For listeners who have always wanted to know what Italian baritone Giuseppe Taddei's 1953 Torino radio performance of the title role of Mozart's Don Giovanni sounded like but had missed its earlier pirated releases, this 2006 Urania release provides the solution. Better remembered these days as Leporello in Carlo Maria Giulini's classic 1959 studio recording, Taddei proves to be a standard-issue Don Juan -- sardonic, sweetly seductive, and utterly remorseless -- but he lacks the demonic fire to turn the role into more than ...
Read More
For listeners who have always wanted to know what Italian baritone Giuseppe Taddei's 1953 Torino radio performance of the title role of Mozart's Don Giovanni sounded like but had missed its earlier pirated releases, this 2006 Urania release provides the solution. Better remembered these days as Leporello in Carlo Maria Giulini's classic 1959 studio recording, Taddei proves to be a standard-issue Don Juan -- sardonic, sweetly seductive, and utterly remorseless -- but he lacks the demonic fire to turn the role into more than a star turn by a character actor. And for those who have always wanted to know what the rest of the cast was like that night, it likewise provides the answer. The men, particularly the agile Italo Tajo as Leporello and the monumental Antonio Zerbini as the Commendatore, are more than acceptable, while the women, especially the screechy Carla Gavazzi as Donna Elvira, are less than endurable. For a half-century-old radio performance, the cast could be described as...
Read Less