The overall character of the Met and Salzburg performances is cast by Walter. If, like me, you grew up thinking of Walter in terms of warm, noble Brahms, Mahler, and Beethoven that could at times seem a trifle gradual and undramatized, and Wagner that could at times fall downright slack, the Met ’40s broadcasts (besides this one, Fidelio, Ballo, Forza) will disabuse you. This is an ebullient reading at predominantly quick tempos, but one with a dark undercurrent and an unmistakeable drive toward the two great finales. I won’t argue for Don Giovanni as tragic, but it most certainly has a cosmic dimension. Its comedy plays in the shadow of mortality, and it is clearly that premonitory awareness that governs the progress of Walter’s interpretation, and requires the stature of a Pinza for its fulfillment. The final scene of this opera has had many impressive statements, but I know of none as powerful as this one, wherein Walter brings the cosmic, daemonic element home and Pinza’s heretofore unconquerable basso cantante, with all stops pulled out, comes up against the crushing force of Cordon’s deeper, rock-steady bass. Cordon’s career never quite developed the way it seemed destined to, but of all the Commendatores I’ve heard, only Ludwig Weber at his best might be comparable. It’s a shame the sound isn’t better, but I’m sure you’ll get the idea.

And so to La Scala, and from the theatre of the ear and mind’s eye to that of the screen. When I surveyed the then-available videos of Don Giovanni for The Metropolitan Opera Guide to Opera on Video in 1993 (there were seven of them) I suggested that three were viable as screen entertainments. These were the 1977 Glyndebourne production directed by Sir Peter Hall, the Drottningholm period-practice version of 1987, and Peter Sellars’ radical displacement to the contemporaneous South Bronx. These versions shared no aesthetic, had very little in common musically or dramatically, and were the three least glamorously sung of the bunch. Only one of them (the Glyndebourne/Hall) even coincided with my own preferences with respect to production philosopohy. But because on video, opera’s ear/eye priorities are reversed from those of live performance, those were the ones that played best, and that I imagined would wear well upon repetition.

One can’t sensibly compare video and audio recordings. But one can describe the experience of each, and since these came up in close proximity for me, I’ll say that whereas the Met ’42 version gives me the problem of having to burrow into it to extract a measure of its rewarding contents, the La Scala ’11 poses that of having to wall off major sections of it to salvage remnants of what I know is in the work. I have appetite left for only brief summaries of its goings-on in three areas: 1) What I can glean regarding Robert Carsen’s stage production, 2) The effect of RAI Milan’s video representation (Patrizia Carmine, Video Director), and 3) The singing and acting, as conveyed by camera and mike. It would constitute consumer fraud to evaluate Barenboim’s conducting—the eye takes over, the orchestra just hangs around. I would need to avert the screen’s gaze and listen through a second time, and I won’t be doing that. At those moments, beginning with the overture, in which the orchestra is in the clear or boils up for a few seconds, I get the impression of a plush reading, slower and softer-edged than Walter’s, and certainly well played.