Today offered the opportunity to see two performance of the same opera in the same day. The Met broadcast their Don Giovanni at 10am west coast time; we could have attended San Francisco Opera’s Don Giovanni that evening, but figured that was a bit much.
The Met set was pretty simple and not very interesting, with the exception of the statue-comes-to-dinner scene. Most of the action takes place in the street just outside a three-story building; each story is divided into six door-size bays, each with a pair of shutters. The shutters spent most of their time closed, but occasionally one or two or more would open to let someone step into or out of the building, or to view the street from one of the upper stories. Close-ups revealed that the building was probably painted 50 years ago: the paint is extensively worn away. The elements of the set could be pulled apart to generate an alley into which Leporello could escape in Act 2, or pulled way apart to reveal Don Giovanni’s party at the end of Act 1. In such cases there was a backdrop of another three-story array of bays and shutters, echoing the one that we see most of the time. For the graveyard and statue-comes-to-dinner scenes, the shutters were gone; in each bay was a graveyard statue, with the Commendatore’s statue in a large bay at the second-story level.
Our cast:
Leporello: Luca Pisaroni
Don Giovanni: Mariusz Kwiecien
Donna Anna: Marina Rebeka
The Commendatore: Štefan Kocán
Don Ottavio: Ramón Vargas
Donna Elvira: Barbara Frittoli
Zerlina: Mojca Erdmann
Masetto: Joshua Bloom
Conductor: Fabio Luisi
Production: Michael Grandage
The entire performance was very fine, but I have to single out three exceptional moments: (1) Ramón Vargas giving us an outstanding “Il mio tesoro” (2) the statue-comes-to-dinner scene, with Štefan Kocán’s “Don Giovanni!” summons raising goosebumps, and Don Giovanni disappearing through a trapdoor in the floor while puffs of flame appear 3 feet in the air to either side of his dining table (3) the intermission interview with Jay Hunter Morris, tapped to replace an ailing Gary Lehman in the upcoming performances of Siegfried. Morris was beside himself with awe and enthusiasm: “I get to sing on the Met stage with Bryn Terfel!! And Debbie Voigt!! And Gerhard Siegel!!" His gentle southern accent made him all the more endearing. You can catch similar enthusiasm from him at 4:30 and 8:25 of a 10-minute video about San Francisco’s 2011 Ring.
The above is not to slight the contributions of the other singers. Mariusz Kwiecien is a candidate for the world’s leading Don Giovanni, and Luca Pisaroni complemented him well as Leporello. Mojca Erdmann made a fetching Zerlina. And it was a pleasure to listen to the others. A very solid beta.
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