John Gavanti is a 1980 "No Wave

No Wave

No Wave was a short-lived but influential underground music, film, performance art, video, and contemporary art scene that had its beginnings during the mid-1970s in New York City. The term No Wave is in part satirical word play rejecting the commercial elements of the then-popular New Wave genre...

 opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

" album by members of the bands Mars

Mars (band)

Mars was a New York City No Wave band formed by vocalist Sumner Crane in 1975. He was joined by China Burg , Mark Cunningham , and artist Nancy Arlen , and briefly by guitarist Rudolph Grey. The band played one live gig under the name China before changing it to Mars...

 and DNA

DNA (band)

DNA was a No Wave band formed in 1978 by guitarist Arto Lindsay and keyboardist Robin Crutchfield. Rather than playing their instruments in a traditional manner, they instead focused on making unique and unusual sounds...

. It was written and played by Mark Cunningham (of Mars), Sumner Crane (of Mars), China Burg (of Mars), Ikue Mori

Ikue Mori

, also known as Ikue Ile, is a drummer, composer, and graphic designer.-Biography:Ikue Mori was born and raised in Japan. She says she had little interest in music before hearing punk rock...

 (of DNA) and Arto Lindsay

Arto Lindsay

Arthur Morgan Lindsay is an American guitarist, singer, record producer and experimental composer. He is a 1974 graduate of Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida....

 (of DNA). All were prominent members of New York City's short-lived No Wave music scene.

The opera is a loose retelling of Mozart's

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...

 opera Don Giovanni

Don Giovanni

Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...

, which in turn is based on the legend of Don Juan

Don Juan

Don Juan is a legendary, fictional libertine whose story has been told many times by many authors. El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra by Tirso de Molina is a play set in the fourteenth century that was published in Spain around 1630...

. The title character is a libidinous figure endowed with magical powers, and the songs of the opera follow him on a series of adventures, many of them involving the pursuit of various females, including a female lion, a young girl, and a grandmother "in the beautiful autumn of life."

Description

Cunningham wrote about the project on his personal website:

"John Gavanti was, in a sense, a band, as we spent over a year developing and rehearsing the work. It consisted of Sumner Crane, the author of the libretto and songs, Don Burg, altar ego of China Burg, and myself as well as Ikue Mori from DNA. In the recording sessions we also used Arto Lindsay and his brother Duncan on garbage lid percussion for a samba takeoff. Sumner played guitar and piano, Don bass clarinet

Bass clarinet

The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B , but it plays notes an octave below the soprano B clarinet...

 and I managed to get in trumpet, trombone, baritone horn and tuba. Ikue played the viola and cello. Neither she nor Lucy had ever touched those instruments before. Sumner called the shots generally but the arrangements were collective improvs. We recorded it in NY at Sear Sound, an all vacuum tube studio later popularized by Sonic Youth

Sonic Youth

Sonic Youth is an American alternative rock band from New York City, formed in 1981. The current lineup consists of Thurston Moore , Kim Gordon , Lee Ranaldo , Steve Shelley , and Mark Ibold .In their early career, Sonic Youth was associated with the No Wave art and music scene in New York City...

. It was released on my own label Hyrax in 1980, and sold over the years almost all the 3000 vinyl copies printed. It's now been reissued as a CD on Atavistic

Atavistic Records

Atavistic Records is an American rock and jazz record label based in Chicago, Illinois, known particularly for its No Wave and free jazz recordings. It has released albums by Glenn Branca, Nels Cline, Lydia Lunch, Peter Brötzmann, various Ken Vandermark projects, Pinetop Seven, Swans, Elliott...

.

In the early eighties, some crazy Italian fans made a video of the whole opera which was really quite amazing; we figured the only way to represent it would be a big budget film, but they did it with no budget, an all male cast and lots of energy and humor. Unfortunately finding a copy is probably next to impossible."

Reviews

Glenn Kenny of Trouser Press

Trouser Press

Trouser Press was a rock and roll magazine started in New York in 1974 as a mimeographed fanzine by editor/publisher Ira Robbins, fellow Who fan Dave Schulps and Karen Rose under the name "Trans-Oceanic Trouser Press" ...

wrote of John Gavanti: "Some have called this the most unlistenable record ever made, and that's a fine invitation indeed."

Track listing

All tracks composed by Sumner Crane.

1. "Overture"
2. "I Awake"
3. "Down To The Ocean"
4. "On Board Ship"
5. "Gavanti Samba"
6. "Lo! La!"
7. "O Ancient Ocean"
8. "New York Blues"
9. "Higher And Higher"
10. "Africa"
11. "Mirror Mirror"
12. "Venice/ Locus Solus"
13. "Gavanti's Lament"
14. "Homeward Bound"