Luogo e data di registrazione		Centre in the Square, Kitchener, Ontario (Canada) - 23/26 Febrauary 1992
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer / Recording supervisor		Wolf Erichson
	Recording Engineers / Editing		Markus Heiland & Peter Laenger (Tritonus)
	Prima Edizione LP		-
	Prima Edizione CD		Sony / Vivarte - SK 53 119 - (CD) - durata 64' 26" - (p) 1993 - DDD
	Cover Art		Danse dans le parc by Antoine Watteau - Archiv für Kunst und Geschichte, Berlin
	Note		-

In February 1761, Ranieri de` Calzabigi (1714-95), a fascinating adventurer, operatic reformer and poet, arrived in Vienna. The first result of Calzabigi`s collaboration with Gluck was Don Juan ou le Festin de Pierre, a tragic ballet with choreography by the Florentine Gasparo Angiolini (1731-1803), a pupil of the former Ballet Master of the Vienna Court Theatre, Franz Hilverding von Waven (1710-68), who in turn was steeped in the new, dramatic ballet style of the great Jean-Georges Noverre (1727-1810). Angiolini, and not Calzabigi as might have been expected, wrote the elaborate foreword to the first libretto (facsimile in the new Bärenreiter score), and was also to do the choreography in Orfeo (1762). Don Juan was first performed on October 17, 1761 at the “Burgtheater” in Vienna, where it received the title Don Juan ou le Festin de Pierre. It followed a performance of Le Joueur by Jean-François Regnard (1655-1709). From the preface that Angiolini wrote to the original libretto, we learn that the decor was by Giovanni Maria (“Giulio III”) Quaglio; Angiolini also has much praise for the music by Gluck. From the diary of a member of the court, Count Carl von Zinzendorf, we have a first-hand description of the première of Don Juan: [October 17, 1761 ...] “At the theatre they danced Le Joueur, and then a ballet pantomime, Le Festin de Pierre. The subject is extremely sad, lugubrious and terrible. Don Juan sings a serenade to his mistress and enters her house. The Commander discovers them in the act, the men fight a duel and the Commander is mortally wounded and falls dead on the stage. He is carried away. Don Juan enters with some ladies and they dance a ballet, then he sits down to dinner, meanwhile the Commander arrives as a statue. All the merry-makers hide, Don Juan mocks him and imitates all the ghost's movements, he mounts a sandstone horse on the stage. Don Juan continues to mock him, the ghost leaves and all of a sudden hell is shown, the furies dance with torches of fire and torment Don Juan, at the back one sees beautiful fireworks which represent the fires of hell, one sees the devils flying about, the ballet lasts too long, finally the devils carry off Don Juan and throw themselves with him into a sea of fire. All this was very well done, the music most beautiful.” We read of the continued success of the new ballet in the entry for November 2: “Tout le monde étant à la Comédie allemande où on donne le Le Festin de Pierre (Everybody was at the German Theatre where the Stone Guest is being performed); and Zinzendorf reports on the conflagration which the fireworks in the piece caused on the next day, when the “Kärntnertortheater” burned down, killing the cashier and his wife: “On nous dit que le théâtre allemand brùloit. En effet nous vimes le Ciel tout rouge de ce côté.” (People tell us that the German Theatre was in flames. Indeed, from this side we could see the sky lit up all red.) Later they climbed on the ramparts to see the spectacle and found the Emperor there, too. Apart from much beautiful, indeed exquisite music, it is the final Larghetto, followed by a Chaconne (Allegro non troppo, in D minor) describing Don Juan's descent into hell, which is the central part of this historically important and musically fascinating score. Gluck later used it as an entr'acte in the Paris version of Orphée (“Air des Furies”; Act II between Scenes 1 and 2), and in this slightly different orchestration it became one of the composer's most famous pieces; and rightly so, but we miss in this later version the wonderfully dramatic Larghetto and also the leaner orchestration of the Allegro non troppo in the 1761 score. The Chaconne form, which is characteristically used to end ballets and even operas at this period (see even the Ballet Music to Mozart's Idomeneo, K.367), provides the base for what was, for many people in the audience that October night in 1761, the first piece of music to describe real fear. It is usually difficult to mark the beginning of a new school, or movement, with one specific work; but in the case of Don Juan, this final Chaconne is without any question father of the “Sturm und Drang” movement which in a few years would flood Austrian music. Even the key, D minor, was always to assume special qualities in the “Sturm und Drang”, its predecessors and its successors (e. g. harpsichord Concertos in this key by Johann Sebastian and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Haydns Symphony No. 26, Mozart's own Don Giovanni as well as other works e. g. the Quartet, K. 421, or the Piano Concerto, K. 466). Gluck's music not only started a movement of immense importance, but it was quite literally copied. We find Luigi Boccherini writing as the Finale of his Symphony La casa del diavolo an Introduction followed by an Allegro that, with some additions and interesting transformations (a description of which space forbids), is lifted straight from Don Juan. An even more unlikely tribute comes from Russia, where we find whole passages from Gluck's Don Juan (via the Orphée adaptation of Gluck himself) in a work by Evstignei Ipatovich Fomin (1761-1800) - Orfeo i Euridíca Melo-Dramma: Posto in Musica da E. I. Fomine Acade: Filarmonico a Pietroborgo (autograph title), first performed at St. Petersburg on January 13, 1792 - thus carrying this symbolic use of demonic D minor to the far north a whole generation later. Semiramis was the next ballet that Angiolini and Gluck, using Voltaire's tragedy, staged at the Vienna "Burgtheater" on January 31, 1765, as part of the wedding festivities of the Crown Prince Joseph (later Emperor [Joseph II]) with Maria Josepha of Bavaria. The action is as follows: Act I: In her palace, Semiramis, the legendary Queen of Assyria, has a horrifying dream: Ninus, the husband whom she caused to be assassinated, appears to her and vows revenge. Act II: A temple near the palace. Semiramis has chosen Ninias, a victorious general returning from the wars. He is conducted to the temple. Claps of thunder cast own the alter and the Statue of Ninus. The populace flees, terrified. Act III: A sacred wood. Ninus's tomb. The people prepare a sacrifice but flee when the Queen arrives. The tomb opens, Ninus appears and carries her within. Ninias arrives. He has learned that he is Semiramis's son. An invisible hand writes on the tomb's base "Avenge your father!" He recoils, appalled. Priests arrive, Ninias makes himself known to them. They command him, as they give him Ninus's crown and sword, to enter the tomb and to kill the first person he meets. Ninias obeys and upon returning shows his sword covered with his mother's blood. He attempts to kill himself. The priests prevent him. His mother dies, after recognizing him. The people acclaim Ninias. Voltaire himself, in a commentary to his Semimmis in 1752, said "il était à craindre que le spectacle révoltat" (It was to be feared that the show would be found disgustlng), adding that the British have to see Hamlet every day. Gluck's ballet of twenty minutes was hardly the appropriate fare for a wedding ceremony, and an Austrian member of the Court wrote: "The 31st [January 1765] was the third and last gala day... in the evening [their majesties] went to the theatre where Racine's tragedy Bajazeth was given with a new ballet taken from Semiramis and choreographed by Signor Angiolini, which however found no approval whatever, and in fact it was much too pathetic and sad for a marriage celebration." Glick's Semiramis is one of his least-known works - curiously, for it contains some striking music and is written with his usual force and brevity. The score includes the usual wind instruments and strings but also trumpets and kettledrums. © 1993 H. C. Robbins Landon