Rating: 
Summary: Magnificent!
Review: A truly gripping and dramatic film. This is cinematic opera at its best, bringing music and theatre exultantly to life on screen. Enjoy the lustrous costumes and beautiful performances. If anyone doubted that opera still has a place in today's world of drama then this will truly show them!Magnificent!
Rating: 
Summary: Bungled Final Scene
Review: Don Giovanni is one of the greatest, if not the greatest
opera's ever written, and part of the reason why is the
combination of light and dark and humour and seriousness.
The finale of the second act where Don Giovanni is
confronted with the ghost of Il Commendatore contains
some of the most chilling and awe-inspiring music ever
written and this was really badly done in the movie. One does not see the Bass voice singer at all, and rather than
a ghost that moves, we see the back of a lifeless statue!!
Then there is also a servant who stands beside Don Giovanni with a blank expression on his face, looking completely incongruous beside the Don and Leporello who are looking terrified! This left a bad taste in the mouth. The director should have stuck to something more like a stage
production.
Rating:
Summary: The Great Opera Never Looked Better
Review: Don Giovanni, dark, comic, is Mozar'ts greatest Italian opera. If you have seen Amadeus, then you will love this filmed version of the opera. It is stunning, shot in beautiful Italy, with lavish costume and a terrific performance. Maazel conducting, the talents of the great Kiri Te Kenawa (Dona Elvira), Berganza (Zerlina) Van Dam (as the Commandatore) and Edda Moser (Dona Ana) and of course the Don has never sounded more scheming. It is a tale of the legendary lover, frustrated in his romantic conquest of Dona Ana whose slain father returns to life in the famous dinner scene. The moralistic ending, after we see the stubborn Don's persuit of women, his witty sidekick Leporello, and the many intricate plots sorrounding him by Elvira, Dona Ana and her brother who have vowed revenge on the Don. It is a terrific opera and frankly, no greater film version out there. Look no further. This is the Don Giovanni to watch.
Rating: 
Summary: DVD-company admits this DVD should not be released
Review: From inside information from the company: Something went wrong during the soundtransfer. Expensive to remake this DVD. Majority of buyers will not complain...
Rating: 
Summary: SUBLIME film, but the sound is just AWFUL !
Review: Having seen this film years and years ago in the cinema at least twice, I jumped at the chance to get it on DVD when I saw that it was released. I wasn't disappointed - if you can abstract from, say, Dame Kiri te Kanawa, walking around in a corn field singing in Dolby stereo, you are in for a rare treat ! Aaaah, the settings, the costumes, the singers, the time details are just fantastic ! Especially Dame Kiri is at the height at her vocal powers and possesses enough dramatic flair to act as well as sing but the show stopper MUST be Kenneth Riegel, singing his heart out in "Il Mio Tesoro" - I have rarely heard a more heart-felt and passionate rendition of the aria ! This film would definitely get 5 stars if it hadn't been for the poor sound transfer ! On the back it is marked "digitally mastered audio" and "Dolby Surround" - full of anticipation I switched on my dolby surround system only having to switch it off again and go for "normal stereo". Sometimes during the film it sounded as if the singers were singing inside a tin can so I have to deduct a start for bad sound remastering - otherwise maybe the BEST opera adaptation for the screen EVER !
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely breathtaking!
Review: I cannot say enough about this video. I would give it more than five stars if I could. It is the best imaginable performance of Don Giovanni. The film is extremely rich visually: the setting (in the Palladian villas of Vicenza) is splendid and the costumes beautiful. The acting is as good as or better than in any straight film. Losey's production is carefully thought out down to the last detail; I find something new to delight in every time I watch it. But all this would be nothing were it not for the singing. No other recording of Don Giovanni can rival this one. Teresa Berganza is a sympathetic and engaging Zerlina. Kiri Te Kanawa, with her incomparably lovely voice, is magnificent as Elvira, one of the great interpreters of this role. The crowning glory of the film is the Don Giovanni of Ruggero Raimondi. He is indescribable, the perfect Don Giovanni; next to him, all others are as nothing. Listening to and watching him is a glorious experience. I highly encourage any lover of this opera to purchase not only this video but the CD soundtrack (CBS Records); both have provided me with endless joy.
Rating: 
Summary: Problematic
Review: I found this flimed version of Don Giovanni to be extremely disappointing. First and foremost are technical issues, specifically the sound. In short, it is wretched. Dim, washed out, low volume, congested, distorted - like listening through a cheap transistor radio. I have a very high quality hi-fi system, and have my DVD player fed into powerful amplifiers which in turn are fed into two large full range speakers, and even with all these advantages, the sound was beyond bad. Even with the volume turned way up, and treble and bass boosted I could derive no enjoyment from the music, which is by far the most important element in ANY opera production. Moving onto the film itself, it seems to me that the whole manages to be less than the sum of its parts. Many scenes are thoughfully shot, and the on-location scenery is beautiful, but overall effect is oddly detatched and cold, and the production never really catches fire, as any great Don Giovanni must. I've seen many staged versions of this opera that possessed far more vitality and and a greater sense of realism than this one, despite its attempts of offering a "real life" version of the opera. In fact, after viewing many operas on DVD over the past year, I have come to the conclustion that "filmed" versions of operas rarely work well. There seems to be something vital lost in the process of doing hollywood-style scene-by-scene acting to a lip-synched pre-recorded soundtrack. Consequently all the the opera DVD's that have truly captivated me are live recordings of staged performances. The immediacy of communication present at a live performance simply has not been present in any movie-style film version I have yet seen. Having heard all of the current contenders (Karajan, Muti, Conlon, Harnoncourt, and this one), in my opinion there is no truly first-rate Don Giovanni on DVD at the present time. The one that comes closest is the Conlon, which is very good overall, and will at least hold you over until a first-rate production becomes available.
