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
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?
LEPORELLO hides under the table as DON GIOVANNI returns to the reception hall accompanied by THE STATUE OF THE COMMENDATORE.
THE STATUE: Don Giovanni, to have supper with you
you invited me, and I've come!
DON GIOVANNI: I would never have believed it;
but I'll do what I can.
Leporello! Another supper
have brought at once!
LEPORELLO [from under the table]: Ah master! We're all dead!
DON GIOVANNI: Go, I say!
THE STATUE: Stay a bit!
He does not partake of mortal food
who partakes of celestial food!
Other cares more grave than this
has brought me here below!
LEPORELLO: I seem to have fever . . .
and to keep my limbs still . . .
I can't anymore!
DON GIOVANNI [overlapping]: Speak then!
What do you wish? What do you want?
THE STATUE: I speak, listen! I have no more time!
DON GIOVANNI [overlapping]: Speak, speak! I stand listening!
LEPORELLO [overlapping]: Ah, I can't keep my limbs still anymore!
THE STATUE: You invited me to supper,
now know your obligation!
Respond to me, respond to me,
will you come to have supper with me?
LEPORELLO [standing well back]:
Oh dear, oh dear! I don't have time, excuse me!
DON GIOVANNI: I'll never be wrongly accused of cowardice!
THE STATUE: Decide!
DON GIOVANNI: I've already decided!
THE STATUE: Will you come?
LEPORELLO: Tell him no, tell him no!
DON GIOVANNI: My heart is firm within my breast:
I'm not afraid, I'll come!
THE STATUE: Give me your hand in pledge!
DON GIOVANNI [giving his hand]: Here it is! Ah! Alas!
THE STATUE: What's the matter?
DON GIOVANNI: How ice cold this is!
THE STATUE: Repent, change your life!
It's the ultimate moment!
DON GIOVANNI: No, foolish old man!
THE STATUE: Repent!
DON GIOVANNI: No!
THE STATUE: Repent!
DON GIOVANNI: No!
THE STATUE: Yes!
LEPORELLO: Yes, yes!
DON GIOVANNI: No, no!
THE STATUE: Ah, there's no longer time!
[THE STATUE leaves. Flames burst out from all directions.]
DON GIOVANNI: With what unaccustomed terror
I feel the spirits assail me!
Whence issue these swirling flames
so fraught with horror?
CHORUS OF SPIRITS [from below]: All is as nothing to your crimes!
Come! There is worse in store!
DON GIOVANNI [overlapping]:
Who is rending my soul? Who is tearing at my viscera
What torture, alas! What frenzy!
LEPORELLO [overlapping]:
What a desperate grimace! What gestures of a soul in hell!
What screams! What wailing!
DON GIOVANNI: What terror! etc.
LEPORELLO: How it fills me with terror! etc.
CHORUS OF SPIRITS: All is as nothing etc.
DON GIOVANNI [as he is swallowed up by the ever-increasing flames that burst through the mansion]: Ah!
-- translation draws on Peggie Cochrane's for Decca
Franz Crass (bs), Commendatore; Nicolai Ghiaurov (bs), Don Giovanni; Walter Berry (bs-b), Leporello; New Philharmonia Chorus and Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. EMI, recorded June-July 1966
Gottlob Frick (bs), Commendatore; Eberhard Wächter (b), Don Giovanni; Giuseppe Taddei (b), Leporello; Philharmonia Chorus and Orchestra, Carlo Maria Giulini, cond. EMI, recorded Oct.-Nov. 1959
[REVISION NOTE: The Giulini performance has been added.]
NOW, OH-SO-NEAR THE END, WE DO OUR "BACKWARDS
THING" AND RETURN TO THE VERY START OF THE OPERA!
Anything sound, you know, familiar?
MOZART: Don Giovanni, K. 527: Overture (with concert ending)
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner, cond. RCA, recorded Mar. 14, 1959
BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra, Kurt Sanderling, cond. BBC Legends, recorded Apr. 17, 1978
Staatskapelle Dresden, Sir Colin Davis, cond. BMG, recorded c1998
Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Neville Marriner, cond. EMI, recorded c1981
But after the music that, at least for us, sounds ever so familiar, the Overture proceeds to its end -- we'll talk more about its end in a moment -- in an utterly different vein, and while we're never going to hear any of this music again, in its jolly way it too is preparing us well for the epic opera we're about to witness.
As regards the ending of the Overture, I've noted above that in these performances we hear a "concert ending," as it happens provided by the composer himself, because in the opera itself, as you may recall, the Overture doesn't have a proper ending; it runs right into the opening scene, where we find Leporello in a position possibly even more uncomfortable than hiding under the table. [REVISION NOTE: In the course of the post revision I've added the dramatic Sanderling performance, which I always meant to include but couldn't find while I was working on the original version of the post.]
