Mattia Battistini, "Deh, vieni alla finestra", Mozart: Don Giovanni (recorded in 1902)

[francesca7564]

Great document !!!

TY Tim ...

:-)

[Kievest]

Such seductive singing and patrician good looks could lure the most innocent

woman out onto the balcony and into a world of trouble. Thank you for posting

and to paulostroff99 for sharing! Priceless historic post!

[paulostroff99]

Awesome! TY Tim for postng.

[EdmundStAustell]

Now this a real eye-opener, stylistically speaking. Singers of Mozart would not today take such liberties today with the music. But for him it works very well. Mozart was not the god then he is now, and he was treated much more casually in times past. Also, he sings in a very sly and insinuating way, like opening the open O's toward the beginning of the aria to were they are almost A's. Tesara for tesoro, etc. That's a very roguish was of talking. I'll bet he was one heck of a good actor.

[aaronsande]

@EdmundStAustell From now on when I receive criticism of my vowel pronunciation, I am going to blame it on my roguishness ;D

[EdmundStAustell]

@aaronsande Ha, ha. Yep. You can tell them it's just your nature.  Open E's and O's in Italian are tricky sounds. The E is the worst of the two. It's like the E in the English word 'egg," and if you can imagine an irate Italian woman screaming at someone, "EH, Mario! Ascolta!" you can get the picture. They are uncharacteristically harsh sounds in an otherwise beautiful language.

[aaronsande]

@EdmundStAustell E? You mean the sound represented as "EH"? (I'm assuming you aren't one of those who pronounces "egg" as "aig")

E is not so hard...the A sound is the hardest for me, because if you listen to Caruso, for example, it's not really "AH", but "AAAAAA" almost as in A-bsolutely. Hard to sing, for some reason...

[meltzerboy]

Battistini is my favorite baritone, bar none. I know he takes liberties with the score in note-values, ornaments, and individual phrasing and style; however, there is always an artistic imagination behind it, as well as some showing off, to be sure. And his voice is so beautiful, his tone production so bel canto, his breath control (especially in the earliest recordings) so incredible, that the idiosyncrasies do not bother me in the least. Thanks for sharing, Tim!

[Herur22]

I like him very much. And a very excellent quality of the recording.