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Which is better?

Don Giovanni versus The Magic Flute

11K views 73 replies 33 participants last post by  Pugg 
#1 · (Edited)
Explanations, as always, thoroughly welcome but not necessary.
 
#2 · (Edited)
Wait, if I choose Don Giovanni, are you implying that I hate The Magic Flute? If I choose The Magic Flute, does that mean I can't stand Don Giovanni?

I refuse to stand for this nihilistic game you're playing. Tell me which is the answer I'm supposed to choose!

More seriously: I love both works, but chose the earlier because its wonderful mixture of the serious and the farcical delves into shades of both dark and light that The Magic Flute doesn't. Then again, someone could rightly counter that there's nothing in Don Giovanni that could touch the marvelous lightness of the music for the trio of boys, or the weighty solemnity of Sarastro's proclamations.
 
#50 ·
I am with Mahlerian on this. I can not feel that considering contentiousness of some discussions I do not want to give the impressions that I think one of the works is better than the other.

Having said that I have seen both. As far as the music is concerned I like them both. But as theater I prefer Don Giovanni. But this is my just my personal bias.
 
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#3 · (Edited)
Don Giovanni by a country mile in a New York minute.

The Magic Flute has some nice musical moments, but I have never found it very interesting as drama.
 
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#16 · (Edited)
Sloe, I admire your consistency even if I don't share your view. :lol:

With some knowledge of Italian and good singers/actors, I find Mozart's recitatives very entertaining.
 
#5 ·
The Magic Flute for (among other things) P-p-p-papagino/a! I love them so much more than the primary couple. As for Don Giovanni, I know he gets his comeuppance at the end, but it's just so hard for me to watch him be such an utter slimeball for most of it. I don't totally dislike Don Giovanni (the opera), and the music is excellent of course, but watching Don Giovanni's behavior kind of makes me want to take a shower.
 
#8 · (Edited)
I love the sex in Don Giovanni, but it suffers from a fatal flaw - the gloating self righteous ending. So of the two I prefer Magic Flute. Though I think the music in DG is good, and I'm not crazy about the story in The Flute. So probably neither. I choose Cosi or Figaro.

The other killer problem with DG is the strangeness, unrealness, of the title role. The way he wills his own destruction at the end.
 
#14 ·
I love the sex in Don Giovanni, but it suffers from a fatal flaw - the gloating self righteous ending. So of the two I prefer Magic Flute. Though I think the music in DG is good, and I'm not crazy about the story in The Flute. So probably neither. I choose Cosi or Figaro.

The other killer problem with DG is the strangeness, unrealness, of the title role. The way he wills his own destruction at the end
.
That rules out a whole raft of operas, I would think! :lol:
 
#9 ·
Don Giovanni, but only just...
 
#19 ·
On the subject of Mozart's operas, Beethoven seems to have been something of a nationalistic prig. " 'Die Zauberflote' will always remain Mozart's greatest work, for in it he for the first time showed himself to be a German musician. 'Don Juan' still has the complete Italian cut; besides our sacred art ought never permit itself to be degraded to the level of a foil for so scandalous a subject."
 
#23 ·
Hi Pugg, I am very curious why you say TMF. I know you are an opera expert and I'm, well...... I just LOVE to sing along to almost all of Don Giovanni. A question that I have been meaning to ask since I joined TC: I have never found the Queen of the Night's aria terrifying; it is extremely weak to me: have you ever heard this from anyone else? would you please explain to me why everyone else says it's terrifying? Now a good baritone playing Don Giovanni that is pretty awesome.
 
#21 ·
Is secco recitative or just regular speech in the case of the Magic Flute really that big of a deal? I mean such a small portion of these operas consist of these things. The majority of it is music, of course. These 30 second intervals of non-music really turn people off that much?
 
#25 · (Edited)
It's a difficult question, though! Don G is powerful and mixes buffa elements and naturalism with opera seria-ish characters and the supernatural. It's a Romantic opera; this mixture of genres is what Hugo advocated and what grand opera composers and Verdi would do. But much of the second act is a series of setpiece arias that don't advance the action.

Magic Flute has some impressive music, but has a pantomime plot and the German tendency to metaphysical obscurantism (see Wagner, Frau ohne Schatten).
 
#33 ·
It's a bit like that Meryl Streep flick, the one where she did a hammy foreign accent. Which one was it? Oh yeah - all of them. No wait! Sophie's Choice. You're sending one of my babies to the history books, man!

Don Giovanni for me, though. But I'd keep a copy of TMF spinning round my brain, unforgotten, undimmed, with its little cute face in a golden locket, close to my heart...
 
#55 ·
It's a bit like that Meryl Streep flick, the one where she did a hammy foreign accent. Which one was it? Oh yeah - all of them. No wait! Sophie's Choice.
According to my father, who was an immigrant from Poland, in "Sophie's Choice" Streep did a perfect middle class Polish woman in accent, carriage and gesture. He was surprised and impressed when finding out she was American, and was a fan ever since.
 
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