Rating:
Summary: The perfect opera to be your first!
Review: I got this copy of "Il dissoluto punuto," ossai "Il Don Giovanni" for Christmas. This was my first opera, and I am astounded. I'm hooked on this style of entertainment, now. Kiri Te Kanawa and Ruggero Raimondi are the perfect opera performers to introduce you to opera. They both have wonderful voices and can act like nobody's business. Enough about the main performers. When I got this, I was expecting it to be a film of a stage performance.. and that's not at all what it was. These "opera films" are absolutely wonderful. Kind of unusual and take a bit to get used to, but are very nice. Excellent film. Great performance of the scene that made me want the opera (Don Giovanni, a cena teco). I love the happy, bouncy quality of the marriage party, where we first meet Masetto and his wife. It's so Mozart! I never really understood the purpose of the valet in black. (O.o). Mozart can be so intriguing... he was my favorite composer to begin with, and this only increased it. Great opera to be your first. I strongly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: The perfect opera to be your first!
Review: I got this copy of "Il dissoluto punuto," ossai "Il Don Giovanni" for Christmas. This was my first opera, and I am astounded. I'm hooked on this style of entertainment, now. Kiri Te Kanawa and Ruggero Raimondi are the perfect opera performers to introduce you to opera. They both have wonderful voices and can act like nobody's business. Enough about the main performers. When I got this, I was expecting it to be a film of a stage performance.. and that's not at all what it was. These "opera films" are absolutely wonderful. Kind of unusual and take a bit to get used to, but are very nice. Excellent film. Great performance of the scene that made me want the opera (Don Giovanni, a cena teco). I love the happy, bouncy quality of the marriage party, where we first meet Masetto and his wife. It's so Mozart! I never really understood the purpose of the valet in black. (O.o). Mozart can be so intriguing... he was my favorite composer to begin with, and this only increased it. Great opera to be your first. I strongly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: The perfect introduction.
Review: I have a very personal relation to that production. Being a teenage vandal I used to record heavy metal music over the operatic masterpieces on Decca's cassettes - there was a shortage of a quality tape in Russia these days. One day in was Don Giovanni soundtrack's turn to fall victim - my friend's Black Sabbath album yearned to be duplicated. I was in a strange mood so I just turned on the opera to make things worse for me - the usual teenage masochism. The sounds streaming from Hi-Fi made me listen till the end. Then I pushed the rewind and listened once more. Got hold of the film next day. Yesterday was a day of my 100th viewing - give or take a couple times. Since then I've seen a lot, but Losey's film is still my favourite. The movie is a perfect introduction to the world of opera. It takes care of many preconceptions that prevent lots of people from enjoying the genre. The casting is perfect. Many of us have a problem with separating a voice and a body. Young lovely virgin sung by colossal diva does not look veritable. Wrinkled and potbellied owner of the divine tenor voice makes us wish for a younger and leaner replacement for the romantic lover's part. How to solve that? The sensous lips of deliciously breasted Sophie Lourent were opening to the voice of Renata Tebaldi in Aida's production but the result is pure kitsch. Enter the Losey's masterpiece. Everyone is perfectly cast. Ruggero Raimondi makes you care for the character, despise the lecher and respect the brave man who challenges Fate. He contributes his eyes to the best closeups in opera films, his non-athletic body - to the bathtub scene, when the fluffy clothes are shod and we see that sagging flesh - the striking visual commentary on the nature of sin. Kiri Te Kanawa is passionately unrestrained, she stalks the monster, warns the potential victims...and loves him till the final pyrotechnics. I suspect well after that too. Donna Anna cradles her purity so fervently that you begin to suspect that such fervor is meant to fight the temptation that is equally strong. Don Ottavio is corpulent and not very brave - his self-inflammatory singing warms him up for the task ahead. And he looks funny when informed that after all these trials the physical consumation of his love is postponed for a whole year! The rest of the singers are also the perfect match - except maybe Theresa Berganza's Zerlina, who is lamely coquettish and unconvincing. The production was filmed in Vicenza, the villas, the canals and gardens combine in a world of beauty. And very laconical, truly classic beauty that is. No dusty curtains of theater - just marble, sky and greenery. That production is terribly underrated, it does not occupy the place it deserves - the DVD is a must, but there is still no disc, while a host of mediocre opera films has already got their tickets to eternity.
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