Mozart's Don Giovanni, subtitled in the score as a dramma giocoso, is considered by most musicians to be the greatest single achievement of its creator in the operatic realm. To me, it definitely appears as the first great flash of light in what would come to be known as the "Romantic era" in music.
Mozart stakes his turf right in the first two chords of the overture. Those thunderous chords, and the dogged slow march that follows them will of course re-appear in the penultimate scene when the statue of the Commendatore comes to dinner and then casts the unrepentant Don Giovanni (Don Juan in Spanish) into Hell. It's powerful, deeply unsettled music, and definitely reaches far forwards from the well-defined and well-mannered courtly world in which Mozart began his career. Any stage production of this masterwork has to take account of that one foot planted far ahead of the composer's own time, while also finding a way to deal with the other foot as firmly planted in the conventions of the late eighteenth century theatre.
The Canadian Opera Company's new production is the second I've seen from this company. The first, some years back, was a rather lame effort in which the director and designer -- after a fairly traditional take on the entire story -- saw fit to imply that the appearance of the statue was just a cutesy little pantomime staged by two of the other characters to scare Don Giovanni into repentance. Oh, please. The major effect of this directorial conceit was to make nonsense of the truly frightening music which accompanies this scene.
This opera was written in a time when Hell was a very real concept to the vast majority of people, Mozart probably not excepted. I'm not going to argue that we ought to stage it as if we were in an eighteenth century theatre, but at the same time I see no good purpose to be served by imposing a demeaning gloss of twenty-first century scepticism onto the traditional story.
So, now that I've staked my turf, let's look at this new production.
Director Dmitri Tcherniakov has done a significant rewriting of the opera's libretto by altering all the relationships among the characters so that all of them, except Don Giovanni himself, are members of or connected to a single family, a well-to-do modern family. The entire action takes place in one single room of their home. He has then ripped open the libretto's use of a single 24-hour time frame by recasting the scenes over a period of several months. As the production progressed, these innovations caused more and more difficulty by conflicting with the sung text of the opera in various ways. These jarring inconsistencies -- and they were jarring -- could quite well have been resolved by "dropping the other shoe", so to speak, and also rewriting the sung text. Then the work could quite clearly have been presented as "Don Giovanni, music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte, adapted by Dmitri Tcherniakov." But that was a step that Tcherniakov did not take. I wonder if he did not dare to go that far.
By going as far as he did, he has already significantly altered the nature of the work he was staging. This is risky territory for any creative artist to enter. How far can you go without effectively creating a new work of art, your own, out of the fragments of the previous work? I don't feel that Tcherniakov exactly crossed this line, but he came dangerously close to doing so. The results were challenging, and at times stimulating, but I don't feel on the whole that the approach served Mozart or the audience especially well.
The program booklet included a lengthy Director's Note which I read after the performance. It did not clarify at all the staging of the second act, which was especially baffling. Why were all the characters grouped together around the stage in attitudes suggestive of a catatonic stupor? What motivation caused each one to come to life when his/her turn to sing arrived, and then lapse back into silence, stillness and possible madness? Not only confusing, this was also -- quite frankly -- boring.
So was the excessive use in Act II of stand-and-deliver singing, where the performer simply stands still in one spot while singing. When the entire stage picture telegraphs detachment, non-involvement, disinterest, and inaction to the audience -- what is there to interest or involve the audience?
The other point which grated on me especially was the confusion which Tcherniakov's changes caused around Zerlina and Masetto. In the original text, they are members of the peasant class, and the scenes involving them are totally coloured by the power dynamics of class. Don Giovanni, as an aristocrat and landowner has immense power over this couple. In Tcherniakov's version, where they appear as his social equals, the sung text becomes nonsensical.
The time lapses which Tcherniakov built into the story became simply annoying, as each one was announced by a subtitle projected on the black curtain that collapsed across the stage at each of the numerous scene breaks. Those breaks also interrupted the flow of the action to excess. Of course in a traditional production scene changes have to happen, but is it really necessary to keep lowering the curtain? Those subtitles could equally well appear on the Surtitle screen above the proscenium.