AS LONG AS WE'RE HERE, LET'S LOWER THE
LIGHTS AND GET READY TO RAISE THE CURTAIN
Don Giovanni has popped up frequently in Sunday Classics posts. The performances we're going to hear are dusted off from the SC archive -- three very different conductors, three very different (and very good) Leporellos, happily well paired, I think. And Leporello is so important. He's really the audience's link to the action of the opera.
Don Giovanni: Overture . . . Leporello,
"Notte e giorno faticar" ("Night and day I slave")
The garden of Donna Anna's house. Night.
LEPORELLO is seen pacing back and forth in front of the house.
Night and day I slave
for one who does not appreciate it.
I put up with wind and rain.
Eat and sleep badly.
I want to play the gentleman,
and I don't want to be a servant.
Oh, what a fine gentleman!
You stay inside with your lady
and I must play the sentinel!
I want to play the gentleman,
and I don't want to be a servant;
no, no, no, no, no, no,
I don't want to be a servant.
But it seems to me that someone's coming,
but it seems to me that someone's coming.
I don't want to be heard;
ah, I don't want to be heard,
I don't want to be heard,
no, no, no, no, no, no,
I don't want to be heard.
-- translation (mostly) by William Mann for EMI
Fernando Corena (bs), Leporello; Vienna Philharmonic, Josef Krips, cond. Decca, recorded June 1955
José van Dam (bs-b), Leporello; Orchestra of the Théâtre National de l'Opéra de Paris, Lorin Maazel, cond. CBS-Sony, recorded June-July 1978
Walter Berry (bs-b), Leporello; New Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. EMI, recorded June-July 1966
Don Giovanni has popped up frequently in Sunday Classics posts. It's the epitome of what I just described as "operatic writing that, as I've lived with it most of my life, has been woven into my whole conscious being." And the role of the Commendatore, short as the role is, is just so important, not to mention hard. He is, or was, a genuinely despicable human being; it's maybe not surprising that his daughter, Donna Anna, is in some clear though not easily definable way(s) seriously screwed up. The role is, relatively brief, and yet so powerfully written, and also hard to sing really well, that it cries out for the most commanding possible performance -- a role that is at the same time probably no more than the opera's seventh most important. (Yes, I know that at the opera's creation the role was doubled with Masetto, the opera's eighth-most-important role. But that doesn't mean it was especially good casting for either role.)
A lot of fretting is done over whether Don Giovanni is a comedy or a tragedy. The question, though, seems to me about as useful as it would be applied to life, and has a good shot at obscuring almost everything that's important to me about the opera.
Which is why we've gone back to the very beginning, in three recordings that matter a lot to me (as some readers may recall, the Krips-Decca and Maazel-CBS are my favorite Don Giovanni recordings, and the Klemperer-EMI is important in ways that are pretty much unique to it), this time letting the Overture, which of course has no formal ending, run directly into the opening scene, as poor Leporello stands bitching and moaning outside the Commendatore's house about his treatment by his master, who has, as so often, left him on hungry sentinel duty his intended place of seduction.
THE DEATH OF THE COMMENDATORE
For the moment we're going to slip over the immediately following event: Don Giovanni emerging at a hasty clip from the Commendatore's house, with a blood-thirsty Donna Anna in hot pursuit, and skip to the appearance of the Commendatore in even hotter pursuit.
Commendatore, "Lasciala, indegno" "Leave her be, scoundrel!")
DON GIOVANNI has rushed out of the house with DONNA ANNA on his heels, screaming bloody murder, followed shortly by her enraged father, the COMMENDATORE. LEPORELLO remains outside on seduction watch for his master.
COMMENDATORE: Leave her be, scoundrel!
Fight with me!
[DONNA ANNA, hearing her father's voice, leaves DON GIOVANNI and enters the house.]
DON GIOVANNI: Go! I don't deign to fight with you.
COMMENDATORE: Thus you think you'll escape me?
LEPORELLO [to himself]: If I could only get away from here.
DON GIOVANNI: Wretch! Stay if you want to die!
[They fight. The COMMENDATORE is mortally wounded.]
Trio: Commendatore, Don Giovanni, and Leporello
COMMENDATORE: Ah, help! I'm undone . . .
The assassin has wounded me . . .
and from my throbbing breast
I feel my soul departing.
DON GIOVANNI [to himself]: Ah! Already the rash old man is down,
trembling and in agony,
Already from his throbbing breast
I see his soul departing.
LEPORELLO [to himself]: What a crime! What excess!
Inside my breast, from fear
I feel my heart pounding.
I don't know what to do, what to say.
[The COMMENDATORE dies.]
