Harrison-Maretzek Italian Opera: Don Giovanni

“A good performance of ‘Don Giovanni’ is a delight to be long remembered, and the performance last night was certainly more than a good one; as a whole it was excellent, and in some of its principal parts it was nearly perfect.  Madame Rosa was the Donna Anna. She hardly produced such a vivid impression as she did by her Leonora on Wednesday, but nobody could have sung the part better, and the letter aria which she restored to the second act was one of those superb pieces of vocalism which she only can give us. Miss Ronconi’s Elvira was weak. Miss Hauck, as Zerlina, achieved a very marked and well-deserved success. We have rarely seen her more sprightly and charming than in this delightful part, and rarely heard her pure voice and correct style with more pleasure. The La ci darem duet with Bellini was encored, and the audience seemed disposed to require a repetition of everything she sang. Pancani was the Don Ottavio. The music is not entirely suitable for a robust tenor, and his voice was not in perfect order; but in several scenes, and particularly in the Il mio Tesoro, he was excellent. Of Bellini’s Don Giovanni we have only to say that it was quite equal to his usual high standard, and his acting in the last scene was particularly good. Ronconi’s Leporello is famous and funny; but we cannot like it. He appears as a vulgar buffoon, ready to sacrifice everything for the sake of a laugh. In the impressive last act, when the tragedy culminates in the awful apparition of the statue of the Commendatore, the spectacle of the clownish servant hiding victims under the table and distracted now by terror and now by gluttony, was so incongruous as to be painful. When a great artist so lowers himself, the vulgar may laugh, but the judicious grieve.”

“PIKE’S OPERA HOUSE.—Mozart’s chef d’oeuvre, ‘Don Giovanni’ was given last night (which by the way, is the last night of the present brilliant season) before an immense audience. It is something singular and also gratifying to Messrs. Pike and Harrison that nearly every audience during the season has been an unprecedentedly large one. The opera was magnificently sung last night [list of solo cast members] and in the rest of the cast, the chorus and orchestra there was not a defect that the most captious might take offence at.”