bass John Macurdy (1929-2020) -- "as Verdi's King of Egypt and Grand Inquisitor, Wagner's Fafner (x2), and Mozart's Commendatore." It was a grueling post to do, one I thought I wrestled to the end pretty much for me, and of course for the memory of the subject, a singer whom I found myself enjoying in this wild assortment of roles that all happened to be at the center of operatic arguments that after a hear-lifetime of close contact have been woven into my conscious being.

Naturally this suggested further listening, especially in another context we've been dabbling with: a crisis of artistic belief I went through awhile back, from which I've managed a sort of comeback with an assist from an unexpected source: a performance offered by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center of a work that had been hardly known to me: the Piano Quintet of Edward Elgar, which documents the composer's heroic struggle against the sense of public and private despair in the cataclysmic year 1918.


WOULDN'T THIS BE A GOOD TIME TO HEAR THE
DON GIOVANNI SUPPER SCENE TO ITS FIERY END?

At the very least, we can listen to this vaguely weird and utterly beguiling little Dvořák piece

Recent Berlin Phil Series live-streamed events have had a profusion of chamber music. This week the strings-and-winds Berlin Philharmonic Octet played the great Schubert Octet and two shorter works, including the world premiere of Toshio Hosokawa's Textures, which was to have been played 10 times during a tour to Japan and Taiwan. And chamber music figured prominently in last week's Tribute to Daniel Stabrawa.


The caption text in this screen grab is a translation of voiceover commentary from Daniel S. himself, part of one of the "tribute" sections of the May 30 Digital Concert Hall event.

by Ken

Stipulating that you already love Dvořák's strange and surprising and also singularly luscious Terzetto in C for two violins and viola (after all, aren't Dvořák's surprises, especially the stranger ones, usually singularly luscious?), and you know that longtime Berlin Philharmonic first concertmaster Daniel Stabrawa is going to be playing it with two colleagues from the orchestra, violinist Krzysztof Polonek and violist Ignacy Miecznikowski. Would you think maybe that "something's up"?

Since heaving up a preliminary version of this post earlier this afternoon, after I'd started rewatching last the May 30 Berlin Phil Series tribute to Daniel Stabrawa (now that it's available in the Digital Concert Hall), I've started re-rewatching, this time loading it on my computer so I could make some screen grabs, including those above. I've rewatched Daniel playing the Panufnik Concerto for Violin and Strings (which now seems to me quite a lovely piece; I'll be rewatching again) and especially I've rewatched the performance of the Dvořák Terzetto, which is absolute gold.

To return to the lineup for the Dvořák trio, you were probably smarter, not to mention more suspicious, than I am, even without my prompting. Let's take this a step farther and look at Krzysztof's and Ignacy's official Berlin Phil webpix.


SO, WHAT DO YOU NOTICE?