An attractive looking production, very traditional but lively and detailed in cloak swirling commedia dell’arte style, in Mozart-era costume and massive neo-Classical sets. Out of the old school, is Muti’s conducting, …reasonably brisk and dramatically effective. As such, though it’s not my favourite reading, I very much enjoyed it.
We’re lucky to have Sir Thomas Allen’s Don, though a decade after his Glyndebourne triumph in the role. His acting is more youthful and psychotically magnetic than in James Conlon’s Cologne recording. ‘La ci darem la mano’…an unsettling mix of seduction and stalking. Francisco Araiza is an ardently Italianate Ortavio. Ann Murray is…Donna Elvira, imperious and touching. Suzanne Mentzer’s sparkling but vulnerable Zerlina, convincing in her rapport with Natale de Carolis’s light-voiced…Mavetto. The chorus work a lot harder than they sometimes do at La Scala, to good effect. All told, this staging is much richer than Michael Hampe’s worthy but rather drab incarnations for Karajan and Conlon. At mid-price this is very appealing.’
- Gramophone
Daniela Dessi and Delores Ziegler lead the cast in Mozart's brilliant and witty opera, as the two women whose faithfulness in the face of romantic love is ruthlessly tested in Da Ponte's comic tale. Mozart lavishes some of the finest music ever written on the unfolding story of the two sisters' chaotic and fickle love affairs with their two Italian army officers.
