Don Giovanni

Don Giovanni (1979)

The famous nobleman Don Giovanni travels from town to town conquering women’s hearts, until the troubles he has created return to his own doorstep.

Date of release
1979-11-06
TMDB
6.9 / 10 (42)
Runtime
2h 56m
Genres
Drama, Music
Director
Joseph Losey

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: Don Giovanni
  • Awards: 2 · Nominations: 5. Including: César Award for Best Production Design; César Award for Best Editing

Don Giovanni is a 1979 musical film directed and produced by Joseph Losey, based on Mozart's classic 1787 opera Don Giovanni, itself based on the Don Juan legend of a seducer, destroyed by his excesses. The film stars Ruggero Raimondi in the title role, along with John Macurdy, Edda Moser, Kiri Te Kanawa, Kenneth Riegel, José van Dam and Teresa Berganza. Mozart's score was conducted by Lorin Maazel and performed by the Orchestre de l'Opéra national de Paris.

Production

In the opera, the action supposedly takes place in Spain, but Mozart's librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte wrote in Italian, and this film uses locations in Venice and Murano. In particular, the film features buildings by Palladio in and around the city of Vicenza (Basilica Palladiana, Villa Rotonda, Villa Caldogno and Teatro Olimpico).

Typically for a musical film, the singers recorded their aria performances separately, and lip-synched in their film performances. As Noel Megahey notes, "dragging the orchestra of the Opéra de Paris around the locations for the length of the production for a live recording is completely unfeasible." However, the recitatives were recorded live on-set, with the actors accompanied on harpsichord by Janine Reiss.

The total budget for the film was about $7,000,000.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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