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| S. Ramey and K. Moll, Don Giovanni, Metropolitan Opera, 1990 |
In 1995, Eco was a guest of the BBC4 radio show, "Desert Island Discs", in which guests are interviewed and discuss their favorite pieces of music. Eco picked, among others:
Aria from the end of Mozart's Don Giovanni, "This is part of the final act... when the commander arrives. All the arias of Don Giovanni became so popular because they are easy to sing. This one, cannot. The melodical line [is] so difficult that you can listen to it for years and never be-- except when you are a professional, and you sing it professionally-- is of such a difficulty, once to render this sudden apparition of death, of the infernal, of the infernal power, something that escapes human comprehension, and that it escapes also the human musical comprehension. I think it's a terrible passage. It makes me thrill every time I hear it." -ecowiki