Here’s a ‘Don Giovanni’ for our turbulent times
Do the arts make us better people?
My wife, Hale, a former high school art teacher, has long said they don't but always adds that doing for others, our communities and nation, getting beyond the narrow lanes of selfcentered ways, makes us better people.
I can see what she was driving at, but I've always believed the arts prepare us to be better people by softening our rougher edges.
ncient Greek philosopher Aristotle described the process as “catharsis,” a kind of purification, a purging of base emotions through “pity and fear,” affirming the mystic power of art when we experience it, particularly theater.
But the notion, it seems to me, also applies to any art that appeals to the intellect as well as our emotions, such as Renoir's 1880 Impressionist painting of youthful friends, “Luncheon of the Boating Party”; or Ian McEwan's 2001 novel about a girl's half-innocent mistake that ruins lives, “Atonement”; or the Gershwins' 1935 “Porgy and Bess” opera, which is theater and a showcase for the human voice, as all operas are.
Such art has its greatest punch when it reflects our own times yet reinforces timeless themes, shedding light on what we can do to navigate our way through especially tension-filled days such as the ones we are passing through today.
Which brings me to San Francisco Opera's new staging of Mozart's enduring “Don Giovanni” (through July 2), directed by Michael Cavanagh, in a third and last chapter of the company's several-year cycle of the composer's collaborations with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte.
As in the other two operas in the cycle, “The Marriage of Figaro” and “Cosi fan tutte,” “Don Giovanni” is set in what Cavanagh called “The Great American House.” Over the three operas, the narrative arc begins during the post-colonial period, moves to the 1930s, and, for this last one, into a war-ravaged home in the late 2080s. In colors gray and white, the house, of course, represents the nation, the so-called “shining city on a hill,” which has suffered some temporary power outages recently, which the Jan. 6 Select Committee has aired during TV hearings these past two weeks.
Cavanagh, projection designer Erhard Rom, costume designer Constance Hoffman and lighting wizard Jane Cox set the last shared vision 150 years after the action in “Cosi.” The opera, written in 1787, opens with projected images of flames lapping the scrim, into a tenuous future, with shredded parts of the American flag hanging down, the house and civilized society crumbling.
“In `Don Giovanni,' the greed, desire and hunger for power without regard for impact on our fellow human beings has stolen our future and loosed monsters on the world,” he added. “And those monsters look like us.”
“Don Giovanni” is the classic story about the familiar unrepentant bounder, the man who never saw a woman he didn't want to have sex with and abandon immediately afterward.
As the story begins shortly after the overture, conducted with an emphasis on lithe pacing by Bertrand de Billy, the Don, sung confidently and knowingly by baritone Etienne Dupuis, is attempting to rape Donna Anna, portrayed by soprano Adela Zaharia, who boasts sharp but shimmering vocals. Her father, the Commendatore, sung ably and robustly by bass Soloman Howard, objects fiercely. The Don challenges the older man to a duel and kills him, the crime that eventually dooms the Don in the end.
Then we learn that Donna Elvira, a role sensitively rendered by soprano Nicole Car, likewise seduced and in thrall of the Don, thinks of herself as his wife. The Don's work is just never done, as the laugh-inducing “Catalog aria,” sung deftly at high speed by bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni, of the Don's Europe-spanning list of conquests attests. Even the peasant girl Zerlina, lyrically and brightly sung by soprano Christina Gansch, willingly goes off with the Don, another woman, panting with desire, captivated by his charms.
One of the humorous aspects of the story is that the Don strikes out with every one of the ladies. As a stud, he's a flop.
At opera's end, Don Giovanni invites the gigantic statue of the Commendatore, Howard, unseen, returning to sing briefly, to dinner, an event forecast ominously in the overture. As the statue opens up to reveal a hell, Don Giovanni refuses to renounce his selfish, lascivious ways, and down, down goes the Don.
It may be unlikely that Cavanagh knew in 2019, when he and his team spawned the idea of this “Don Giovanni,” that the title character would so closely resemble Trump of 2021 and 2022, who, like the Don, is rich, threatening, and willfully amoral. Sadly, that may explain his appeal in some quarters of America, despite his many negative comments about women, his efforts to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election results, and his asking supporters to send him money for “the official election defense fund” to challenge the 2020 election, when the fund simply didn't exist, and much of the money was actually used for other purposes. Like the Don, he's still working the con.
Do the arts make us better people? I've believe they prepare us to be better people by softening our rougher edges.