To the sound of thunder: A relevant and unsparing critique of humanity
Don Giovanni Theatre Royal, Glasgow Keith Bruce
WHEN Sir Thomas Allen’s production of the darkest collaboration between Mozart and librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte was first seen in 2013, there were reservations about the orchestra and some of the singing.
Nearly a decade later, Scottish Opera emerges from the trials of the pandemic, having responded to those challenges with inventive creativity, with a new season of work that shows a company in a much more stable and confident position.
If that is immediately obvious in the playing of the overture by an orchestra on top form under music director Stuart Stratford, with the brass and continuo bringing a period performance sensibility to the score, the rich ensemble in the instrumentalists is reflected onstage by the singing company.
The chorus contribution to the piece is small but effective, and it is in the combination of the soloists – especially in the septet that ends Act 1 and at the close of the work after the Don’s demise – that this production is at its richest.
Mozart was very democratic in his allocation of some of his best arias to the complex characters in the tale, and Roland Wood’s Giovanni, Zachary Altman as his servant Leporello, Hye-youn Lee and Kitty Whately as Donnas Anna and Elvira and Emerging Artist Lea Shaw as Zerlina, all deliver excellent accounts of their solos.
The Wednesday night audience showed the most enthusiasm for the fine tenor voice of Argentinian Pablo Bemsch, happy to ignore the fact that sappy Don Ottavio is arguably the least sympathetic ally drawn figure on stage.
Significantly, however, there was no showboating from any of them that might impede the director’s propulsive story-telling. With clever mobile design by Simon Higlett (although the noise of the scenic machinery was not always drowned out by the soundtrack’s rumbles of ominous thunder), this Giovanni is transposed to a Gothic Venice.
While that makes fine scenic and socio-historic sense (Da Ponte was expelled from the citystate for his own libidinous behaviour), it works less well with some of the text, particularly the “Spain 1003” punchline of Leporello’s famous catalogue aria, enumerating his master’s conquests.
But that is a small matter in a staging that captivates because all the principals produce rounded character portraits.
Altman’s is a very put-upon servant, and Wood follows his
Falstaff with another all-too-recognisable duplicitous libertine. Lee, who was Madame Mao in Nixon in China, shows the mask of Donna Anna’s piety, while Whately makes Elvira’s emotional rollercoaster believable.
As in all the Mozart/ Da Ponte operas, it all adds up to an unsparing critique of the human species, and seems much more relevant in the 21st century that one might have wished.
Repeated on Saturday and touring to Eden Court, Inverness, Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, and His Majesty’s, Aberdeen, before returning to Glasgow. This performance sponsored by Miller Samuel Hill Brown.