[Met Performance] CID:147300



Don Giovanni
Metropolitan Opera House, Fri, March 5, 1948




Don Giovanni (138)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart | Lorenzo Da Ponte
Don Giovanni
Ezio Pinza

Donna Anna
Rose Bampton

Don Ottavio
Charles Kullman

Donna Elvira
Jarmila Novotna

Leporello
Salvatore Baccaloni

Zerlina
Frances Greer

Masetto
Hugh Thompson

Commendatore
Jerome Hines


Conductor
Fritz Busch







Review 1:

Review signed A. V. B. in the Herald Tribune

"Don Giovanni"

Its 7th Performance of Season Given by Metropolitan

The season's seventh performance of Mozart's "Don Giovanni" at the Metropolitan Opera House last night presented two of the company's younger singers in roles they had not sung here previously. They were Frances Greer as Zerlina and Hugh Thompson as Masetto. The otherwise familiar cast included Ezio Pinza, Rose Bampton, Jarmila Novotna, Charles Kullman, Salvatore Baccaloni and Jerome Hines. Fritz Busch again conducted.

As members of a cast in which standards of performance ran rather low, Miss Greer and Mr. Thompson, though often somewhat weak in carrying power, gave a clean account of the notes that was not always characteristic of some of the more imposing singers. They sang in time and in tune, and did not allow clowning to make a rather painful travesty of Mozart's masterly themes as, for example, Mr. Baccaloni, in particular, continues, to do. Yet, in their acting, they conveyed the humor of their parts.

Mr. Thompson, to be sure, would have benefited from more forceful resonance in his efforts to communicate the petulance he expressed visually with such charm. Miss Greer's singing had a certain legato in "Batti, Batti" but in general there was too little of this quality to animate her melodies. She had insufficient breath support to project them, notably when they descended below her intrinsically pretty, topmost tones. One had to be content with a pleasantly musical, if somewhat feeble, quality.



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