Episode 004: Don Giovanni with Sylvia Korman
Does Don Giovanni ever actually end? Or are we just living in a constant state of deferral with a final boss that will never be defeated? Critic Sylvia Korman joins us to delve into this question and more, including why this is your favorite philosopher's opera, whether Donna Anna is a Horse Girl, Zerlina’s high femme camp antics, Leporello in the Manosphere, and recent productions of Don Giovanni at the Met and Berlin's Komische Oper.
Additional topics include: tenors who @ Elon Musk, the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, Kierkegaard, and the Bardo.
Follow Sylvia on Twitter at @cowboyverismo. Follow their alter ego, People Mad at Opera, at @operacomments. Read their reviews on Parterre.
Read friend of the pod Ben Miller’s piece on the Komische Oper’s Don Giovanni (which incorporated the 20 minutes of Mozart’s Requiemthat he had written) in the New York Times.
Simon says:
“Don Giovanni is the greatest opera ever composed. Words to this effect, at least, were written by three men with peculiarly sound equipment to pass judgment—Gioacchino Rossini, Charles Gounod, and Richard Wagner. Beethoven preferred The Magic Flute, for he thought the subject of the Don too immoral.”
Don Giovanni: The story
Further reading
Kristi Brown-Montesano: Understanding the Women of Mozart’s Operas (2007)
Lydia Goehr, Daniel Herwitz: The Don Giovanni Moment: Essays on the Legacy of an Opera (2006)
Jonathan Miller: Don Giovanni: Myths of Seduction and Betrayal (1991)
Julian Rushton: Cambridge Opera Handbooks: Don Giovanni (1981)
Richard Will: Don Giovanni Captured: Performance, Media, Myth (2022)
Catherine Clément (Betsy Wing, trans.): Opera, or the Undoing of Women (1988)
Anthony Arblaster: Viva La Liberta! Politics in Opera (1997)
Lorenzo Da Ponte: Memoirs (1823; NYRB Classics edition published in 2000)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Robert Spaethling, ed.): Mozart's Letters, Mozart's Life (2000)
Søren Kierkegaard (Alastair Hannay, trans.): Either/Or: A Fragment of Life (1992 ed.)
Playlist
“Madamina, il catalogo è questo”
René Pape / 2006
“Mille torbidi pensieri”
Barbara Frittoli, Marina Rebeka, Mojca Erdmann, Ramón Vargas, Luca Pisaroni, Joshua Bloom / 2011
“Vedrai carino”
Patricia Nolz / 2021
“Il mio tesoro”
Michael Spyres / 2021
“Mi tradi quell’alma ingrata”
Lorraine Hunt Lieberson / 1990
“Non mi dir bel idol mio”
Annette Dasch / 2008
Finale (“Gia la mensa e preparata”…”Don Giovanni, a cenar teco”)
Christopher Maltman, Erwin Schrott, Anatoli Kocherga / 2008
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