Mozart - Don Giovanni (Deutsche Grammophon, 2 DVDs)

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An all-star cast featuring Deutsche Grammophon artist Anna Netrebko, Bryn Terfel and Anna Prohaska, delivers a sensational new recording of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, conducted by Daniel Barenboim at the start of his inaugural season as Music Director of La Scala.

Recorded live at the opening of the 2011-12 La Scala season, Don Giovanni is now set to be released in time for Bryn Terfel’s 50th birthday on 9 November 2015. It also ties in with the traditional opening of the new season at La Scala – 7 December, the feast-day of St Ambrose, patron saint of Milan.

It features stunning performances from Anna Netrebko as Donna Anna in her La Scala debut, Peter Mattei as a swaggering Don Giovanni, Bryn Terfel as his sidekick Leporello and Anna Prohaska as Zerlina. Anna Netrebko made her international breakthrough at the 2002 Salzburg Festival as Donna Anna, among the most powerful and moving of all soprano roles. “Netrebko’s Donna Anna was thrilling in her nobility and ease of execution,” noted the Observer (London) following her La Scala debut. “She is on grand form.” The New York Times, meanwhile, hailed her “compelling portrayal”. Director Robert Carsen’s staging of Don Giovanni opens by turning a distorting mirror on the performers, the audience and the theatre itself, in what the Observer called “a fabulous visual coup”.

01. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Don Giovanni, K527