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Something a little different this Friday folks. The love of music comes in many shapes and sizes, we here at DWR appreciate peoples’ dedication to their art. This fine individual has decided to pursue his love of Mozart via the crystal harp; I say more power to him.
Don Giovanni premiered in Vienna in 1787. The author of the libretto, Lorenzo da Ponte, described it as a dramma giocoso, a work that includes both comic and tragic elements. The comedy includes a variety of mishaps, while the tragedy includes attempted rape, murder, and finally the Don being dragged straight to Hell, complete with a chorus of demons.
The background to the scene above: Don Giovanni happens upon a wedding party. Zerlina, played by Joan Rodgers, is the bride. Giovanni decides he wants Zerlina, and arranges for her to become separated from the rest of the wedding party, including the groom. He tries to seduce her, but the seduction is interrupted when one of Giovanni’s previous victims happens on the scene. In the video clip, Zerlina is re-united with her future husband, who is extremely jealous of the attention Giovanni is paying to her. Zerlina wins his affection back with a combination of flirtation and self-abasement.
I’m currently working on learning this aria. There are a lot of things that make it fun to sing. It’s fun to sing flirtatious characters. The melody is relatively simple, but is entertaining from a technical perspective, with its interesting leaps and runs. Done well, it’s an excellent show-off piece. I hope to get it to that point.
I also hate it. It seems to be a case of Feminism Ruins Everything. To me, a woman who has grown up expecting to be treated as an autonomous human being and the equal of any man, it’s a really disturbing piece. Masetto should be reassuring Zerlina that he will do his best to support and protect her, not blaming her for Giovanni’s unwanted attention! And, given that Masetto is being a jealous prick, Zerlina should be tearing him several new orifices, not offering to stand like an unresisting lamb to be beaten and then kiss his hand. Trying to wrap my emotions around the idea that Zerlina’s behaviour could be realistic for a woman of her social status in that era, is sobering. It’s not really that long ago, after all, that women really did need to get married Or Else. And that any suspicion of non-virginity or infidelity would lead to Or Else. A woman like Zerlina might have been so totalized in her identity that it would never occur to her to expect anything but jealousy from Masetto, and that she would in fact blame herself for having attracted Giovanni’s attention. Unfortunately, when I’m as disturbed as this idea makes me, I don’t sing well. Still working on finding a way of singing this aria musically, without grossing myself out.
Mozart’s music is used during the opening scene of X-Men 2, as far set pieces go to establish a movies ‘tone’ I think this one works quite well. (ed. Fox is being all DMCAish on youtube as of late, thus the changing of the link)
Go here to watch it on dailymotion.com.
For the more classically inclined, please see this video for the non teleporting, non-(physically)ass kicking version of Mozart’s Requiem.
The Requiem Mass in D minor (K. 626) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was composed in Vienna in 1791 and left unfinished at the composer’s death. A completion by Franz Xaver Süssmayr was delivered to Count Franz von Walsegg, who had anonymously commissioned the piece for a requiem Mass to commemorate the February 14 anniversary of his wife’s death.
It is one of the most enigmatic pieces of music ever composed, mostly because of the myths and controversies surrounding it, especially around how much of the piece was completed by Mozart before his death. The autograph manuscript shows the finished and orchestrated introit in Mozart’s hand, as well as detailed sketches of the Kyrie and the sequence Dies irae as far as the first nine bars of “Lacrimosa”, and the vocal parts of the offertory. It cannot be shown to what extent Süssmayr may have depended on now lost “scraps of paper” for the remainder; he later claimed the Sanctus and Agnus as his own.
Walsegg probably intended to pass the Requiem off as his own composition, as he is known to have done with other works. This plan was frustrated by a public benefit performance for Mozart’s widow Constanze. A modern contribution to the mythology is Peter Shaffer‘s 1979 play Amadeus, in which the mysterious messenger with the commission is the masked Antonio Salieri who intends to claim authorship for himself.
The Requiem is scored for 2 basset horns in F, 2 bassoons, 2 trumpets in D, 3 trombones (alto, tenor & bass), timpani (2 drums), violins, viola and basso continuo (cello, double bass, and organ). The vocal forces include soprano, contralto, tenor, and bass soloists and a SATB mixed choir.
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