One other directorial choice caused significant problems. Tcherniakov aptly chose to present Don Giovanni and his sidekick Leporello as fountains of energy, in contrast to the relatively static behaviour of the other characters. Fair enough. But having the singers moving too energetically -- while singing -- caused periodic dropouts in the vocal sound. Since the pre-eminent feature that distinguishes opera from theatre is the singing, I certainly have to complain when the stage movement makes the music vanish! If this happens in a house of relatively modest size like the Four Seasons Centre, how much worse would the problem be in one of the more cavernous major opera houses of the world?
If all of this sounds like the production was a resounding flopperoo, be not deceived. The musical quality of the performance was totally impressive, right across the board. The singing cast were uniformly strong. Among the women in the company I would single out Jennifer Holloway as Donna Elvira, who rose very effectively to both the musical and dramatic challenges always present in this conflicted character, as well as the extra challenges inherent in Tcherniakov's re-visioning of the opera. Her powerful rendering of Mi tradi was a major highlight of Act 2. Canadian tenor Michael Schade, a world-renowned Mozart specialist, sang with great finesse and beauty as Don Ottavio, including the use of his finest light tones in pianissimo singing that was still clearly audible in every note. Sasha Dijahanian impressed with her lovely clear tone as Zerlina, while also effectively portraying the young woman bewitched by Don Giovanni's powerful personality.
Baritone Kyle Ketelson was a fine Leporello, his playful acting complementing his magnificent singing in the famous Catalogue Aria in which he discusses the contents of Don Giovanni's "little black book" with Donna Elvira. His onstage acting partnership with Don Giovanni definitely cranked up the energy level whenever the two appeared together.
In the title role, Russell Braun gave a memorable performance. This production demands that the Don descend by degrees into dissolution, his drinking becoming progressively more extreme as the voice and face of the Commendatore haunts him. In the end, he dies on stage from what appears to be a heart attack. My sister (who attended the show with me) aptly commented that he didn't need to be dragged into hell because he was already there. I would agree, and add that the hell he suffered wasn't even of his own making since the forces within him driving him through his life to his death were too great even for him to control. Braun captured all the degrees of this descent powerfully and clearly, and matched it with singing of even greater power and energy. His greatest moment was his high-stakes reading of the near-impossible Finch'han dal vino, the high speed delivery of the text well paired with an energetic staging that yet made the aria completely audible and intelligible.
Conductor Michael Hofstetter in his COC debut drew beguiling sounds from the orchestra and led a nimble, alert reading that strongly supported the singers. As a musician, my one quibble lies with the powerful opening of the overture. Why, oh, why is it considered impossible to play that thunderous opening as Mozart wrote it? The rolling chord of D Minor lasts five beats with a clearly marked three beats of rest following, but in practice (last night being no exception) you get maybe 1.5 to 1.7 beats of rest if you are lucky. If there is such a thing as "grammar" in music (I believe there is) the failure to respect those three full beats of rest makes nonsense of the opening chords. Some day, maybe I'll hear a conductor who is brave enough to play it as Mozart wrote it. Maybe.
You will never get such a thing as a "definitive" interpretation of a masterpiece like Don Giovanni. It ranks as one of those art works which can be infinitely re-interpreted for centuries after its creation. This COC production certainly was challenging, intriguing, and maddening in equal measures. The director's conception was an interesting one, even when it conflicted with the text. The musical values of the performance were first-rate throughout. Where it failed was with the staging of the second act, with all its confusing and tedious stillness, and unclear stage pictures. This, I think, was probably responsible for the rather "polite" applause which greeted the closing curtain, applause which really only became enthusiastic with the appearance at the end of the curtain calls by Leporello and Don Giovanni. This entire cast of singers certainly deserved better recognition for their fine work.
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