Parepa-Rosa English Opera: Don Giovanni

“The last week of the present brilliant opera season opened last night with a fine house, one of the best of all operas and a good performance. The three prime donne of the troupe, Mme. Parepa-Rosa, Jenny Van Zandt and Clara Doria; the tenor, Tom Karl; Campbell, Aynsley Cook, Seguin and Ryse were in the cast. Mme. Rosa sang the grand letter aria superbly and Mme. Van Zandt made a charming Zerlina. Cook was the best Leporello we have had here for years, and Campbell a dashing Don Juan. Chorus and orchestra did their duty, no easy one either, nobly.”

“‘Don Giovanni,’ which was so highly praised on the occasion of its first performance by the English company on Monday of this week, was repeated last night. Mozart’s greatest work seems to us but ill adapted to the English language. The elevated character of the music is constantly at variance with words that are common place, and turns of expression that are too strongly suggestive of the vulgar incidents of every-day life. Indeed, we are not certain but that the lyric music, in her hours of grandest inspiration, ought always to speak in a foreign tongue, that she may not shock us by the incongruity of words that are common and tones that are divine. Of the really great operas which Mr. Rosa has produced in English, ‘Oberon’ has probably met with the most decided popular success, partly because it was originally written to English words, and partly because it deals with certain remote regions and supernatural events which are poetic in any modern language. ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ and ‘Lucretia Borgia’ came next—the first because it is one of those perennial comedies that are laughable in all quarters of the world, wedded to the most vital of music, the second because its plot (whatever history may say—and history has tried to prove that Lucretia was a most excellent woman) is removed from the range of possible human experience. But in ‘Don Giovanni’ we have for the first part of the evening a purely modern story, told in common work a-day language, and yet united with some of the greatest music ever written for the lyric stage. To cover this incongruity we need the vail of a foreign language. It is not until the supernatural machinery is introduced in the latter part of the opera that the work becomes really impressive in the vernacular dress.

 

Nevertheless, the Academy audiences have received it with marked favor. The greater part of the applause has been bestowed of course upon Madame Parepa Rosa. Few roles, of the many she has filled, fit her better than that of Donna Anna,--and we may add that there is no music (except Handel’s) for which she seems to have such a special aptitude as for Mozart’s. The next in merit last night was Mrs. Van Zandt, whose Zerlina was everything that Zerlina ought to be,--graceful, vivacious, tender, fascinating. Miss Doria as Donna Elvira, Mr. Campbell as Don Giovanni, Mr. Karl as Ottavio, Mr. Aynsley Cook as Leporello, and Mr. Seguin as Masetto, added to the general effect. Mr. Cook deserves especial mention—not because he was better than the others, but because he was so very much better than his own Duke Alfonso in ‘Lucretia.’ We cannot say that the whole performance was a brilliant one,--indeed it was heavy, and the chief artists, with a few exceptions, were dull,--but it merits honorable mention, and will serve as a prelude to the brilliant sensational entertainment with which the season is to close to-night.”