John Macurdy (bs), Commendatore; Ruggero Raimondi (bs), Don Giovanni; José van Dam (bs-b), Leporello; Orchestra of the Théâtre National de l'Opéra de Paris, Lorin Maazel, cond. CBS-Sony, recorded June-July 1978
Franz Crass (bs), Commendatore; Nicolai Ghiaurov (bs), Don Giovanni; Geraint Evans (b), Leporello; New Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. EMI, recorded June-July 1966
NOW LET'S HEAR THIS WHOLE (BREATHLESSLY BRIEF) SCENE
From "Notte e giorno" to the Death of Commendatore
The garden of Donna Anna's house. Night. LEPORELLO is seen pacing back and forth in front of the house.
Night and day I slave
for one who does not appreciate it.
I put up with wind and rain.
Eat and sleep badly.
I want to play the gentleman,
and I don't want to be a servant.
Oh, what a fine gentleman!
You stay inside with your lady
and I must play the sentinel!
I want to play the gentleman,
and I don't want to be a servant;
no, no, no, no, no, no,
I don't want to be a servant.
But it seems to me that someone's coming,
but it seems to me that someone's coming.
I don't want to be heard;
ah, I don't want to be heard,
I don't want to be heard,
no, no, no, no, no, no,
I don't want to be heard.
[He hides. DON GIOVANNI and DONNA ANNA rush out of the house. She is trying desperately to detain him very much against his will.]
DONNA ANNA: There's no hope, unless you kill me,
that I'll ever let you go!
DON GIOVANNI: Mad woman! you cry out in vain.
Who I am you will never know!
LEPORELLO [aside]: What tumult! Oh heaven, what cries!
My master in another scrape!
DONNA ANNA: People! Servants! Onto the betrayer!
DON GIOVANNI: Be quiet and tremble at my fury!
DONNA ANNA: Scoundrel!
DON GIOVANNI: Fool!
LEPORELLO [aside]: It remains to be seen
if this rascal will be the ruin of me!
DONNA ANNA: Like a desperate fury
I'll know how to pursue you!
DON GIOVANNI: This desperate fury
wants to be the ruin of me!
[DONNA ANNA, hearing the voice of the COMMENDATORE, goes in the house.]
COMMENDATORE: Leave her be, scoundrel!
Fight with me!
[DONNA ANNA, hearing her father's voice, leaves DON GIOVANNI and enters the house.]
DON GIOVANNI: Go! I don't deign to fight with you.
COMMENDATORE: Thus you think you'll escape me?
LEPORELLO [to himself]: If I could only get away from here.
DON GIOVANNI: Wretch! Stay if you want to die!
[They fight. The COMMENDATORE is mortally wounded.]
Trio: Commendatore, Don Giovanni, and Leporello
COMMENDATORE: Ah, help! I'm undone . . .
The assassin has wounded me . . .
and from my throbbing breast
I feel my soul departing.
DON GIOVANNI [to himself]: Ah! Already the rash old man is down,
trembling and in agony,
Already from his throbbing breast
I see his soul departing.
LEPORELLO [to himself]: What a crime! What excess!
Inside my breast, from fear
I feel my heart pounding.
I don't know what to do, what to say.
[The COMMENDATORE dies.]
Alexander Kipnis (bs), Leporello; Rose Bampton (s), Donna Anna; Ezio Pinza (bs), Don Giovanni; Norman Cordon (bs), Commendatore; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Bruno Walter, cond. Live performance, March 7, 1942
Fernando Corena (bs), Leporello; Eleanor Steber (s), Donna Anna; Cesare Siepi (bs), Don Giovanni; Giorgio Tozzi (bs), Commendatore; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Max Rudolf, cond. Live performance, Dec. 14, 1957
John Tomlinson (bs), Leporello; Lella Cuberli (s), Donna Anna; Ferruccio Furlanetto (bs), Don Giovanni; Matti Salminen (bs), Commendatore; Berlin Philharmonic, Daniel Barenboim, cond. Erato, recorded April 1991
THIS IS THE LAST WE HEAR FROM THE COMMENDATORE
As a living mortal, that is. The fellow is dead, after all. Still, as we heard in the John Macurdy post, we have a highly unexpected encounter coming up deep into Act II -- an encounter that's even more surprising for Don Giovanni and Leporello than for us. Now, the statue, you'll recall, has only two lines in the recitative, both accompanied by a suitably otherworldly ensemble of clarinets, bassoons, trombones, cellos, and basses -- but my goodness, how important are these lines? Not to mention the single syllable, "Si," the statue utters in the ensuing duet, in which Leporello carries out his master's order to invite the statue for supper. (And the duet really has to be called a duet, I think, despite the single syllable uttered by the statue. That isn't enough to make it a trio, is it?)
Don Giovanni has Leporello invite the statue to supper --
Recit. and duet, Leporello-Don Giovanni, "O statua gentilissima"
DON GIOVANNI and LEPORELLO have reconnected in a walled churchyard with monuments, including a statue of the late COMMENDATORE. In the moonlight DON GIOVANNI recounts an episode of having encountered a young woman who mistook him for LEPORELLO and proceeded to treat him amorously.
