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Sunday, December 19, 2004
  Donna Elvira: Chi è lá
Don Giovanni: Stelle! che vedo!

Listening to Donna Elvira converse with the two criminals, I wonder if this is good recitative. It sounds good. But is that because the singers, Teresa Berganza, Ruggiero Raimondi, and Josè Van Dam, know what to do with just a few notes? Or did Mozart chose the right few notes to repeat so frequently? I miss the picturesque recitative we heard in Bach's canata not long ago. Not an opera singer myself, I don't know what a singer wants in recitative.

At this point in history, if I am not mistaken, recitative is about to appear in string quartets and symphonies. Is Donna Elvira's the type of recitative that is expressive or clear enough to make that leap? 
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In January 2004 I starting writing an opinion for each selection in the Norton Recorded Anthology of Western Music. Now, more than a year later, I am almost finished. Soon, I will have an archive full of opinions on the music we so carelessly call "classical." And no one can stop me.

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Location: Cincinnati, Ohio, United States

Director of the Contemporary Performer's Workshop... Music Teacher for St. Aloysius Gonzaga School... Principal 'Cellist of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra... Composer

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