Recitative
DON GIOVANNI: I took advantage of the mistake. I don't know how, but she recognized me; she screamed, so, hearing people coming, I made off and quickly jumped over that wall there into this place.
LEPORELLO: And you can tell me about it
with such complete unconcern.
DON GIOVANNI: Why not?
LEPORELLO: But suppose the girl had been my wife?
DON GIOVANNI: Better still!
[He laughs loudly.]
STATUE OF THE COMMENDATORE [accompanied by clarinets, bassoons, trombones, cellos, and basses]:
You will be finished laughing before the dawn.
DON GIOVANNI: Who spoke?
LEPORELLO: Ah, that will be some soul
from the other world
who knows you in depth.
DON GIOVANNI [searching among the monuments and striking at some of the statues with his sword]:
Quiet, fool! Who goes there?
STATUE OF THE COMMENDATORE:
Scoundrel! Audacious fellow!
Leave the dead in peace!
LEPORELLO: I told you so.
DON GIOVANNI: It'll be someone outside
playing a joke on us. Hey, isn't that
the statue of the Commendatore?
Read a little of the inscription.
LEPORELLO: Excuse me, I didn't learn
to read by moonlight.
DON GIOVANNI: Read, I say.
LEPORELLO [reading]: "On the wretch who brought me to the extreme passage I here await vengeance."
Do you hear? I'm trembling.
DON GIOVANNI: O most buffoonish old man!
Tell him this evening I expect him to sup with me.
LEPORELLO: What madness! But it seems to me . . .
Oh gods! See there,
what a terrible look he's giving us!
Seems alive . . . seems to hear . . .
and to want to speak . . .
DON GIOVANNI: Look here, get on with it!
Or I'll kill you on the spot
and then bury you.
LEPORELLO: Softly, softly, sir . . . I'll obey now.
Duet, "O statua gentilissima"
LEPORELLO: O most genteel statue
of the great Commendatore . . .
Master, my heart is is shaking . . .
I can't, I can't finish . . .
DON GIOVANNI: Finish it, or in your breast
I'll put this blade!
LEPORELLO: What a mess! What an idea!
DON GIOVANNI: What fun! What sport!
LEPORELLO: I feel ice cold!
DON GIOVANNI: I want to make him tremble!
LEPORELLO: O most genteel statue,
although you are of marble . . .
Ah, master, my master!
Look! Look!
How he keeps his eyes fixed on us!
DON GIOVANNI: You die! You die!
Sir, my master
LEPORELLO: No, no, no, no! Wait, wait!
Sir, my master --
mark well, not I --
would like to have supper with you!
[THE STATUE nods its head in assent.]
Ah, ah, ah! What a scene this is!
O heavens, it nodded its head!
DON GIOVANNI: Go away! You're a buffoon!
LEPORELLO: Look, look, look again, master!
DON GIOVANNI: And what am I supposed to look at?
LEPORELLO: With his marble head
[nodding his head in imitation of the statue]
he's going like this, like this!
DON GIOVANNI and LEPORELLO: With his marble head
he's going like this, like this!
DON GIOVANNI [to THE STATUE]: Speak, if you can:
will you come to supper?
will you come to supper?
STATUE OF THE COMMENDATORE: Yes.
LEPORELLO: I can scarcely move, oh gods!
My strength is failing
For mercy's sake let's be off!
Let's get away from here!
DON GIOVANNI [overlapping]: Indeed the scene is bizarre.
Will he come, the good old man, to supper?
Let's go prepare it!
Let's head for there!
[They go off together!]
Ruggero Raimondi (bs), Don Giovanni; José van Dam (bs-b), Leporello; John Macurdy (bs), Commendatore; Orchestra of the Théâtre National de l'Opéra de Paris, Lorin Maazel, cond. CBS-Sony, recorded June-July 1978
Picking up earlier, at the start of the recitative:
Cesare Siepi (bs), Don Giovanni; Fernando Corena (bs), Leporello; Giorgio Tozzi (bs), Commendatore; Metropolitan Opera Chorus and Orchestra, Karl Böhm, cond. Live performance, Dec. 14, 1957
Bernd Weikl (b), Don Giovanni; Gabriel Bacquier (b), Leporello; Kurt Moll (bs), Commendatore; London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded Oct.-Nov. 1978
Again, pity the poor impresario who has to provide the production with a vocally adequate statue, and think a kind thought for the stage director who has to enable a statue to both sing and drop in for supper.
I'M GOING TO LEAVE THE SUPPER SCENE
ITSELF FOR SEPARATE CONSIDERATION
Because I think this time we really do we to deal legitimately with the opera's "final scene," and not just the Commendatore episode of it. Next week, in all probability.
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